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Missed Solana? 2 Promising SOL Competitors to Consider in 2024

Posted on by angelo

Solana (SOL) has been one of the best performing cryptocurrencies this cycle, attracting interest from both individuals and institutions due to its network scalability and transaction efficiency. Finbold has selected two promising Solana competitors to consider for the second half of 2024.

SOL notably saw an impressive 19,873% surge in 2021 and another remarkable recovery from the 2022 low. During the previous bull market, Solana rose from $1 to $260 in less than 12 months. Later, it rose from $8 to $204 in a year and a half, currently trading at $140 per token.

SOL/USD weekly chart. Source: TradingView (CRYPTO Index)

Solana has positioned itself as a serious competitor to Ethereum (ETH), leader in Web3 and decentralized finance (DeFi). In particular, the network offers much higher throughput measured in transactions per second (TPS), faster confirmation and lower fees.

Today, two of Solana’s competitors are quietly building high-speed networks to meet similar demand. From a technological perspective, both of these cryptocurrencies thrive on a highly scalable, efficient, decentralized, and secure technology stack.

Solana’s Promising Competitors MultiversX (EGLD) and Radix (XRD) Bet on a Future of Sharding

Solana’s two promising competitors are MultiversX (EGLD) and Radix (XRD), focused on scaling via sharding. Interestingly, many of the world’s largest systems scale through sparse database, a proven way to manage large amounts of data, now replicated in blockchain applications in decentralized and distributed ledgers.

In 2018, Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin mentioned sharding and proof of stake as attributes driving the efficiency of “blockchains of the future.”

“Proof-of-stake and sharing blockchains of the future will be thousands of times more efficient, and so the efficiency sacrifices associated with on-chain will become increasingly acceptable.”

Vitalik Buterin

On this subject, Radix creator Dan Hughes published a lengthy essay on X titled “Why Sharding?” In summary, Hughes explained that his 12 years of experimenting and developing different blockchain architectures brought sharding to light.

Additionally, MultiverseX and Radix have both developed an asset-driven model for the tokens integrated into their blockchain. This model is more secure than the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) model, where ERC-20 tokens result from a smart contract call that tracks account balances.

Instead, tokens on asset-oriented blockchains function like the native token itself and avoid giving special permissions to applications, which often leads to security breaches and wallet depletion.

MultiversX (EGLD) Scalability and Pricing Analysis

The MultiversX production network is the first and only mainnet to implement and run all three types of partitioning. It includes “network partitioning”, “state partitioning”, and “transaction partitioning”.

Essentially, MultiversX scales through an adaptive sharding model, where the network adds more shards based on demand. Each shard has a theoretical capacity of 10,000 TPS, and the network currently operates with three shards.

At the time of writing, the eGold token (EGLD) is trading at $28.53, down 58% year-to-date, suggesting an oversold cryptocurrency. Its market cap stands at $775 million, which is 83 times less than Solana’s market cap of $65 billion.

MultiversX (EGLD) price chart since the beginning of the year. Source: Finbold

Radix (XRD) Scalability and Price Analysis

On the other hand, Radix still hasn’t implemented sharding in the mainnet. Instead, the blockchain is currently testing this implementation with promising results. Additionally, the project is betting on the atomic composability of all its transactions, which results in a seamless user experience when using different shards.

Recent tests by Dan Hughes suggest that the network will be able to handle over 200,000 swaps per second. Swaps are more complex transactions that typically achieve lower throughput than regular TPS. The testnet confirmed these swaps in an average of 3.75 seconds, using 32 shards.

Radix test network. Source: Dan Hughes

Meanwhile, XRD is priced at $0.29, below its initial coin offering (ICO) price. It is down 28% year-to-date and has a market cap of $300 million, which is 216 times smaller than Solana.

Radix (XRD) price chart since the beginning of the year. Source: Finbold

However, both EGLD and XRD pose considerable risks to investors despite their promising technology. Investors should be careful and do due diligence before making a financial decision, as these low-cap cryptocurrencies could still perform negatively.

Disclaimer: The content of this site should not be considered investment advice. The investment is speculative. When you invest, your capital is at risk