An investor from Crypto Valley Venture Capital is reportedly keeping a close eye on a number of Ethereum (ETH) rivals that show growth potential.
In a new Business Insider report, Olaf Hannemann, the founder and chief information officer of the blockchain-focused venture capital firm, says that beyond Bitcoin (BTC), there are a number of interesting projects in the arena of smart contract platforms as led by Ethereum.
“[A] fundamental view we have is favoring the protocols where people truly develop projects. Our view on Ethereum is generally positive. It’s still the go-to for many projects and I think there’s positive momentum still.”
In addition to Ethereum, the venture capitalist says he likes several of ETH’s competitors.
“There’s a lot of capital in Ethereum, but there is also Tezos and Cardano. We like Solana and Polkadot too.
There are projects looking at stacks, which offer applications built on top of Bitcoin. Avalanche is one to watch too and more recently we are looking at NEAR protocol.”
Tezos (XTZ) is a platform that enables developers to build smart contracts and decentralized applications for products and services. while Cardano (ADA) is a scalable decentralized blockchain platform.
Solana (SOL) is a layer-1 smart contract platform like Avalanche (AVAX) and Polkadot (DOT) is a cross-chain interoperability protocol. Meanwhile, Near Protocol (NEAR) is a developer-focused blockchain designed for scalability and stability
Looking at the broader future of cryptocurrencies, Hannemann foresees more mainstream money entering the markets but that won’t necessarily eliminate the volatility that has been a hallmark of the digital asset space since its inception a decade ago.
“There’s more and more established capital also coming in. It has different market dynamics to traditional established markets. Something which is both a challenge and an opportunity is that you are able to trade at extremely high-leverage positions. That will bring with it a very volatile market in the short term.”
When it comes to the ultimate winners and losers after the crypto space reaches maturity, the venture capitalist investor says,
“Our investment thesis is essentially that we believe that blockchain technology is a catalyst for a lot of other mega-trend technologies that are happening right now, like machine learning, internet of things, personalized healthcare and longevity.
I think long long-term, the jury is still out on whether will there be one or two endgame winner protocols, or whether it will be many different blockchains for different industries.
You get evangelists who truly believe one blockchain is better than the other but you know what, I may have the better protocol, but if I can’t convince startups to build on on my protocol, I’m going to lose out medium term.”
