Ethereum will be the smart contract global standard

Benzinga, a fintech company that provides market news and data to retail and crypto traders, published its latest survey earlier in June, titled “Ethereum Predicted to Become the Global Standard Smart Contract Blockchain.”

The firm surveyed data from 100 cryptocurrency investors and traders, and the data collected revealed some very good news for the Ethereum blockchain, because over 50% of those surveyed “believe that Ethereum is poised to become the global standard contract blockchain.”

The survey says, “Out of 100 investors polled, 56.7% said Ethereum, 20.6% said Cardano, 8.2% said the Binance Smart Chain and 14.5% reported other platforms.” That certainly puts Ethereum solidly out in front of its competitors and the so-called ‘Ethereum killers’.

What makes the investors so bullish on Ethereum? They responded, “decentralization, application ecosystem and scalability” play a role in the decision, although they also revealed that ‘scalability’ was the most important factor, and ‘decentralization’ the least important.

The ‘scalability’ factor is interesting, because that refers to processing times and lower gas fees, the latter having been a thorn in Ethereum’s side recently. Scalability has also been a problem for the leading smart contract blockchain, but this does not seem to have deterred these investors from seeing a bright future for it, and a belief that it will overcome the gas fee and scalability issues with Ethereum 2.0, which is on its way. The fact that it is the main blockchain for DeFi projects also plays an important role in infusing investors with confidence in the product, because it has first mover advantage.

However, Benzinga does offer some words of warning for newer retail investors: “Ethereum’s struggle to upgrade from proof of work to proof of stake has been highlighted by high gas fees and harsh criticism from environmentalists. This chink in Ethereum’s armour has been targeted heavily by Cardano and the Binance Smart Chain, and only time will tell if the flaw is fatal. For now, Ethereum is still home to the largest DeFi ecosystem, and layer 2 solutions show promise to scale Ethereum before the ETH 2.0 mainnet goes live.”

On the other hand, the fact that investors remain the most bullish on ETH suggests that traders have faith in the Ethereum Foundation’s ability to successfully complete the 2.0 scaling upgrade. This is not to say that Cardano and Binance Smart Chain will not have an opportunity to claim some of Ethereum’s market share, but if Ethereum is widely seen as the ‘gold standard’ for smart contracts, their work will be so much harder.