Consolidated/paraphrased from various amazing contributors - this is not advice, but observation - If Passing On, No Need for Attribution, just happy to help as others have helped me
- Ethereum does much more than Bitcoin (not trashing papa Bitcoin, but Ethereum does more. Much Much more). This may not be bad. Being more conservative, less innovative, has perks. There's plenty of discussion on this theme I'll mention below.
- Ethereum's network effects as the dominant smart contract platform are overwhelming. All the things that make smart-blockchains cool are being done on Ethereum. There's no serious competition anymore; the evidence overwhelming:
- Ethereum's momentum as the primary platform where crypto-assets are issued has grown over the last three years, with the share of the total token market cap constituted by Ethereum based tokens rising from 73.81% in July 2017, to 98.40% in July 2020 (source). The entire market has steadily converged on Ethereum as the settlement layer for crypto-assets and Ethereum's ERC20 token interface as its technology standard for digital assets.
- Ethereum is the most utilized crypto platform in the world, with more fees being paid to Ethereum miners than any other project's. The dominance extends beyond just Ethereum, to Ethereum-based dApps, with seven of the next nine largest revenue earning crypto projects in the world being based on Ethereum, as this charts shows with all the projects highlighted in pink being Ethereum-based: https://cryptofees.info
- All major DeFi applications operate on Ethereum. Tracked by DefiPulse. These DeFi apps are all interacting to create an increasingly sophisticated open financial system on Ethereum that gives the platform an increasingly insurmountable advantage over potential competitors.
- All of the major stablecoins; Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC), True USD (TUSD), Binance USD (BUSD), and Paxos Standard (PAX), use the ERC20 standard.
- Beyond market adoption, the Ethereum development community is by far the largest in the cryptocurrency space, and its advantage over all other smart contract platforms has rapidly grown over the last three years:
- Ethereum has an overwhelming lead over all other cryptocurrency and blockchain projects in the number of developers working on it according to the recently released Electric Capital Developer Report (2020). This lead is accelerating, with a 215% increase in the number of developers working on Ethereum since 2017, and with the number of monthly developers increasing by 300+ between Q3 2019 and Q3 2020, which bucked the downward trend seen in the rest of the cryptocurrency market. (source)
- The overwhelming majority of Research and Development on blockchain scalability is being done on Ethereum-based projects (source). Groundbreaking scalability solutions that have recently launched on Ethereum Mainnet include Loopring and zkSync, which use zkRollUp technology to enable thousands of transactions per second to be processed on Ethereum layer 1: (source) The misinformation you'll hear too much
- Ethereum's developer tool list outshines everything out there. Getting smart contract to work properly is complex, and there is no magic port that will can do that realistically (no matter what others might shill). These are years of tools from thousands of developers. Having smart contract functionality means little compared to the tool list needed to use it effectively.
- Every other project still needs years to have all these tools, for what? A blockchain that has some trivial perk (assuming it's a perk). By the time they have these tools (years away) ETH 2.0 and a whole new paradigm of functionally will be in place. Again, there are thousands and thousand of ethereum developers, no other project comes close.
- Note, there's some that think moving tokens (ERC20) from one blockchain to another is a big deal. It's not. There are no simple converters for the broader blockchain functionality. This is not a push button process. An ERC20 token is not the real world application being converted, it's just a simple token. Nothing special.
- ETH 2.0 model outshines all in the areas of decentralization. There's a lot of discussion about types of "Proof-of-Stake" (a validation method of the blockchain ledger). ETH 2.0 allows individuals to stake (validate) the ledger. Projects that claim to be cheaper/faster use delegators (cartels), often calling their method "Delegated" or "Dynamic" Proof-of-Stake (or other names), which essentially forces control of the chain in to groups, so for example, exchanges could assume control. ETH 2.0 stakers can opt in to join pools, but pools are not required. Got 32 ETH? You can stake as a individual.
Ethereum's supply (and other common new-person questions about ethereum)
- ETH is not capped, but restricted, capped is unlikely to be secure. Ethereum's monetary policy is best described as "minimum issuance to secure the network"
- ETH issuance and burn is more sophisticated than Bitcoin. Under EIP-1559, some ETH get's burned (removed), which is projected to be greater than issuance (created). Everything is about creating a stable network, rather than and arbitrary cap. Bitcoin IS inflationary, and will be until we're all dead. Ethereum has a true deflationary mechanism
- What I see - anyone saying that ETH isn't scarce or anyone saying a "hard cap" is healthy for blockchains:
- doesn't understand math and securing blockchain systems
- is purposely deceitful
- trying to pitch their corpo-coin
- You might hear someone say "immutable" or "code is law" or similar topics, in references to Ethereum's early history. Young blockchains are technologies that often have issues that need sorted out to build trust. Bitcoin had a really bad event that had to be fixed (lots of bitcoins were generated by an exploit). But it got repaired. Ethereum had a similar event, and some will try to split hairs about how Ethereum's event was different. In the end, blockchains require trust or they will not be validated. In the end, Ethereum has garnered that trust, by devs, by investors, and just starting, industry.
- What about "eth-killer" (enter whatever) doing such and such?
- The graveyard of "eth-killers" is VAST: ICX. QTUM. VET. ZIL. EOS. ONT. XTZ. IOTA. NEO. STRAT. AION, Rootstock, ETC (to name a few). We have a new wave of them now. My advice. Stop pretending you can "kill" Ethereum and starting thinking how you can contribute to the world Ethereum is creating.
- But the gas-fees are too high... Yes, they are. Because the chain is being used. But L2 (above chain) solutions are already out (an example) for developers to start using. Plus other updates coming in a few months, such as EIP-1559, clients... this summer. FUDing gas costs now is justified, but don't think untested/unused projects have any edge, especially with upgrades on a functioning chain (Ethereum) are already here, with more coming.
More opinion, not advice
- The order of importance is Ethereum, Bitcoin than any of the players trying to innovate the space, which are overwhelmingly building on Ethereum.
- I no longer see any other independent blockchain as relevant compared to Ethereum. I did a few years ago, but many of those projects failed their vision, some disappointed greatly
- Ethereum 2.0 will easily cover my prior concerns. So to me, it's done - if blockchains have a future, it's Ethereum's future. (mostly)
- I do see plenty of interesting defi projects (on Ethereum, of course). They are all MUCH higher risk than Ethereum. itself.
- I have a minority opinion, it seems Bitcoin is irrelevant compared to Ethereum. It's more just name recognition.
- Ethereum already does more than Bitcoin, including more transactions, but that's not the reason I see Bitcoin as irrelevant
- The major valid argument supporting Bitcoin (compared to ETH) is that it is a simple blockchain. It remains a powerful upgrade to gold, a better store of value. Ethereum, while more capable, involves innovations, which adds potential risks. AND ETH 2.0 is not fully here yet
- I do, somewhat, agree with the above argument, in the short term, but if ETH 2.0 works (and it seems it will) and it fully becomes a computer-ledger for the world (a bigger "what if" for all crypto), then ETH becomes a more fundamental resource to society than Bitcoin. ETH, then, is a better store of value. Bitcoin is irrelevant.
- Working together - I see it. Other chains will still be around in a couple of years. But to dethrone Ethereum, you need to do something absolutely unexpected, like turning a phone into a camera. Turning gold digital. Turning digital gold into an app store (Ethereum). What's next? Something HUGE, I suspect some day, but NOTHING I see now in this space is anything other than just a shadow/subordinate of Ethereum (in my opinion).
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