Kyle Samani, the co-founder and managing partner at Multicoin Capital, an Austin, Texas-based “thesis driven” cryptocurrency fund, recently noted that projects such as Dfinity and Cosmos could potentially challenge Ethereum’s (ETH) dominance in the decentralized application (dApp) and smart contract development industry.
Samani’s comments regarding how he expects the blockchain sector to evolve came during a recent interview with Business Insider. The finance and management graduate from New York University’s Stern School of Business revealed he believes that by the end of 2019, the Ethereum network will still be the most dominant blockchain network to launch initial coin offerings (ICOs).
However, he noted there will be a more balanced market moving forward as there are many well-funded projects similar to Ethereum that are currently being developed. As CryptoGlobe reported in late August 2018, Dfinity’s Zug, Switzerland-based “internet computer” project managed to raise over $100 million through a private token sale. In total, the seemingly promising initiative has raised nearly $200 million.
Dfinity’s Launch Delayed
Dfinity’s funding round was led by giant venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Multicoin Capital, San Francisco-based hedge fund manager Polychain Capital, early stage investment firm Aspect Ventures, among others. On December 13, 2018, Dfinity’s development team announced they would be postponing the launch of the world’s first “internet computer” platform.
As mentioned in the company’s Medium blog post, Dfinity’s developers were “working on timelines” for releasing several different versions of their software. A “cut-down” version of the platform was scheduled to be introduced during Q1 2019. However, Dfinity’s team said that supporting such a beta launch would slow down the progress of the full version of their “world computer” program.
Getting Closer To Blockchain Interoperability
Cosmos, the other blockchain project Samani believes will take off and challenge Ethereum, is focused on developing solutions which will allow different blockchains to communicate with each other (blockchain interoperability). As covered, Lucas Nuzzi, the technical analyst at Digital Asset Research, had said in June 2018:
We are very close to achieving interoperable blockchains, and this has the potential of changing the entire cryptocurrency market.
The Cosmos project aims to create a “decentralized network of independent parallel blockchains” which is referred to as the “internet of blockchains.” Cosmos’s development team claims that their decentralized exchange (DEX) will be as fast, if not faster, than the existing centralized exchanges. Last year, the Cosmos team said they completed most of their development work, and were prepared to roll out different versions of the platform’s software including beta versions for testing.
