How healthy is the proliferation of blockchain and cryptocurrency projects?
A little flashback to seven years ago; the crypto space was an over one (1) billion dollars worth market with just fourteen (14) cryptocurrency listed on the earliest cryptocurrency tracking service, coinmarketcap.
It been just seven years from this time and everything looks very different. Over four thousand cryptocurrency projects listed on coinmarketcap with the total market capitalization staying well over two hundred and sixty (260) billion dollars at the time of this writing. Do the math, that’s an average of over five hundred (500) new cryptocurrency projects created every year. Of the fourteen earliest cryptocurrencies occupying the charts, only bitcoin and Litecoin have managed to maintain a significant position in the market ranking with the other projects as good as dead. coinmarketcap, 2013 Source
A significant number of these new cryptocurrency projects emerged after the event of 2017, and a little while before that. Till date, the number of new cryptocurrency projects have been overwhelming, one could hardly keep track of them, only few of these new projects are currently listed on popular cryptocurrency trackers, in the real sense, there are over six (6) thousand cryptocurrency projects currently, this number is even poised to get much bigger with time.
The crypto space grows with each new project that emerges, and with each new concept, the scope of blockchain and cryptocurrency applications also increases, this is evidenced in the rapid growth experienced since 2013 as cryptocurrencies have become one of the notable economic disruption of the past five years.
New exciting projects emerging regularly in blockchain and cryptocurrency intensifies the struggle for supremacy or at least for recognition, what it takes to get noticed in the industry gets even bigger and as well costlier. The fact that Craig Wright still spends much of his time trying to defend being the anonymous ‘bitcoin creator’ depicts the struggles of staying relevant in the industry. New projects will have to show some huge sign of seriousness and put in a whole lot of efforts to get noticed in the industry and become relevant, existing projects also faces the struggle of keeping their position and possibly soaring higher. This creates a competitive scenario and an environment favourable for natural selection theories.
There are currently over 5,000 cryptocurrency projects with over 270 billion dollars total market capitalization. Source
The impact of this proliferation on the cryptocurrency industry is a result of these projects struggling for survival, the different survival strategies introduced by these new and existing projects is the architect of the current reputation and state of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. But one question still lurks, how has the crypto space really fared with the flooding of new projects? The comment section is open for discussions! Let’s talk! Share your views in the comment section and join the discussion. I’ll go first…
From a personal point of view, the crypto space has become a hot zone for innovations and new concept, the organization presents a free space for new projects to grow and existing ones to expand. To a large extent, this has been of positive return to the industry and the cryptosphere has presented the perfect environment.
Monero and Zcash were one of the earliest cryptocurrencies to offer privacy options; as at 2017, the crypto space was already housing over fifty (50) privacy-centred cryptocurrencies each adding some unique features to stand out, and sourcing differ solutions to cryptocurrency privacy, numerous privacy coins have emerged since this time and the struggle for supremacy intensifies even more. This sort of competition is well pronounced in the crypto space with each concept having a couple of cryptocurrency projects utilizing is and hoping to find solutions to the same problem. source
Artificial intelligence, social web, data science, Internet of things to mention a few has a number of cryptocurrencies applying its principles to blockchain technology in a bid to offer solutions to real life issues using the blockchain technology. This proliferation motivates these different projects to work even harder as this is the only way they will survive the competition they face.
But it’s not always green, despite the positive effects of this proliferation, there still exists some effects which doesn’t really go down well. The crypto space has witnessed countless scams of various forms. Inclusive is scams from cryptocurrency project teams. Scams in the industry has boomed more with new projects joining the industry.
Project team scams ranges from exit scams to manipulations by teams in a bid to work their way up the charts. Competition is perfect and positive when the competitors seek dominance via the righteous means, such competitions are bound to revolutionize the industry, this we have seen in the crypto space too. In contrast, unhealthy competition kills the reputation of the industry. Investors are scared away by the correlation of cryptocurrency with scams, especially scams by project teams, such as fake market statistics, insider trading, infeasible proposals and shiny marketing of fake projects. These manipulations have seen several ‘low-quality’ projects steer up the charts and dominate while amazing projects wallow in negligence.
Down the charts lives many great projects which are unable to play the ‘cryptocurrency game’ and are hence unable to push their web presence. They fail to thrive while inferior projects take their deserved place. With more projects coming in and the competition getting even hotter, these unhealthy moves are bound to escalate. For investors, separating the sheep from the wolves becomes another problem, inferior projects with good marketing and poor technology seems to appeal more. At the end of the day we can only hope that technology wins.
