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Felix Feng, the Co-founder and CEO of SetProtocol, recently elucidated the reason why cryptocurrency projects usually chose Ethereum, a leading smart contract platform, over other smart contract blockchains, including Proof-of-Stake chains of players such as Tezos and Tron Foundation.
Feng stated on Twitter that one of the most frequent questions he’s asked was whether SetProtocol would be built on other chains. The CEO stated that there were several factors, such as developer infrastructure, decentralized exchange infrastructure, standardized token standard, non-volatile asset, and oracles, influencing the decision.
Under developer infrastructure, Feng commented that Ethereum would not have reached the point it has today, without infrastructures like Infura, MetaMask, and Truffle. He added that the leading blockchain had “an ecosystem of other tools that make a smart contract,” and enabled DApp development. This was followed by Feng speaking about teh projects which “mimic” the Ethereum Virtual Machine. He said,
“[…] it’s possible to simply copy/paste your smart contract code and deploy the bytecode generated by truffle. However, it gets a lot more challenging when existing tools are incompatible, and you have to think about underlying blockchain assumptions.”
He further stated that building tools “slow down development significantly”. For this, he cited the example of projects like MakerDAO and Augur Project which took years to launch, contrary to projects like dYdX Protocol which only took months. Feng also commented that MakerDAO and Augur contributed “greatly” to the Ethereum ecosystem. He went on to state,
“Also, an understated consideration is security. Projects such as the DAO and
@ParityTech have provided precedent for common security issues. If you build on a new chain, you risk being the guinea pig for a new bug. And, good luck finding an auditor to review your code.”
The CEO also spoke about the second factor, decentralized exchange infrastructure. He stated that SetProtocol relied on “solid decentralized exchange infrastructure”. This included infrastructures like Kyber Network, Uniswap Exchange and Ox Project, enabling users to gain access to the token “without a trusted counter-party”. He said,
“Not only does the infrastructure / APIs need to be robust and solid, there must be sufficient liquidity between the main trading pairs that Set’s strategies include.”
Under standardized token standard, the third factor, the CEO stated that a token standard, agreed upon by the community and which enabled protocol compatibility was “an under-appreciated requirement”. He added that it was important for a developer to build features without worrying about “incompatibility with other systems”.
The fourth factor was non-volatile assets, which was about stablecoins. On this, Feng stated that stablecoins were “vital for proper functionality” of several financial applications, including payments, lending, margin trading, and non-correlated base assets. He added that “without projects like MakerDAO and Dai – we wouldn’t be able to build certain strategies”.
He went on to state,
Fin: These key pieces of infrastructure all play a part in making Set and decentralized asset management viable today on Ethereum – and these pieces would need to be present on another chain before we can seriously consider building on it.
— Felix {Setoshi} Feng (@felix2feng) May 20, 2019