5 Crypto projects with EVM compatibility that everyone should look into
So, what types of projects am I mostly paying attention to?
And let’s think back to my previous video and article where I stated that understanding the market state of EVM compatible chains can help an investor identify the next pot of gold in the cryptocurrency market. In this article, I want to provide a list of my favorite EVM compatible chains.
EVM compatibility is very important in the current blockchain space. EVM stands for Ethereum Virtual Machine which allows a project built on ethereum to migrate easily over onto another chain that is EVM compatible.
These other chains that I am talking about are layer 1 smart contract blockchains. These chains are the foundational technology and protocol that allows developer teams to build smart contracts on top of it.
To give an example of what I mean, think of the foundational technology as the land, and smart contracts built on top of it are the crops or buildings being built on top of the land. The crops growing and the buildings being built gives the land value and functionality. Layer 1 smart contracts blockchains can be seen as the land in this example.
Now that we have an idea of what EVM and Layer 1 smart contract blockchain is then let’s get to my list. You can also check out my video as I talk about this.
Fantom
I have Fantom with ticker FTM as number 1 on my list. Fantom is a decentralized, permissionless, smart contract platform that went live in December 2019. Fantom’s Opera network is EVM compatible. In late August of 2021, Fantom committed $370 Million worth of FTM to boost their ecosystem development.
This incentive program led to a rush of developer teams that went onto Fantom to build. There are now 140 listed dapps on the Fantom website and in the chart below shows the protocols on Defilama, there are 179 protocols built on the Fantom ecosystem with almost $10 billion dollars in total assets locked (TVL).
From the price perspective, In the past 52 weeks, FTM saw a low price of $.15 and a 52 week high of $3.48 that’s over 2200% in gains in that period of time.
And of course the market has taken a dip. So if you bought FTM at it’s 52 week All time low, then you’re still enjoying about 1000% gain when comparing to the current price
The most astounding point for me is seeing the growth in dapps and protocols coming onto Fantom to build. I believe that more developers lead to more dapps and more dapps brings in more users and more users bring in more assets. I’ve been seeing Fantom grow and it continues to be one of my favorite EVM blockchain projects to follow.
Avalanche
Avalanche with ticker AVAX is a highly scalable decentralized smart contract platform built by Ava labs whose headquarters is located in Singapore.
Let’s compare AVAX to other blockchains.
Avalanche has near instant transaction finality and is able to confirm transactions in under 2 seconds and can handle a transaction throughput of over 4,500 tps. There are thousands of validator nodes on Avalanche and the safety threshold is 80%, and that’s really high when comparing to the 51% of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Let’s take a look at the protocols on DefiLlama.
Avalanche is EVM compatible and there has been an increase in protocols built on Avalanche. At the time of this recording, Avalanche has 173 protocols being tracked by DefiLlama and has over 10 billion in total value locked on Avalanche ecosystem.
I follow Avalanche for the same reason as Fantom. It is the growth and similar to Fantom, Avalanche has seen similar growth rates in terms of new dapps and protocols being built. Avalanche is second on my list due to its market cap being a lot higher than Fantom, therefore there’s a possibility of AVAX giving less of a return of investments.
Cronos Chain
Cronos ticker CRO is crypto.com but rebranded into Cronos. When I think of Cronos, I like to compare it to Binance and Binance smart chain. The exchange is the centralized side while the EVM chains are for building the decentralized part of the ecosystem. The crypto space is more than big enough for the 2 to co-exist.
Cronos has a lot going on already. It has a cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com, its own native chain, debit/credit cards, NFT marketplace and is EVM compatible.
Recently, Cronos chain was launched in November 2021. Since launched, Cronos has seen an influx of developers and protocols moving to build on Cronos.
In a short period since launching, they already have 44 protocols built in the Cronos ecosystem that are tracked by Defillama and is already seeing over $2 billion of total assets being locked on the Cronos ecosystem.
This project is making a lot of moves and in my mind, I see it creeping up to become the next Binance. There’s also a good campaign of marketing coming from Cronos and Crypto.com therefore I see this project as one of the leaders in the crypto space that is bring a lot of exposure to people and in bringing more users to the space.
Near Protocol
Going onto the 4th one, we got Near protocol. Near protocol is its own native smart contract blockchain however it is designed as a community run cloud computing platform. Overall, The platform is designed to provide an ideal developing environment for developers and dapps.
The Near protocol uses its side chain Aurora for EVM compatibility and it’s Octopus network of interoperable app chains. This allows Near protocol to interact with Ethereum based dapps as well as other chains on their Octopus Network.
What’s really good for Near token holders is that all transaction done on Aurora will have their transaction finality on the Near blockchain. Since launching the sidechains, the Near token’s price has seen a growth of over 500% from it’s 52 week low to the current price at the time of this recording.
The Near Protocol has seen a lot of growth since launching its sidechains. I started paying attention to Near due to the project making expansion moves. I’m sure that reading the above projects, you can tell that I hinted that the metrics I pay attention to is the growth in developers and dapps and TVL. This lets me know that the blockchain is getting used.
Near also had a hackathon on Devera which had $1,000,000 in prizes, had over 3900 participants and was sponsored by many large projects. This tells me that in the next few months, we’ll see even more developers and project teams coming onto Near Protocol.
Telos
The last one on my list is Telos ticker TLOS. Telos is an low key under the radar EVM compatible smart contract layer 1 blockchain. Telos is said to be one of the fastest and most scalable smart contract blockchain with transaction throughput reaching 10,000 tps and extremely low energy usage.
The Telos blockchain launched their mainnet in December 2018 and was built using the EOS IO technology.
In November 2021, Telos completed their EVM and launched it and is now ready for Ethereum based dapps go over onto Telos blockchain and build in their ecosystem. Telos also recently launched the Telos Spark Hackathon that begun on February 7th and will be ending march 6th 2022.
The goal of the Hackathon is to for Ethereum based developers to bring their best tools and applications to the Telos EVM.
In terms of price, telos is sitting at about $1 us dollar at the time of this writing and is around $270 million dollar market cap. So there’s still a lot of room for telos to grow in terms of price when comparing its market cap to other EVM layer 1 smart contract blockchains.
Overall
When looking at crypto projects, what I look for is growth. I personally don’t look at the growth of retail investors and traders as price action can be very misleading in crypto and normally leads to pump and dumps. What I look for is the growth of developers, dapps, protocols and assets coming onto a blockchain ecosystem. I also pay attention to what the project teams are doing to increase these metrics. I look at the grant programs as well as hackathons and whatever the project is doing to bring in more development into the ecosystem.
I believe that more developers leads to more dapps. More dapps leads to more users. More user leads to more assets and volume on the blockchain.
