The crypto market has seen some upsides this year, but it has mostly been bearish. Bitcoin crashed to $15,000 in January, reaching the lowest level since the 2021 all-time high of over $60,000.
This has made investors have mixed feelings on the future of the industry, especially for altcoins. There has been a significant decline in the prices of altcoins, even at the time of writing this report, and there’s no sign of sustainable relief yet.
Despite the bearish trend in the crypto market in Q2 2023 however, the use of smart contracts has been on a steady increase, reports show. Ethereum has been the lead in terms of smart contracts, but that has changed in 2023.
According to the report, BNB Chain has surpassed Ethereum in the number of verified smart contracts in Q2 2023. The Binance-owned blockchain took 46.5% of the total number of verified smart contracts, while Ethereum had 31.3%.
BNB Chain is a Binance-owned blockchain upon which developers can build smart contracts and decentralized applications. Binance created the network to go into smart contracts as an option to Ethereum, since Ethereum had several issues such as high transaction fees and regular network congestion.
Although Ethereum has been the go-to platform for smart contracts for years, things are starting to change because of these weaknesses since BNB Chain provides a faster and cheaper alternative. This trend will likely continue as developers look for more affordable and faster ways to build and deploy smart contracts.
The data shows that developers have much trust for BNB Chain’s ecosystem. Ethereum also showed consistent growth, showing that it still retains an important position in the space as a long-standing leader.
Improvements to BNB Chain
BNB Chain was able to achieve faster transactions and lower fees because of improvements it made to the network. Worthy of note is layer 2 solution, zkBNB, which saw significant adoption in 2023.
The adoption is due to the application of Layer 2 solutions, like opBNB and zkBNB for addressing the scalability and cost issues associated with Ethereum. Such solutions are a relief to developers who have suffered from problems of congestion and high fees for many years.
The data also shows that other blockchains such as Polygon, Fantom, Avalanche, Arbitrum, and Optimism have demonstrated a steady engagement in their smart contract activities.
This ensures healthy competition that is likely to sustain innovation in the blockchain space, especially for smart contracts.
Smart contract adoption on the increase
Smart contracts are digital contracts on a blockchain that get executed when certain conditions are met. These have become increasingly relevant in today’s world as every sector seeks to automate its processes. They also eliminate disputes and reduce human error and fraud in processes involving contracts.
The Q2 report shows that smart contracts are seeing more adoption, indicating that developers have an unwavering faith in smart contracts and the potential of decentralized applications, regardless of what happens in the crypto market.
This suggests that more adoption is expected in Q3, with focus on enhancing smart contract security, stable momentum in Layer 2 Solutions Adoption, increased cross-chain interoperability, usability innovations, increased regulatory scrutiny, and an emphasis on educating the public about the benefits and risks associated with blockchain technology and decentralized applications.
