Blockchain-oriented companies are always looking for ways to gain a competitive edge over others. In some cases, that means switching from one blockchain to another. For its part, Tutellus is switching over from Ethereum’s blockchain to NEM’s chain. It’s a remarkable decision, although it remains to be seen if this creates a precedent for other companies.
From Ethereum to NEM
Over the past few years, we have seen a ton of projects try and build on top of the Ethereum blockchain. Given the technical advantages that this blockchain has to offer, such a decision seems to make a lot of sense. With its smart contracts, asset creation, and other tools, Ethereum’s chain can bring a lot of functionality to other projects building on top of this ecosystem. However, Ethereum’s blockchain is not necessarily suited for every purpose one can think of, as the Tutellus team’s recent action shows.
Their decision to migrate from Ethereum’s blockchain to NEM is quite intriguing, for many reasons. While the team acknowledges Ethereum is a very powerful blockchain ecosystem, they are also concerned about the expenses associated with it. More specifically, the transaction fees are an area of concern right now, especially for projects needing to run many events per user and per unit of time. There is also some concern regarding the centralization aspect of any project building on top of Ethereum in its current state, which is something that needs to be addressed as well.
Moreover, it seems the Tutellus team isn’t too happy with the way Ethereum’s blockchain performs as of right now. Their blog post calls this ecosystem downright “slow”. This is especially true in terms of the number of transactions per second broadcast by the network. Without immediate improvements on the horizon, it is evident the network will eventually clog up once again. If all of the projects building on top of Ethereum were to go live right now, the situation would quickly become unworkable for all parties involved.
NEM’s blockchain, on the other hand, seems to offer viable solutions to these problems. According to the Tutellus team, NEM has a big community of developers, although the same can be said about Ethereum as of right now. It is certainly true that NEM is headed in a very different direction from Ethereum right now, and that can be perceived as a good thing.
More specifically, this blockchain is designed to process a lot more transactions per second from day one. Unlike Ethereum’s chain, NEM can generate around 1,000 transactions per second. While that is still unimpressive compared to the likes of Visa and MasterCard, it is a step up from Ethereum. Additionally, it seems NEM’s upcoming Catapult upgrade will push this number to 4,000 TPS under perfect conditions.
One of the main selling points of NEM is how every individual project can have its own internal blockchain tied to the NEM parent chain. As such, projects can consolidate users’ transactions in their own blockchains and connect them to NEM to consolidate specific information. This is very different from Ethereum’s chain, which would be forced to handle all of this consolidation directly. Rest assured the Ethereum developers will come up with a way to address these problems in the future, but for now, NEM seems to be better suited for Tutellus.
