Can the dominance of the Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchain be challenged? You could argue that this is what Ripple Labs tried to accomplish with XRP, but that is a private centralized blockchain network. Even though there are quite a few blockchain projects that take advantage of the open source nature of BTC and ETH, we have yet to see a distributed ledger that can be described as a direct competitor. This is where Gitcoin comes in.

The digital currency token that runs on the Gitcoin blockchain has gone from trading under $5 in mid-July to a record high pricing level above $9.70 on August 11. This meteoric rise can be explained by a single fundamental aspect: Gitcoin may just have what it takes to propel the world of blockchain development to the next level. On the surface, Gitcoin may seem like a decentralized finance project providing an Ethereum layer, but it is definitely more than that.

On top of using the blockchain to secure value by building on top of Ethereum, Gitcoin is also building a network of decentralized protocols. It has released the Go-Protocol, a protocol that will help developers create and run their own protocols with the hope of creating a ‘world computer’ of sorts. It is this very ideology and mindset that is helping Gitcoin continue to set itself apart from other protocols and projects and continue to push the state of blockchain and the internet forward.

The Gitcoin Protocol as a Community of Protocol Creators

The Gitcoin protocol allows anyone to create their own protocol, for example, to reward anyone who holds a token of a protocol that they have created on their blockchain.

Gitcoin is doing this for two main reasons: it has an incentive for all developers to create their own protocol and Gitcoin provides a protocol to create tokens on your own blockchain. The protocol itself is an Ethereum token so anyone can create their own token, but developers can also contribute scripts and code routines that have an effect on the underlying network. In other words, Gitcoin has the potential of morphing into a blockchain network that will respond to specific needs in the near future.