When we look at the development history of the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchain networks, it makes perfect sense to see the rise of decentralized finance projects such as Avalanche, Fantom, Tezos, and many others. The white paper published by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto more than 10 years ago envisioned a time when the open source nature of Bitcoin would invite developers to continue improving the original blockchain network.

Although Ethereum is where most DeFi projects launch, Bitcoin will be the next generation of layer-one and layer-two projects will seek to augment smart contracts, trading, exchange transactions, transfers, and even mining operations. There is a race to improve and establish next-generation blockchain networks that can highly scalable, user-friendly network capable of being adopted on a global scale is a continuous race being facilitated by DeFi technology startups.

Avalanche is a DeFi project that runs on the Lightning Network to allow users to send, earn, and borrow crypto tokens. The technology is focused on enabling fast and cheap transactions that do not require the creation of new tokens. Instead, Avalanche utilizes the existing Lightning Network to mint its own AVA cryptocurrency tokens, which have experienced considerable price appreciation even as Bitcoin has been retreating.

One of the biggest reasons why we are still witnessing a race for scalability in the cryptocurrency market is that some network issues are still unresolved, especially in relation to transaction and transaction times. Because of its nature, Bitcoin is not ideal for micropayments, or for trading activities that need small transactions because miners take up to an hour to validate blocks that are being broadcast into the blockchain network.

Fantom is a platform of financial tools for everyday users that enables them to build, deploy and manage their "DApps" without the need for special or specialist programming knowledge. Fantom provides a free SDK that will enable existing or new users to deploy smart contracts and DApps on the network and start developing DApps for the first time. The platform provides an on-chain and off-chain user experience, similar to Ethereum, allowing users to interact with smart contracts on the Fantom network using the Fantom Wallet and Fantom DApp Browser.