Last week, a report from Bank of America predicted that smart contract platform Solana is expected to become the “Visa” of digital assets.
According to the report, while Ethereum was popular due to its decentralization and security, its scaling ability is a problem. As an attractive alternative, Solana’s prioritization of micropayments regarding gaming and NFTs allowed for a utility similar to that of Visa, but for crypto.
“Solana could become the Visa of the digital assets ecosystem. Ethereum’s prioritization could optimize it for high-value transactions and identity, storage, and supply chain use cases,”Alkesh Shah said that the Daily HODL was his.
It’s not just Bank of America analysts that saw Solana’s potential. Over the past year, the cryptocurrency outperformed Ethereum. Its market price has risen 400% over the year and reached a $47 billion market cap.
Solana launched March 2020. Since then, it has recorded over 50 billion transactions. Additionally, the blockchain has generated more than 5.7 million NFTs. “[Solana’s] innovations allow for the processing of an industry-leading 65,000 transactions per second with average transaction fees of $0.000025 while remaining relatively decentralized and secure,” Shah said.
Although Solana has seen a successful debut and made a name for itself in the media, it isn’t without its shortcomings. In December and January, the blockchain’s distributed-denial-of-service attacks caused long wait periods and network congestion.
Tezos is an original proof-of stake blockchain that has been proving to be a worthy competitor to Ethereum. The new CryptoLife app, designed to give customers access to their own debit card that they can use for fiat or crypto, as well as store and transfer cryptocurrency with ease. It also offers a loan service called Cryptodrafts which comes at no interest.
Tezos’ partnership with Baanx, the FinTech that allows users to buy, sell, and transfer crypto to anyone instantly across the world with its debit card, is one particular milestone for the company, giving it an unprecedented competitive advantage.
The FCA approved the full registration of cryptocurrency activity for the UK-based FinTech on January 5. This FinTech has seen rapid growth in the past twelve months. Baanx can now enhance its services and offer Cryptodraft products that are secure to customers. This allows holders to get funding as low as 0% APR, by protecting their crypto holdings.
Mark Evans, Chief Compliance Officer of Baanx says that the company’s registration was a significant milestone. Evans stated that clients of Baanx could rest easy knowing that digital assets are being managed by an approved counterparty. This is one of the most respected regulatory bodies around the globe, the FCA.
Garth Howat is the founder and chief executive officer of Baanx. “Baanx is a global leading FinTech platform trusted by international clients like Ledger and Tezos. We are proud to have been approved by the FCA. This is another step in our ongoing success providing innovative services that disrupt both the FinTech- and banking industry. Baanx and Ledger are currently collaborating on cryptodraft services for the Ledger community. This will be done in a Q1 deployment across key countries within the EEA as well as parts of the US. Ledger will power the CL card platform. Initial support for BTC, ETH and USDT. In the next couple of weeks, we’re also launching our next partnership with Tezos, which will also offer cryptodraft to the Tezos community. BXX token holders will have an opportunity to gain greater utility from the toke.n with the Cryptodraft product.”
The mainstream financial industry continues to adopt cryptocurrency rapidly, and technology is constantly evolving. The ability to use cryptocurrency in the same way as a Visa card is one example of such an advancement. While a competitive market, Tezos is proving to be a worthwhile contender in the space, providing a welcome alternative to Ethereum’s scalability problems and Solana’s network congestion.