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NEAR vs ATOM: Strengths and Weaknesses

A beginner to crypto may not even know about NEAR and ATOM, thus missing out on decent investment opportunities. Today, we will tell you more about these two assets.

NEAR vs ATOM

NEAR vs ATOM — Determining the Best Long-Term Investment

In the past couple of years, we saw the emergence of innovative blockchains. They disrupted the smart contract paradigm in its entirety.

Many projects tried to bring solutions to the scaling issues of the industry, with significant success. 

Just a few years ago, PoS chains and new scaling mechanisms weren’t widely available. However, chains like Near and Cosmos have brought their fair share of innovations to the industry.

With their fast transactions and inclusive models, they are setting up the pace for genuine web3 adoption. 

But which one is better in a NEAR vs ATOM contest? This article will lay down the fundamentals of these blockchains as well as their pros and cons. 

NEAR Blockchain Review

Near was released in Q4 2020, which allowed it to catch a major bullish cycle in the crypto industry. This blockchain attempted to innovate the market. It provided a highly scalable platform for deploying smart contracts. 

To achieve this, the Near blockchain utilizes a proprietary consensus mechanism Doomslug. It allows for linear scaling of the network. Additionally, its Nightshade technology provides a type of sharding. 

This means that developers can launch app-specific sidechains that work in tandem and scale infinitely. As a result, an increased number of users on the Near network has no impact on its performance. 

Finally, this project attempts to stand out from the competition by being a developer- and user-friendly platform. It uses multiple accessibility features such as namesake addresses, easily readable by humans.

This is in contrast to EVM networks (Ethereum, Polygon, etc.). Those use cryptographic addresses that can be difficult to memorize or utilize on a daily basis. 

Strengths and Weaknesses of the Project

With such strong fundamentals, Near has some incredible advantages over its competitors. For instance, its high throughput promises 100,000 transactions per second. This makes it one of the fastest available blockchains on the market

Moreover, the “chunk” sharding of the Nightshade technology allows for linear and near-infinite scaling. This makes it a perfect environment for building transaction-heavy applications.

Those include metaverses, NFTs, and blockchain games. 

However, there are some concerns regarding centralization, as only validators can vote on proposals. Moreover, 35% of the NEAR tokens are held by insiders. This raises issues of decision-making centralization. 

Cosmos Blockchain Review

Released in Q1 2020, Cosmos had a bit of a rough start as the market was still pushing toward the bullish cycle in 2021.

Nevertheless, it gained enormous traction in the past year. It solidified itself as the go-to platform for the “Internet of Blockchains.” 

The Cosmos network allows projects to build their own blockchains with sovereign governance. Moreover, they can benefit from its shared security.

This means that a project can create its own blockchain, with a particular use case, and connect it with other blockchains on the Cosmos network. 

In turn, this allows these chains to seamlessly share assets between them, without the need for cross-chain bridges. This is an incredible feature, as it enables true interconnectivity between these chains. 

What’s more, the IBFT consensus mechanism ensures that the chain remains highly scalable. 

Strengths and Weaknesses of the Project

The first and most obvious advantage of Cosmos is the interoperability between chains. This feature allows us to create an internet of blockchains.

App-specific chains can focus on their products and share their assets with other blockchains. For example, a metaverse platform can connect with DeFi and NFT-specific blockchains to provide a complete product for the user. 

That said, there’s some concern regarding the usage of the network. The reason behind this is that more than 80% of the transaction happen on only four major chains, out of hundreds running on the network. 

Final Note 

Near and Cosmos both provide scalable platforms, albeit their solutions differ greatly. This means that there’s a spot for each one of them at the top of the crypto market, as well as in investors’ portfolios.

This is in contrast to POWR vs EWT, which directly competes in the decentralized energy market. 

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