Third Generation Blockchain Projects In South Korea Aim to Fix Ethereum’s Shortcomings

Blockchain has come a long way since Satoshi’s 2008 Bitcoin proposal. Since then, we’ve gotten large-scale development platforms like Ethereum and smaller scale privacy tokens such as Verge. However, it only makes sense that these first technologies have their shortcomings – ones that future iterations come in to fix.

A New Generation Arrives

While Ethereum and other “second generation” blockchains tend to be faster than Bitcoin, the platforms still suffers from scalability issues. CryptoKitties and other popular decentralized applications struggle to run as intended due to a congested network. Third generation projects look not only to solve scalability issues, but also to provide faster transaction speeds and even cheaper fees. According to Business Korea, the South Korean blockchain market is looking to head the innovation charge.

One project coming out of South Korea, Orbs, has made quite a name for itself. Its goal is similar to Ethereum’s—establishing a platform for decentralized application development—but unlike Ethereum, Orbs will be solving the speed problem with side chains.

Simply put, side chains are blockchains connected to the main chain that are delegated smaller tasks like transaction verification and mining, depending on the project. Then, the records come back to the main chain after validation before locking into the ledger forever.

Orbs is looking to work with another project, Terra, adding to its pre-existing partnership with Ground X. The potential Ethereum successor also works with Puma Pay, a promising new project that raised $117 million (130.63 billion won) in an initial coin offering (ICO) during Q2 of this year.

Competition Between Newcomers

Interestingly, EOS could stand as competition to Orbs. Instead of side chains, the self-proclaimed “most powerful infrastructure for decentralized applications” rotates between 21 delegated block producers to increase speeds.

South Korea’s top game developer, Neowiz Co., is already developing games on EOS, with even more coming from different countries across the world. In fact, according to Business Korea, “EOS has been accepted as the most promising third-generation platform in the gaming sector.”

Finally, ICON (ICX), South Korea’s top blockchain startup, has just released version 3.0 of its mainnet. Now, the project is looking for developers who want to use it.

More and more South Korean groups are revealing their forays into blockchain technology, all looking to solve problems presented by previous projects. These third generation blockchains still have a long way to go, but they’re well on their way to eclipsing current, long-standing projects such as Ethereum or possibly even Bitcoin.

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