Polkadot could become an Ethereum killer-but one analyst is skeptical

According to analysts, Polkadot has emerged as a major competitor to Ethereum in 2020.

Polkadot and Cosmos have always been at the forefront of the discussions, given some of their similarities with Ethereum.

Polkadot, in particular, has a similar conceptual infrastructure design as ETH 2.0.

Ashwath Balakrishnan, an analyst at Delphi Digital, said that under ETH 2.0, the Ethereum blockchain gets "Divided into 64 pieces." These pieces are called shards, which connect to one another using the Beacon Chain.

"Polkadot's Relay Chain is similar to the Beacon Chain, creating the infrastructure for blockchains built with Substrate to seamlessly connect to Polkadot. These independent blockchain are called 'parachains.'".

Since Ethereum and Polkadot approach scaling by dividing their blockchains into many pieces, the two protocols share an uncanny similarity.

Albeit Polkadot's technology remains compelling, the analyst said the protocol's early-phase on-chain governance system and the impending ETH 2.0 remain as roadblocks.

The largest roadblock to Polkadot would likely be ETH 2.0.

They would have to choose between remaining on Ethereum with ETH 2.0 or migrating to an entirely new protocol that is Polkadot.

"DOT's design is elegant and hits scalability issues really well. But there are some question marks First, on-chain gov is unproven and young. Decred and Tezos have been pushing on-chain gov for a while, and they haven't been as successful as supporters imagined. Second, Polkadot's app layer is a recreation of Ethereum. With scalability improvements coming to Ethereum via L2s and ETH 2.0, it remains to be seen if there's a genuine catalyst for builders to fully migrate or even create a mirrored instance of their protocols on Polkadot."