Why Ethereum Killers Cardano, Polkadot, Avalanche Are Surging Despite Bitcoin Slump

Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), the two top cryptocurrencies by market cap, remained muted on Wednesday night but many smart contract coins were rallying.

What Happened: BTC price traded 3.47% lower at $44,829.47 and ETH was down 4.23% at $1,730 at press time.

So-called Ethereum-killer coins bucked the trend and were trading in positive territory at the same time.

Cardano (ADA) — the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap — traded 16.05% higher at $0.89. Polkadot (DOT) was up 5.02% at $24.94.

See also: How to Buy Ethereum (ETH)

Solana (SOL) spiked 7.8% at $9. The cryptocurrency touched its all-time high of $9.23 on Wednesday evening. 

Other notable gainers were Aave (AAVE) higher by 3.44% at $518.33 and Stellar (XLM) up 4.03% at $0.43. Avalanche (AVAX) traded 30% higher at $54.66.

Why It Matters: Shapeshift, a crypto management platform released a report on DOT, Near Protocol (NEAR), and Cosmos (ATOM) on Wednesday. 

The company’s head of research Kent Barton said in the report that scaling challenges have “opened the doors to other smart contract blockchains.”

Barton said while these platforms don’t have “the critical mass of developers, users, and projects that Ethereum enjoys,” the issues are not “intractable.”

On Wednesday, Curve Finance, a large automated market maker on ETH, said it would bring its platform to Polkadot’s Equilibrium parachain. The AMM would exist on both ETH and DOT, CoinDesk reported.

The move comes amid a high transaction fee on ETH that is affecting Decentralized Finance (DeFi) projects. 

When you found a new hot Ethereum DeFi project but too poor to pay gas fees. pic.twitter.com/dxGcsmMXZX

— Trevon James (@BitcoinTre) February 3, 2021

“Deep liquidity is vital for adoption of new applications like Equilibrium, as well as for the adoption of new blockchains themselves,” said Curve Finance CEO Michael Egorov, according to CoinDesk.