Ethereum Is Like New York, Avalanche Is Chicago And Solana Is LA — Grayscale Matches Blockchains To Cities

The world’s largest crypto asset manager Grayscale Investments has drawn a comparison between the smart contract platform Ethereum ETH/USD and New York City.

What Happened: “Ethereum is like New York City: it is vast, expensive, and congested in certain areas,” stated Grayscale in a recent report.

“However, it also features the richest application ecosystem, with over 500 apps that command a total value of over $100 billion—more than 10x larger than any other competing network.”

The central theme of Grayscale’s report was the evaluation of smart contract networks like Ethereum, Avalanche AVAX/USD, and Solana SOL/USD and how they rank up against each other.

 “The Avalanche network is like Chicago: its economy is similar to NYC, but the network is smaller, transactions are cheaper and less congested, and development is more centralized,” the report stated.

“Solana is like Los Angeles: a structurally distinct network that is speedier and focuses on different use cases,” it added.

Continuing with the analogy of likening blockchain networks to real-life cities, Grayscale stated that Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution Polygon MATIC/USD is comparable to a skyscraper in New York because “it scales by building upwards.”

The report concludes that, like New York, Ethereum may be expensive but it remains the “center of gravity” for application innovation because of the size of the community and the amount of capital locked into it.

Price Action: According to data from Benzinga Pro, ETH was trading at $3,400 down 0.28% in the last 24 hours. AVAX was trading at $99, up 6.8% and SOL was trading at $123, gaining 9.3% over the same period.