Smart contract blockchains have come a long way since Ethereum was first launched in 2015. Ethereum is still the most popular platform, but there are now a number of competing chains, almost all of whom have positioned themselves as more performant when compared to Ethereum. These include Polygon, Fantom, and Avalanche. In 2024, application developers are faced with a glut of choices when it comes to selecting the right blockchain for their project. Cheap gas fees and fast transaction execution, once major differentiators, are now merely table stakes.

The truth is: developers do not choose which blockchain to build on based solely on its technical features. While there are nominal differences between the fast EVM smart contract chains (sure, but can you tell me the difference between Avalanche Consensus, Fantom's Lachesis, and Tendermint?), the biggest factor in determining which platform developers choose is increasingly the wider developer ecosystem and community around a project. While these chains were built with a tech-first approach, they are no longer a purely technical play.

As it becomes easier to create scalable, performant blockchains, technological differentiation will be decreasingly important. It'll be taken for granted that new blockchains will be able to process thousands of transactions per second, more throughput than most will ever need in practice. At the same time, it will become harder for these general-purpose blockchains to compete for builders, as an increasingly larger set of blockchains compete for quality projects.

Thus, the next generation of upstart blockchains will not be technology-first, but community-first. The blockchain that builds a passionate, dedicated community that attracts top talent and devoted users will win; the blockchain that cannot will lose. Creating a community-first blockchain requires different skills than creating a technology-first blockchain, and the teams that build the next big winners will look different than the teams that built the big blockchains of today.

Community-first chains will not be carbon copies of popular blockchains, but will instead focus on creating unique value propositions at the level of product and community, rather than the core protocol.

We're already seeing this happen: Manta Pacific, a recently launched blockchain project, has quickly gained traction by fostering a strong and engaged community, rocketing up the ranks to #4 on L2Beat's leaderboard. Manta's chain does involve some technology-first elements (it's the first production rollup to use Celestia for data availability - no small feat!), but its success can largely be attributed to its focus on community building and engagement, and the Manta team's novel, creative approach to go-to-market and business development.

Other chains are deciding to target specific niches and build communities around them, recognizing the power of a dedicated user base that share a common interest in driving adoption and growth. Ronin – Axie Infinity's gaming-focused chain, was perhaps the pioneer in this strategy, successfully leveraging their game community's passion and enthusiasm to propel its adoption and growth. But now we're seeing a similar playbook across verticals. Frame and RARI Chain are two examples of projects that have embraced this approach, targeting the NFT and collectibles community respectively with royalty enforcement mechanisms. Kinto – a compliant blockchain platform focused on RWAs – aims to build a community of traditional finance institutions by offering a secure and compliant environment for tokenizing real-world assets.

Haseeb Qureshi of Dragonfly has proposed a model of Blockchains as Cities. We agree. And just as there are tens of thousands of cities across the world of different sizes, with different communities, interests and cultures, so too will there be tens of thousands of blockchain communities, each with their own unique characteristics and purposes.

We're building Caldera to accelerate this future. With Caldera, projects can launch their own dedicated blockchain in minutes rather than months using top rollup stacks, enabling them to quickly build and nurture their own specialized communities.

Interested? Get in touch.