The Big Three (By Seppy, Sept 2021)

Problems with Eth as smart contract platform:

-fees -speed (scalability) -network congestion

Dot as Layer 0 doesn’t support smart contracts Parachains on top of Dot as Layer 1 solutions will do support each with their own unique way. Targets are lower fees, faster than eth and interaction with other chains. The 3 main players that focus on delivering smart contracts on top of Dot are Moonbeam, Acala and Astar (ex Plasm)

As Eth is the king regarding the amount of devs working on their platform, basically these 3 teams will have to attract a lot of them, meaning quality dapps, meaning more users, meaning more devs.

Moonbeam:

Moonbeam in simple words is an Eth mirror on Polkadot

• EVM Support (the standard virtual machine used for eth)
• Full compatible with Eth

On moonbeam, developers work and deploy existing smart contracts (created by Solidity, Eth program lang) directly into Moonbeam (and eventually into Dot mother chain). For this to happen, an extra layer developed, called Frontier which basically allows substrate based chains to run eth contracts. All in all, Metamask can be used as usual (by picking moonbeam chain), dapps can be run on moonbeam as they would be in eth, and the native token (glimmer) has the same functions as eth (gas,fees etc).

Astar:

Astar, ex-Plasm, is the Dapp Hub on Polkadot.

• EVM support
• Wasm support ( innovative virtual machine, smart contracts better performance and scalability + higher level languages vs EVM)
• Layer 2 support
• ZK plonk ( pallet for devs to use it on substrate. Privacy+ scalability)
• Dapp staking

Astar will also use Frontier (EVM) but also will support WASM and a virtual machine called OVM to be used to enhance layer 2 protocols. Developers will be incentivized by a mechanism called dapp staking with 50% of rewards going into the developer of the dapp.

Acala:

Acala is the Defi Hib on Polkadot

-EVM support -Innovates through substrate

EVM is still supported but as a part of Acala not as a new different experience which their team will adopt. This new solution is called Bodhi and wraps dot extension into another extension similar to metamask. Eth dapps will be used with dot extension to interact with acala EVM. Tl dr: acala uses a part of eth EVM and a part of their homegrown solution, mix them, retaining both eth compatibility and substrate advantages.

New features including, users pay fees with any supported token, fully upgradable (no contracts migration), on chain governance etc..

On the other hand, while Moonbeam takes contract as it is, the acala model requires some code adjustments from eth smart contract into acala.

Conclusion

Q: So, who will win in the long term? Who will capture the most shares in the trillions of dollars space? Which one will be the best layer 1 blockchain and smart contract platform in Polkadot?

A: Most of parachains are collaborating with each other. Having said that, it’s a competitive space and the “dev hunting” is crucial of these platforms. Moonbeam looks like the one with most pumpamentals short term, since the mirroring of eth incetivizes devs to come and deploy quality projects as well as meme tokens within few minutes. Astar is the most tech heavy of the 3 imho, meaning the work that they will put in, may never pay off in value, due to be not retail friendly. Fundamentals aren’t clear since I haven’t looked at them in detail. Dapp staking will attract devs. Acala, might be also not the most friendly for new users, (defi), but they build something unique and the barrier they set for devs to entry, might cause an avalance of innovation in the decentralized finance sector.