Let’s face it, Ethereum’s been the king of the NFT ecosystem for too long. The gas fees? Criminal. The congestion? A digital artist's worst nightmare. We’re not discussing the best way to earn a living selling digital art, let alone subsidizing a medium-sized nation with these transaction fees! Ethereum is kind of like that old, familiar car you love. Instead, it’s constantly in the shop, accruing repair bills that cost more than it’s worth.

All is not lost, digital artists and collectors! The revolution is modular and it’s happening sooner than you expect. Out with monolithic blockchains that attempt to be all things to all people at the same time, and inadvertently become nothing to no one. We’re referring to the highly specialized production line machines, honed over decades to give high speed, low-cost, efficiency of – most importantly – affordability.

Lower Fees, Faster Transactions, Freedom

Picture this — minting an entire collection and not having to sell a kidney on the secondary market to afford gas. That's the promise of modular blockchains. These core-chain primates break these core chain functions into three layers—execution, consensus and data availability. They run like a well oiled assembly line on steroids! Think of it as Legos for the blockchain: each block has its own task and can be upgraded or swapped out without breaking the whole system.

This will lead to faster transactions, lower fees, and future artists being freer to experiment and innovate their own work. It would be as if you skipped upgrading from dial-up to broadband and went directly to fiber optic – revolutionary. It’s time to stop grifting exorbitant fees to some old guard and turn the page to empowering the creators.

  • Enhanced scalability
  • Lower transaction costs
  • Increased flexibility for developers
  • Easier upgrades
  • Stronger security
  • Higher decentralization

So, who are the standardization champions of this modular revolution? So then, which blockchain is best poised to steal the NFT crown and usher in a new phase of NFT supremacy? Here are five contenders that have me seriously hyped for 2025:

The Contenders Poised To Dethrone Ethereum

Each of these projects brings something unique to the table, but they all share a common goal: to make blockchain technology more accessible, affordable, and scalable. And for NFT artists like us, that’s music to our ears. It’s the difference between starving artist and thriving creator.

  1. Arbitrum: This is one of the most popular Layer-2 scaling solutions for Ethereum. While still tied to Ethereum for data availability, it significantly reduces transaction costs and increases speed. Think of it as giving Ethereum a super-powered engine.
  2. Manta Network: Manta is built for ZK applications; it offers scalable environment to deploy ZK applications solely with Solidity. Manta is a great choice for ZK developers to get started with their first ZK project.
  3. Celestia: This is the true modular blockchain. Celestia focuses solely on data availability, allowing other chains to build on top of it and handle execution and consensus. It's like building a skyscraper on a bedrock foundation.
  4. Optimism: Another leading Ethereum Layer-2, Optimism uses optimistic rollups to bundle transactions and process them off-chain, drastically reducing congestion and fees. It's like adding express lanes to a congested highway.
  5. Berachain: This is a new blockchain that is built on the Proof-of-Liquidity consensus mechanism. This means that the network participants are incentivized to provide liquidity to the blockchain, which in turn increases the security and decentralization of the network.

Ethereum isn't going down without a fight. They’re pursuing their own modular transition with rollups (L2 solutions) and sharding. So good for them to realize that, but let’s be honest, it definitely sounds like they’re trying to catch-up. They’re trying to change the tires on a bus that wasn’t built to accommodate changing tires. Other chains are fully developed from the bottom up with modularity integrated into their DNA. It's like trying to turn a battleship into a speedboat – it's just not the right tool for the job.

Is Ethereum's Empire Crumbling?

And then comes the surprising link. Remember when Blockbuster laughed at Netflix? They ruled the video rental market with an iron fist. They just didn’t believe that consumers were going to start streaming movies online. Well, look where they are now. Ethereum might be the Blockbuster of the blockchain world if they don’t pivot fast.

The future of NFTs is modular. It’s not just about empowering artists, supporting innovation, and creating a new digital art ecosystem that’s more equitable and decentralized. There may be a place for Ethereum. Of all these five modular blockchains, the one taking the biggest lead and poised to make Ethereum irrelevant by 2025 is certainly Celestia.

Human capital is today’s revolution, and it’s going to be glorious.

So, buckle up, friends. The revolution is here, and it's going to be glorious.