We have already written about our decision to give up on the Polkadot (Substrate) blockchain for the benefit of Near Protokol. It is a serious and important step for us, so we want to explain in detail why we made this decision.
We have developed Substrate since the winter of 2021. Then it seemed to us one of the best solutions on the market. But, in the process, we encountered some problems (more about them later in the article), so we started looking for other blockchain options. We carefully studied different options, popular and not so popular, we took apart all the advantages of the platforms. And in the end, we chose Near Protocol.
Let’s analyze the main advantages of Near over Substrate.
Speed
Near is a very fast blockchain.
Let’s explain with a simple example. When we tested the NFT mint on Polkadot, we got 2000 NFTs in 6 seconds. This is much more than Aether, but the speed of Near is almost 10 times faster.
The limitation of substrate is full of overhead, which only reduces performance.
A significant gap, right?
Simplicity
Near Protocol is written in pure Rust (programming language). It’s easy enough to develop and allows us to launch new features regularly. We also managed to get in touch with Near’s developer and get a 40 min consultation from him, which helped a lot in the future work.
This is almost impossible in Substrate. We applied for a grant from Polkadot. But they were not interested in having an audience of 2.5 million people (Realis Fam, you are the best), as they are only focused on high-tech.
Substrate is a complex framework that, although written in Rust, is essentially a separate programming language. It complicates the work. In addition, there are no experts who are willing to work with Substrate.
Also in Near there is more detailed documentation.
Scalability
We encountered a serious problem when we set up the blockchain.
In Substrate, the scalability is done only through parachains. But this is a very long and complicated process because chain specs in Polkadot don’t allow them to run their own parachain. Consequently, scalability is impossible.
In Near, scalability is done with the sharding mechanism* of Nightshade. Each block created on Near contains a snapshot of transactions taking place on each segment of another chain.
*You can read more about sharding herе
Substrate is almost unrealistic to update. If Polkadot comes out with an update, it will take a very long time to set up our blockchain, and it will also carry risks for our users. To avoid all of this, we opted for Near Protocol.
Cost
Near is one of the cheapest blockchains, and it is many times cheaper than Substrate. Again, let’s give a simple example in numbers. Mint 1 mln NFTs in Near will cost $50 (at current exchange rate), in Substrate this amount will be several times more.
User-friendly UI
For a new user, who has never had experience with cryptocurrency, it will be much easier to create a purse on Near than on Substrate. Due to the fact that Near has a convenient system of accounts and keys to access them. Ordinary users will be able to access DApps built on Near, using their usual registration process.
Summary
One of the important advantages of Substrate in economics is that the commission is taken in a native blockchain token (in our case $LIS).
A project must clearly decide for itself how important it is to pay the commission in the native token. Our main goal is to make sure that a player doesn’t think about complex technology and plays the game with pleasure. We pay all commissions for the player and they are already included in the economy of the game.
Thank you for reading to the end. It is important for us to share with users such difficult to grasp information. All these processes help us to understand what a great job the Realis team is doing every day on our way to achieve our goals.
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