It’s time to start the competition now that the foundations of Flow and Ethereum have been covered. In order to determine which platform is currently more practical, effective, commercially feasible, and profitable, let’s compare the two.
Cost of transactions
Ethereum users must spend gas in order to complete a transaction and correctly execute a smart contract. It’s a unique charge that varies according to how intricate the contract is and how active the network is. Ethereum’s own cryptocurrency, ETH, is used to pay gas fees, and on some days, the average cost exceeds $20.
The price of petrol dissatisfied the creators of Flow. Did they, however, succeed in lowering the transaction costs on their own platform? They appear to have so far been successful. Transactions are subject to two fees: the first is a setup charge that starts at 0.001 FLOW (about $0.03), and the second is a transaction cost that starts at 0.000001 FLOW.
Mechanism for consensus
The PoW (proof-of-work) consensus protocol is currently used by Ethereum. When there is such a consensus, miners engage in “battle,” competing to produce new blocks. The person who completes the arithmetic problem first and establishes a cryptographic link between the blocks will triumph in the crypto combat. The winner receives ETH and distributes the new block to the rest of the network. Due to the significant amount of computer resources needed, one of the greatest issues with PoW is its energy consumption. It has prompted a look for less priced options.
Ethereum programmers intend to switch to the PoS (proof-of-stake) consensus protocol at the same time. In this instance, validators will place ETH to take part in the transaction verification process. To build new blocks, distribute them to the network, and get rewards, the validator is picked at random. Potentially, this kind of shift will result in lower gas prices and energy consumption.
The PoS consensus model is already in use on the Flow blockchain. The HotStuff consensus algorithm, which was created originally by VMware Research, powers it.
How the key players generate their income is the main distinction between them. In PoS, players benefit by raising the currency’s worth, but in PoW, they are more interested in raising the commission. The primary cause of Ethereum’s scalability problems is PoW.
Since Ethereum is still transitioning to the PoS protocol, Flow is a great alternative for developers that want to start and profit from their NFT apps right away.
Sensible contracts
Due to the fact that this blockchain was created expressly to allow developers to create apps utilizing them, smart contracts are frequently connected with Ethereum. It’s now the most widely used platform for building smart contracts.
The most significant feature of the Ethereum smart contract is that it cannot be modified after it has been executed. Any action taken on top of a smart contract results in an immutable record being created on the blockchain. This unquestionably boosts users’ confidence in the platform.
However, some engineers believe that since the smart contract may have issues and frequently needs testing, it should be possible to update it after deployment.
In order to allow the contract’s creator to incrementally upgrade the code, Flow permits the deployment of smart contracts on its mainnet in a “beta state.” Users, in turn, can decide whether to utilize the code as it stands at a particular moment in time or to hold off until it has been fully developed.
Smart contract authors no longer need to have control over the code if they are certain that it is secure; at that point, the smart contract becomes immutable. Developers have the chance to greatly increase the security of smart contracts for end users by reviewing and fixing the code.
