Ethereum: A Visual Look

## What Is MetisDAO (METIS)?

Metis is an [Ethereum](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/) [Layer-2](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/layer-2) scaling solution aiming to solve the [blockchain trilemma](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/blockchain-trilemma): that blockchains cannot be decentralized, secure, and scalable simultaneously. It also strives to solve Ethereum's biggest challenges: speed, cost and scalability.

Metis wants to help developers create and manage existing [decentralized applications](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/decentralized-applications-dapps) (dApps), while also supporting developers and entrepreneurs who want to build and launch new dApps. It also integrates the Decentralized Autonomous Company (DAC) framework into its Layer 2 infrastructure to help developers and businesses move from Web 2.0 to [Web 3.0](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-web-3-0). 


## Who Are the Founders of MetisDAO?

Elena Sinelnikova, Kevin Liu, and Yuan Su founded Metis in 2019, but the business didn't officially launch until Nov. 17, 2021. 

Sinelnikova established other crypto projects prior to founding Metis, including the non-profit blockchain educational hub ‘Crypto Chicks,’ in 2017. She has a Master’s degree in computer science and experience working in blockchain, cybersecurity, software development, and as a full-stack programmer. 

Kevin Liu worked as an investment manager and in strategic development before launching Metis. He has an undergraduate degree in management and an MBA from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. 

Yuan Su studied computer science as an undergraduate and then did an MBA at the University of Toronto. After graduating, he worked as a software engineer and manager at IBM until 2019, when he co-founded Metis. He now also heads up development at CaseWare International. 


## What Makes MetisDAO Unique?

MetisDAO differentiates itself from other protocols in a few different ways. 

Metis users can transact quickly and cheaply on the [Ethereum blockchain](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/categories/ethereum) thanks to [Optimistic Rollups](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/optimistic-rollup), which batch multiple transactions into one transaction that is then processed on Ethereum. Its Layer 2 infrastructure uses Ethereum's security and decentralization to make transactions cheaper and faster.

Transaction data is usually stored on layer-1, whereas Metis stores most of its transaction data off-chain, with only the minimum viable data stored on its layer-1. This off-chain data is then placed in Memolabs storage by the Sequencer. When compared with a Layer 1 like Ethereum, storage on Memo Labs is substantially cheaper.

Metis also offers a modular framework, allowing developers to build and customize their own dApps using Metis’ infrastructure. 


## What Is Metis’ DAOtribution Campaign? 

MetisDAO is both a Layer 2 scaling solution _and_ a platform for building and running decentralized autonomous companies (DACs). 

The MetisDAO Foundation has [launched](https://daotimes.com/metisdao-foundation-debuts-new-grants-program-daotribution/) a grants program to empower contributors and communities to kickoff their DACs on KORIS called the DAOTribution Campaign. Through the DAOtribution Campaign, the MetisDAO Foundation opens weekly Kohorts for qualified applicants to submit grant proposals and receive funding through the Metis token.


## What Is the Metis Hybrid Rollup?

On March 2, 2023, MetisDAO announced that it was building “the first-ever Hybrid Rollup by combining optimistic rollup architecture with [zero-knowledge proofs](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/zero-knowledge-proof-2).” Although work on the rollup is still ongoing, Metis believes that combining both architectures will help it provide “a secure, developer-friendly Layer 2 for Ethereum developers to deploy all types of decentralized applications.”


### Related Pages:

Read about [Arbitrum (ARB)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/arbitrum/) — the leading optimistic rollup currently in the market.

Find out more about [Optimism (OP)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/optimism-ethereum/) — another of the top optimistic rollups.

What are optimistic rollups? Find out with the [CMC glossary](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/optimistic-rollup).

Learn more about optimistic rollups vs zk-rollups on [CMC Alexandria](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/optimistic-rollups-vs-zk-rollups-the-ultimate-comparison).

Take a deep dive into [modular versus monolithic blockchains](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/modular-vs-monolithic-blockchains-what-s-the-difference).


## How Many MetisDAO (METIS) Coins Are in Circulation?

The tokenomics of MetisDAO (METIS) is as follows: a maximum supply of 10,000,000 tokens. The first 49.3% of the total supply of METIS tokens was minted in 2021 for “cold launch, team, advisors’ and investors’ allocation, and ecosystem/community development.”

The rest of the 50.7% of METIS tokens will be allocated to: 4.86% for community benefits (including mining), 10% for early-stage Rangers mining, 3% for community development in upcoming Discovery Age, 32.84% for transaction-related mining in upcoming Discovery Age.


## Where Can You Buy METIS Tokens?

MetisDAO is available on [OKX](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/okx/), [BingX](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bingx/), [Huobi](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/huobi/), [Coinbase](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/coinbase-exchange/), [BitMart](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bitmart/), [KuCoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/kucoin/) and more.

Binance

Metis

Trust Wallet

MetaMask

Binance Chain Wallet

Making Ethereum accessible to everyone🌿

Metis Andromeda

Injective is a blockchain built for finance. It is an open, interoperable layer-one blockchain powering next-generation DeFi applications, including decentralized spot and derivatives exchanges, prediction markets, lending protocols and more.

Injective uniquely provides powerful core financial infrastructure primitives that applications can leverage, including a fully decentralized MEV-resistant on-chain orderbook. In addition, all forms of financial markets such as spot, perpetual, futures and options are fully on-chain. The decentralized cross-chain bridging infrastructure is compatible with Ethereum, IBC-enabled blockchains, and non EVM chains such as Solana.

Injective also provides a next-generation, highly interoperable smart contract platform based on CosmWasm, with advanced interchain capabilities. Injective is custom built with the Cosmos SDK and utilizes Tendermint-based Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, providing instant transaction finality with the ability to sustain lightning-fast performance (10,000+ TPS).

The Injective ecosystem includes 100+ projects and over 150,000 community members globally. Injective is backed by a group of prominent investors such as Binance, Pantera Capital, Jump Crypto and Mark Cuban.

Injective’s core exchange module provides state-of-the-art capabilities including an advanced on-chain order book and matching engine for spot, perpetual, futures and options markets, resistance to Miner-Extractable Value (MEV) through frequent batch auction order matching, and zero gas fees for users.

Injective natively uses IBC and is highly-interoperable with multiple layer 1s, including, but not limited to, Polygon and Solana (through an upcoming Wormhole integration). It is also uniquely built to be interoperable with Ethereum, through its own decentralized ERC-20 token bridge, making Injective the first network within the Cosmos ecosystem to natively support Ethereum assets.

Smart contracts are implemented on Injective through CosmWasm, allowing for multi-chain smart contract transactions to occur seamlessly. Injective, however, is the only blockchain that enables automatic smart contract execution. This capability serves as a powerful building block for developers to create novel use cases that would not be possible on any other chain.

The use cases intended for INJ include but are not limited to: protocol governance, dApp value capture, Proof-of-Stake (PoS) security, developer incentives and staking. Further details regarding each of these use cases can be found below:

Protocol Governance: The INJ token governs every single component of Injective, including chain upgrades. Since its mainnet launch, the Injective community has actively contributed to governance, with all proposals passing through a DAO governance vote. The comprehensive governance page is available here.

Protocol Fee Value Capture: 60% of all fees generated from dApps enter an on-chain buy-back-and-burn auction to maintain the deflationary nature of INJ. The burn auction page is available here.

Tendermint-based Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Security: INJ is used to secure the Injective blockchain using a proof-of-stake mechanism. Validators and delegators can both participate in staking.

Developer Incentives: 40% of fees generated by users on dApps built on Injective go directly towards incentivizing new developers building on Injective which brings an ever growing funnel of builders to Injective.

Injective

GMX is a decentralized exchange (DEX) for trading perpetual cryptocurrency futures with up to 50X leverage on popular cryptocurrencies like BTC, ETH and more. The platform launched in September 2021 as Gambit Exchange. To date, GMX has a total trading volume of over $130B and 283K total users, making it the leading derivatives DEX on Arbitrum and Avalanche.

GMX runs on the Arbitrum and the Avalanche blockchain. These ecosystems are connected to the exchange via Synapse — a cross-chain bridge.

Immutable positions itself as the first layer-two scaling solution for NFTs on Ethereum. According to Immutable, its blockchain does away with Ethereum’s limitations like low scalability, a poor user experience, illiquidity, and a slow developer experience. Instead, users benefit from instant trading and massive scalability while enjoying zero gas fees for minting and trading NFTs without compromising user or asset security.

Thanks to this technology, users will be able to create and distribute assets like ERC-20 and ERC-721 tokens on a massive scale. Chris Clay, the game Director of Gods Unchained, a project already building on Immutable, stated that Immutable allows Gods Unchained to implement a new meta-system that was previously impossible. In this fashion, Immutable aims to create a world-class experience for users and developers alike.

Immutable

Celestia

Oasis is the pioneering layer 1 blockchain designed to enable scalability and confidential compute. Oasis is home to Sapphire, the first confidential EVM that empowers Web3 and Decentralized AI developers to build dApps with Smart Privacy natively on Oasis or other EVM-based chains.

ROSE is the native token of the Oasis Network used for gas fees, staking, delegation and governance. With a unique layered architecture, Oasis presents the optimal building and execution environment for DeFi, AI, GameFi, NFTs, the metaverse, data tokenization and DAO governance. Oasis also has native support for rollups at the consensus layer.

Oasis

Akash Network

Optimism (OP) is a layer-two blockchain on top of Ethereum. Optimism benefits from the security of the Ethereum mainnet and helps scale the Ethereum ecosystem by using optimistic rollups. That means transactions are trustlessly recorded on Optimism but ultimately secured on Ethereum.

Optimism is one of the biggest scaling solutions for Ethereum with over $500 million in TVL. It is home to 97 protocols, the biggest being Synthetix (SNX), a derivatives exchange, Uniswap (UNI), a DEX, and Velodrome (VELO), an AMM. Users can begin their journey on Optimism by adding the chain on their Metamask and bridging tokens like ETH to the L2. On May 31, 2022, Optimism conducted a highly anticipated airdrop of its OP token.

Optimism

Bittensor

Arweave is a decentralized storage network that seeks to offer a platform for the indefinite storage of data. Describing itself as "a collectively owned hard drive that never forgets," the network primarily hosts "the permaweb" — a permanent, decentralized web with a number of community-driven applications and platforms.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Arweave.

The Arweave network uses a native cryptocurrency, AR, to pay "miners" to indefinitely store the network's information.

The project was first announced as Archain in August 2017, later rebranding to Arweave in February 2018 and officially launching in June 2018.

Arweave

Illuvium is an open-world fantasy battle game built on the Ethereum blockchain. Often touted as the first AAA game on Ethereum, Illuvium looks to provide a source of entertainment to both casual gamers and hardcore DeFi fans through a range of collecting and trading features.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Illuvium.

The world of Illuvium is inhabited by creatures known as Illuvials, who can be captured by players that best them in battle and nurse them back to health. From then on, they become a loyal part of the player’s collection and can be used when battling other adventurers as part of Illuvium’s auto battler gameplay.

The game is a fusion between an open-world exploration game and a PVP battle game. Players can spend their time exploring the expanses of the game world or building up their team of powerful beasts.

Illuvium has been in development since 2020, and is being built by a worldwide team of more than 40 individuals, including the co-founders; serial entrepreneur and early cryptocurrency adopter Kieran Warwick, and experienced game designer Aaron Warwick, who are brothers. (And who are coincidentally also the brothers of Kain Warwick, the co-founder of DeFi platform Synthetix).

The ILV token has a number of uses within the Illuvium ecosystem. It’s the main token used to reward players for their in-game achievements, entitles players to their share of the Illuvium Vault and is used for participating in the governance of the game via the Illuvium decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).

Illuvium

RenderToken (RNDR) is a distributed GPU rendering network built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, aiming to connect artists and studios in need of GPU compute power with mining partners willing to rent their GPU capabilities out. Conceived in 2009 by OTOY, inc. CEO Jules Urbach and launched in 2017, RNDR held its first public token sale in October of that same year, followed by a private sale period lasting from January 2018 – May 2018, wherein a total of 117,843,239 RNDR were sold at a price of 1 RNDR = $0.25 USD equivalent of token.
During the private sale period, early adopters were onboarded onto the RNDR Beta Testnet, where beta node operators and artists worked collaboratively with the RNDR team in building and testing the network, up until its public launch on April 27th 2020.

Render

Vulcan Forged is a blockchain game studio and NFT marketplace. They are the makers of VulcanVerse.

PYR  is the native utility token that is used for:

Fees for marketplace settlement

Staking in VulcanVerse land and other assets

Upgrading and sustaining game asset levels

Play-to-earn rewards

Access to our game developers and NFT dapp incubation program

Vulcan Forged Platforms and games include:

*VulcanVerse, a Grece-Roman fantasy metaverse made up of 10,000 plots of land

Anvil, a crypto-less and gas-free NFT engine for easy game and dApp onboarding

Vulcan Market, a gas free NFT marketplace for all Vulcan Forged games

Berserk, an NFT online TGG

Frenzy, a create-your-own tournament platform with PYR as it’s reward token.

Vulcan Forged (PYR)

Founded in 2017 and launched via IEO on Binance in March 2019, Fetch.AI is an artificial intelligence (AI) lab building an open, permissionless, decentralized machine learning network with a crypto economy. Fetch.ai democratizes access to AI technology with a permissionless network upon which anyone can connect and access secure datasets by using autonomous AI to execute tasks that leverage its global network of data. The Fetch.AI model is rooted in  use cases like optimizing DeFi trading services, transportation networks (parking, micromobility), smart energy grids, travel — essentially any complex digital system that relies on large-scale datasets.

Fetch.ai

Nakamoto Games

Ocean Protocol

Sui is a groundbreaking layer-1 blockchain platform designed to support the needs of global adoption by offering a secure, powerful, and scalable development platform. At its core, Sui leverages a novel object-centric data model and the secure Move programming language to address inefficiencies prevalent in existing blockchain architectures.

On top of strong technical foundations, Sui prioritizes user experience by eliminating barriers commonly associated with blockchain interactions. Through innovations like zkLogin, sponsored transactions, and programmable transaction blocks, Sui creates a higher standard for user experience within Web3 by ensuring applications are accessible and user-friendly.

Moonbeam is an Ethereum-compatible smart contract parachain on Polkadot. Moonbeam makes it easy to use popular Ethereum developer tools to build or redeploy Solidity projects in a Substrate-based environment.

Moonbeam is much more than just an EVM implementation: it’s a highly specialized parachain that mirrors Ethereum’s Web3 RPC, accounts, keys, subscriptions, logs, and more. The Moonbeam platform extends the base Ethereum feature set with additional features such as on-chain governance, staking, and cross-chain integrations.

Moonbeam’s Ethereum compatibility is unmatched:

Minimal Changes: developers can use existing Solidity smart contracts right away, with no need to rewrite or reconfigure

Use Existing Developer Tools: connect popular tools like MetaMask, Hardhat, Waffle, Remix, and Truffle via a complete set of Web3 RPC endpoints. Use well-known Javascript libraries such as Web3.Js or Ethers.Js.

Unified Accounts, Addresses, and Signatures: use your existing Ethereum H160 accounts & ECDSA signatures to interact with Moonbeam

Tap into the Most Integrations on Polkadot: use existing oracles, bridges, wallets, and other tools that are already building on Moonbeam

Moonbeam provides integration and connectivity between Polkadot Parachains as well as with other chains such as Ethereum and Bitcoin via bridges. Moonbeam was started in 2019 by Derek Yoo of Pure Stake.

Moonbeam

NEAR Protocol is a layer-one blockchain that was designed as a community-run cloud computing platform and that eliminates some of the limitations that have been bogging competing blockchains, such as low transaction speeds, low throughput and poor interoperability. This provides the ideal environment for DApps and creates a developer and user-friendly platform. For instance, NEAR uses human-readable account names, unlike the cryptographic wallet addresses common to Ethereum. NEAR also introduces unique solutions to scaling problems and has its own consensus mechanism called “Doomslug.”

NEAR Protocol is being built by the NEAR Collective, its community that is updating the initial code and releasing updates to the ecosystem. Its declared goal is to build a platform that is “secure enough to manage high value assets like money or identity and performant enough to make them useful for everyday people.”

Flux, a protocol that allows developers to create markets based on assets, commodities, real-world events, and Mintbase, an NFT minting platform are examples of projects being built on NEAR Protocol.

NEAR Protocol

Fantom is a directed acyclic graph (DAG) smart contract platform providing decentralized finance (DeFi) services to developers using its own bespoke consensus algorithm.

Together with its in-house token FTM, Fantom aims to solve problems associated with smart-contract platforms, specifically transaction speed, which developers say they have reduced to under two seconds.

The Fantom Foundation, which oversees the Fantom product offering, was originally created in 2018, with the launch of OPERA, Fantom’s mainnet, coming in December 2019.

Fantom is an open-source decentralized smart contract platform for DApps and digital assets that was created as an alternative to Ethereum. Fantom has the goal of overcoming the limitations of previous generation blockchains and balancing three components: scalability, security and decentralization. The project offers a set of tools to simplify the process of integrating existing DApps, as well as a detailed staking reward system and built-in DeFi instruments.

Fantom is a Layer-1 blockchain that uses a scratch-built consensus mechanism and independent consensus layer, Lachesis, to facilitate DeFi and related services on the basis of smart contracts. Lachesis provides security for other layers as well, including Opera, Fantom's EVM-compatible smart contract chain. The long-playing mission of the project is to “grant compatibility between all transaction bodies around the world.”

One of Fantom's key strengths is its performance and efficient transaction processing, namely thousands of transactions per second, where transactions are settled in 1-2 seconds, and the cost is fractions of a cent per transaction. As a result, Fantom provides higher scalability but at a lower cost.

The ecosystem is based on two main technologies: Lachesis protocol and Opera.

The Lachesis protocol is the core consensus layer that secures the Fantom network by providing both transaction speed and security.

Lachesis is an aBFT consensus engine that uses a directed acyclic graph (DAG) algorithm. How it works: network data can be processed at different times, and the network filters the participants, allowing only one third, which are allocated due to erroneous or malicious behavior, without compromising network processes.

Fantom's Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerant (aBFT) Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism maintains the efficiency of the entire network, its design provides security at maximum speed. Fantom developers emphasize that the PoS mechanism is a leaderless phenomenon — there are no leaders of blocks and participants, and anyone can join (or leave) the network of nodes at a convenient moment.

The key qualities of Lachesis are: asynchronous, leaderless, Byzantine fault-tolerant, and near-instant finality.

As for Opera, it's an application development layer or Fantom's mainnet deployment platform, permissionless and open-source hosting DApps. Thanks to EVM integration and support for the Solidity programming language, Fantom has a full set of smart contract capabilities, which allows users to seamlessly interact with Ethereum platforms while maintaining the advantage of Fantom's transaction efficiency.

The Fantom Foundation concluded that removing block leaders improves network security, so Opera uses a PoS model and leaderless validators (validators do not determine which blocks are valid).

In addition to being a fast, secure and cheap payment platform that enables to make fast and secure payments at minimal cost, Fantom also features on-chain governance where users vote with FTM tokens (one token equals one vote). Of the features: users have the right to express the degree of agreement / disagreement on a scale from 0 to 4.

FTM is the native utility in-house PoS token of Fantom that powers the ecosystem and is applied for payments, network fees, staking, and governance. FTM forms the backbone of transactions, and allows fee collection and staking activities, along with the user rewards the latter represents.