Illia Polosukhin Thinks ETH Won’t Play a Big Role in Web3

The co-founder of NEAR Protocol, Illia Polosukhin, discusses his vision for Web3 and why Ethereum may not have a significant role in its creation.

Ethereum development, according to the co-founder of NEAR protocol, has a focus problem. He claims that engineers should be addressing key concerns that would allow Web3 to scale to billions of users.

“We require a simple user experience. We need to be able to code quickly. We need applications that are easy to combine. I don’t see any of the current Ethereum upgrades aiming for any of those objectives,” Polosukhin told Cointelegraph in an exclusive interview.

Polosukhin foresees a new version of the internet, dubbed Web3, in which users would retain complete control of their data and assets. He feels that the next version of the internet will be built around a variety of apps rather than a single “killer app.”

“Our objective is for customers to have control of their data. They are in command of their money and assets. They are able to manage these platforms, so there’s no need to build an everything-fulfilling platform,” he added.

As a result, both improving blockchain technology’s scalability and interoperability are critical for the creation of Web3. According to Polosukhin, while Ethereum is still the dominant smart-contract platform, it lacks NEAR’s commitment to attaining those objectives.

He believes that Ethereum’s dependence on layer 2 technologies or rollups to address scalability issues may lead to tradeoffs in composability.

“Rollups will naturally create less compatibility and generate more sub-spaces where things are going on,” he added.

NEAR aims to solve the scalability problem by leveraging sharding technology, a process that breaks down the protocol’s infrastructure into several pieces without sacrificing composability as a layer-1 solution alternative to Ethereum.

“We can now have a lot more applications running simultaneously with the same financial models because we are able to scale up the composable structure,” adds Polosukhin.

The Rainbow Bridge is a protocol that allows for the free exchange of assets from the Ethereum blockchain to and from the Bitcoin blockchain via NEAR.

“This allows not just for token transfers, but also for the reading of state on each chain and the passing of any generic messages between them, allowing you to execute contracts.” he continued.

NEAR was one of the most rapidly expanding building communities in 2021. One of the protocol’s major selling points, according to Polosukhin, is that it provides well-known and simple-to-use programming languages like Java and Rust. Another consideration was the $800 million investment announced last year for developers to use the NEAR protocol.

As a result of this, he explained, “building the foundation components and then allowing other individuals to construct their own businesses has been very effective.”