When engaging with a Web3 project, the first thing you need to clarify is what it does. What sector is it in? Is it a public chain, DeFi, RWA, SocialFI, NFT, GameFi, or infrastructure (Infra)? Once you determine the sector, you can generally analyze what problems this sector is currently facing. Who are the leaders in this sector? Then, look back at this project and see what industry problems it solves and whether it is better than existing solutions.
For example, if it is a public chain, what is the purpose of a public chain? A public chain is the "operating system" of Web3, used to run smart contracts, process transactions, and host various DApps. What are the current challenges in the public chain sector?
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High Gas fees: The transaction fees on the Ethereum mainnet can reach $50-100 per transaction during peak times, which hinders the popularity of small transactions and DApps.
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Low TPS: Ethereum's TPS (transactions per second) is only 15-30, compared to the thousands of TPS of traditional payment systems like Visa, which creates a significant gap and makes it difficult to support large-scale applications.
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Insufficient decentralization: Some say Solana can theoretically reach a peak TPS of 65,000, which should be sufficient, but actual tests show its TPS is around 349-805 TPS. This is somewhat adequate, but it is often criticized for being insufficiently decentralized. Ethereum has over 10,000 full nodes and more than a million validator nodes, while Solana has only 3,000-4,000 full nodes and about 2,000 validator nodes. What does this result in? A smaller number of validators means the network relies on a few nodes, making it fragile and prone to single points of failure, which can lead to systemic paralysis and downtime. If you sacrifice decentralization to improve efficiency, you lose the meaning of Web3; traditional internet efficiency is higher.
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Poor interoperability: Different public chains, such as Ethereum and Solana, have fragmented ecosystems, and cross-chain interactions are extremely complex, significantly increasing costs for users and developers.
Now, looking at this public chain project, if you say you have reduced Gas fees, what is your solution? Are you using Layer 2 or adopting a low-cost public chain architecture like BNB Chain? If you say you have improved TPS, what is your level of decentralization? Have you designed a multi-node architecture? Also, how is your cross-chain interoperability?
Ultimately, it comes back to these three points:
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Do you offer a public chain that is faster, cheaper, and safer than existing ones?
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Do you have unique technological innovations? (For example, Aptos's Move language)
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Have you attracted more DApps and users?
A public chain is not a showcase for competing performance parameters; what it truly needs to do is ensure that more people can afford to use it, run it quickly, and connect to it while maintaining decentralization.
Therefore, a truly valuable public chain is not built on promoting high TPS or low Gas fees, but rather on architectural design, ecosystem attractiveness, and developer friendliness, genuinely bringing developers in, retaining users, and enabling applications to run.
Only in this way can a public chain be more than just a "faster Ethereum alternative" but a true underlying operating system for the Web3 world.