(Note: The authors are at Dapper Labs, the original creators of Flow.) Ethereum itself is focusing on higher scalability using sharding and a variety of upgrades.

The biggest debate quickly became scalability - how could Ethereum and other blockchains accommodate a growing number of users without getting bogged down or too expensive to use? The scalability issue ultimately led to the emergence of younger Layer 1 blockchains like Flow, Solana, Avalanche, and WAX, as well as Layer 2 or sidechain solutions from the likes of zkSync, Optimism, or Polygon. While CryptoKitties foreshadowed the tremendous potential that consumer-grade blockchain applications bear for the entire industry, it also gave a sobering testimony of Ethereum’s technical limitations at the time. And we get it: In 2017, Dapper Labs created CryptoKitties - digital collectible cats that introduced the first non-fungible token (NFT) standard, ERC-721.

The narrative for the longest time was (and sometimes still is) all about scalability as a necessary precondition for mass-adoption.

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