As legacy blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum buckle and groan under the weight of their popularity, an entirely new ecosystem of blockchains and cryptocurrencies is emerging. These new chains are** faster, cheaper, and more scalable**, but they won't entirely replace what came before.

And that's ok!

Fiat currency is not a winner-take-all system, and cryptocurrency will be the same. Dollars, Euros, Bitcoin, and AVAX can all coexist.

In fact, the existence of multiple chains is one of the industry's greatest strengths. With so many innovators building distinct products, creation in the space speeds up when we work together by going cross-chain.

It will soon be quite common for tokens and data to stream across a handful of layer one chains.

This interoperability will be pushed forward by a unified interface. The ubiquity of Metamask, Solidity, and the EVM make it easy to take all of your code and development tools with you when you move across platforms. Switching chains can be as easy as picking a new item from a drop down.

Cross-chain functionality will be especially important if chains specialize by use case. Right now, Ethereum is all about DeFi. Filecoin is making a play for data storage. We're still waiting for a chain to dominate decentralized identity and social media.

In our cross-chain future, we may hop chains just like we hop between Robinhood, Dropbox, and Instagram.