Advantages

For Developers

The creation of sidechains enables us to onboard developers from other ecosystems. For example, a Solidity developer can take code they have already written and bring it over to the C1 sidechain right away. This decreases the barrier of entry and provides a motivating boost since they can easily enter the Cardano ecosystem.

In addition, offering alternative languages will help new developers begin developing smart contracts with a programming language they are more familiar with. Solidity is similar to JavaScript, which is the number one language new devs try out first. Once they work on their programming skills and start to dip their toes into the functional paradigm, they may eventually evolve to using a functional programming language like Haskell which naturally leads them into Plutus smart contracts.

However we need to reach developers where they are at today, and not where we expect them to be tomorrow. With the freedom to adopt VMs from any other blockchain, all of the open-source tooling already created for them will be compatible. This provides a net benefit for everybody thanks to the open source nature of the crypto ecosystem. Any technology we build off of will provide an opportunity for collaboration, finding and fixing key bugs in the codebases, and thus enriching each ecosystem as a result.

For End-Users

Users will benefit from a broader selection of Dapps, projects, and protocols available within the ecosystem.

Some other sidechain projects expose users to a deteriorated UX compared to what they are used to by forcing them to go through a multi-step transfer process and/or pay high fees. This has a major negative effect on adoption as newer users are the most sensitive to increased complexity and understanding the value proposition if they have to pay a lot up-front. If either cost or complexity appear to be too high, such users will just give up and move on to something else.

Furthermore, with wrapped smart contracts we will be able to eliminate almost all of the user experience issues which classically come about with sidechains. This admittedly adds extra complexity to both the protocol design and development processes, but once the foundation is laid and the first wrapped smart contracts are released the design patterns will be well tread.

This opens the gates for many developers to build their own wrapped smart contracts using their favorite languages while exposing an interface to users on the mainnet.

For Entrepreneurs and Businesses

Currently there is a shortage of talent, and this is especially true for developers.

Even if entrepreneurs or businesses are able to find devs, they tend to be very expensive and often lack a solid background in understanding blockchain technology deeply. This is compounded by the requirement of knowing brand new smart contract languages, which shrinks the pool of prospects further.

Allowing developers to build in Solidity and other smart contract languages they may already know will help the ecosystem by broadening the pool of available devs. This will translate into more projects, faster development times, and thus more live working products that users will get to actually use.

For Crypto Projects Already in Other Blockchains

Being realistic, it is clearly a major jump for any existing project deployed on another blockchain (such as Ethereum) to throw away their team of Solidity developers and specialists and go through an arduous process of hiring an entire dev team for a new smart contract language (such as Plutus) to then begin rewriting their entire dApp stack from scratch.

Thanks to our protocol enabling the deployment of sidechains, we will be inviting good projects to benefit from the novel pluses of the L1 ecosystem without having to start from square one. Even if they have a large gap in knowledge we can eliminate the majority of the upfront cost by deploying a sidechain that allows them to enter into the ecosystem and make a big splash with limited extra work.

Going one step further, if the project decides to expand and build out their existing dApp as a wrapped smart contract, it will gain a major boost in popularity as users get to easily interact with it from the mainnet. This will only require a limited amount of extra work (most of which will be standardized and easy to follow once initially implemented), thereby allowing developers to focus on building dApps using the tooling that they know best and following clear steps on how to wrap their contracts to unlock greater potential.

For ADA Hodlers

Milkomeda will support the Cardano ecosystem by bringing value via improving the experience for developers, entrepreneurs, and business owners seeking to migrate over to Cardano. The fact that sidechains such as C1 deployed by the protocol will use wrapped ADA as their base asset (and thus for fees) strengthens the use case of ADA, thereby allowing the sidechains to work in tandem with the Cardano mainnet, rather than in opposition as a competing asset. This improves the ecosystem as a whole, while providing ADA hodlers more options in what they can use their ADA for.

For Multi-Project ADA Hodlers

One of the long-term goals of the protocol is to keep building out the infrastructure on the deployed sidechains, thereby building out bridges to other L1 blockchains. This means that eventually each of these sidechains can act as a bridge in itself between Cardano and L1 blockchains.

This will allow users who have tokens on say Ethereum, Solana, etc. to move their assets to Cardano mainnet via a corresponding sidechain. Once on Cardano mainnet, these wrapped tokens become native assets, allowing them to be used with any and every Plutus or Marlowe dApp available in the ecosystem.