Cathie Wood Expects More Blockchain Networks to Enter the Market
ARK Invest founder and CEO Cathie Wood believes the blockchain industry is likely to see more networks emerge as the technology continues to develop, but she says the key question will be how effectively those networks scale, generate revenue and attract users.
Wood’s latest comments point to an increasingly competitive blockchain landscape in which simply launching a new network may not be enough. As more Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchains enter the market, their long-term success could depend on the ability to process activity efficiently while building sustainable business models and attracting developers and users.
Recent reporting on Wood’s remarks said she emphasized that blockchain technology has now been developing for more than a decade and that additional networks are likely to emerge in the years ahead.
Scalability Could Become a Major Competitive Advantage
One of the central issues in the blockchain sector is scalability.
As blockchain applications expand beyond cryptocurrency trading into payments, decentralized finance, tokenization and other financial applications, networks need to process increasing amounts of activity without creating prohibitive costs or delays.
Wood’s comments highlight scalability as one of the factors that investors and industry participants should consider when comparing competing blockchain networks.
The question is therefore shifting from whether a blockchain can process transactions at all to whether it can handle substantially larger levels of activity while maintaining a competitive user experience.
This issue has also become increasingly important as traditional financial institutions explore blockchain-based infrastructure. In February, LayerZero announced Zero, a blockchain designed around institutional financial applications, with Wood and major financial-industry participants backing the project. Wood described the goal as bringing internet-like speed to financial markets, while identifying transaction speed and transactions per second as key hurdles for blockchain adoption.
Blockchain Competition Is Expanding Beyond Technology
Wood’s comments also put attention on the economics of blockchain networks.
Different chains can use different approaches to transaction fees, applications, incentives and network monetization. As a result, two blockchains can offer similar technical capabilities while producing very different economic outcomes.
ARK Invest digital-asset research has recently examined how Layer 1 and Layer 2 networks monetize transactions and how their business models differ.
The analysis associated with ARK’s research compares networks based on factors such as transaction-processing capacity and revenue generated from activity. Wood has highlighted this type of analysis as useful for understanding the strengths, weaknesses, business models and user-acquisition strategies of different blockchain networks.
That means blockchain competition could increasingly resemble competition between technology platforms: networks may need not only strong infrastructure but also sustainable economics and a growing ecosystem of applications.
Attracting Users Could Be Just as Important as Scaling
Technical performance alone may not guarantee that a blockchain becomes widely used.
A network can process large numbers of transactions, but it still needs developers to build applications and users to interact with them. Liquidity, applications, wallets, exchanges, stablecoins and other infrastructure can also contribute to network adoption.
Wood’s broader investment commentary has emphasized the importance of getting close to developers and end users.
In August, she highlighted ARK research on crypto-sector revenue and urged investors to “follow the developers” and get close to the end user. The research estimated that centralized crypto companies generated substantially more revenue in 2025 than on-chain protocols and blockchains themselves.
That distinction is important because network activity does not automatically translate into a sustainable business model.
For emerging blockchains, attracting users who return because they find the network useful could ultimately be more important than generating short-term activity through incentives.
Layer 1 and Layer 2 Competition Could Intensify
The blockchain market is no longer dominated by a small number of networks.
Ethereum remains a major platform for decentralized applications, while networks such as Solana and other Layer 1 blockchains compete for developers, liquidity and users. At the same time, Layer 2 networks have emerged as another important part of the ecosystem, attempting to improve scalability while remaining connected to established Layer 1 infrastructure.
This creates several different competitive models.
Some networks prioritize transaction speed and low fees. Others emphasize decentralization, security, interoperability or specialized applications. Layer 2 networks may focus on increasing throughput and reducing transaction costs while leveraging the security of an underlying blockchain.
As more networks emerge, users and developers may increasingly choose chains based on the specific applications and economics they offer rather than simply following the largest blockchain by market capitalization.
Tokenization Could Increase Demand for Blockchain Infrastructure
The potential expansion of tokenized assets is another reason competition among blockchain networks could become more important.
Traditional financial institutions are increasingly exploring the use of blockchain technology for tokenized securities, payments and other financial-market infrastructure.
Wood’s involvement with LayerZero’s Zero blockchain is an example of this trend. The project was designed specifically with traditional finance requirements in mind, including scalability and privacy considerations. Fortune reported that the project was backed by Wood as well as financial-industry participants including Citadel Securities and Intercontinental Exchange.
If tokenization expands significantly, blockchain networks could compete for institutional activity in addition to cryptocurrency-native users.
That could create demand for infrastructure capable of handling much larger transaction volumes than many current blockchain applications.
ARK Invest Remains Bullish on Public Blockchains
Wood’s latest comments are consistent with ARK Invest’s broader long-term view of blockchain technology.
In its 2026 research, ARK projected significant expansion of the overall crypto market through 2030, driven partly by wider adoption of public blockchains and digital assets.
ARK has projected that the total crypto market could reach roughly $28 trillion by 2030, with Bitcoin potentially reaching a market capitalization of approximately $16 trillion. The firm has also argued that institutional adoption, spot Bitcoin ETFs, corporate treasury holdings and broader public-blockchain adoption could support long-term growth.
The projections illustrate why ARK continues to study blockchain infrastructure despite increasing competition among networks.
If the overall market expands substantially, there could be room for multiple blockchain networks rather than a single winner.
More Blockchains Do Not Necessarily Mean One Network Will Dominate
Wood’s view does not necessarily suggest that every new blockchain will succeed.
Instead, the emergence of additional networks could lead to a more fragmented but competitive ecosystem.
Some chains could specialize in payments, others in decentralized finance, gaming, tokenization, trading or institutional financial infrastructure. Networks that fail to attract meaningful developers and users could eventually lose relevance, while successful platforms could capture increasing shares of activity.
This could produce a market where blockchain networks compete according to different strengths rather than following a single technological model.
What Could Determine the Winners?
Based on the factors highlighted by Wood and ARK’s related research, several metrics could become increasingly important when evaluating blockchain networks:
Scalability: How many transactions can the network process while maintaining acceptable performance?
Transaction economics: Can the network generate sustainable revenue from genuine activity?
User adoption: Are users coming to the network because of useful applications and services?
Developer activity: Is the network attracting developers who create applications that generate recurring demand?
Liquidity: Does the chain have sufficient liquidity to support trading, lending and other financial applications?
Application ecosystem: Does the network offer products that users actually need?
Cost efficiency: Can users transact at competitive costs as network activity increases?
Institutional suitability: Can the infrastructure meet the speed, security, privacy and compliance requirements of traditional financial institutions?
These factors could become more important as the blockchain market matures.
The Blockchain Industry May Enter a More Competitive Phase
The next stage of blockchain development could therefore be less about proving that blockchain technology works and more about determining which networks can build sustainable ecosystems.
More blockchains entering the market could give developers and users additional choices, but it could also make competition for liquidity, applications and users more intense.
For investors, the growing number of networks may make it increasingly important to distinguish between technological promises and measurable adoption.
A blockchain that scales effectively but fails to attract users may struggle to build lasting economic value. Likewise, a network with strong user growth may eventually face challenges if its infrastructure cannot handle increasing demand.
Bottom Line
Cathie Wood expects more blockchain networks to emerge as the technology continues to develop, but the increasing number of chains could make competition within the sector more intense.
Her recent comments highlight three important factors: scalability, sustainable business models and user adoption. ARK Invest’s related research is also examining how Layer 1 and Layer 2 networks process transactions and monetize activity.
The broader implication is that blockchain competition may increasingly resemble competition between technology platforms. The networks most likely to remain relevant could be those capable of scaling efficiently, attracting developers and users, and converting genuine network activity into sustainable economics.
As tokenization, decentralized finance and other blockchain applications continue to develop, the race among competing networks could become one of the most important themes in the digital-asset industry.
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