Layer by Layer Issue 25: Avalanche, Terra, BNB Chain, and Cosmos

The crypto landscape is awash with instances of project development teams taking inspiration from other projects that have been successful in attaining significant growth and adoption. This idea of iterating upon historically effective strategies is so ingrained in the crypto ethos that many of the biggest protocols in the space today originated as forks of other protocols. One of the clearest examples of this trend is the ubiquity of AMM-based DEXs across nearly every major L1 chain. 

With the dramatic rise of Uniswap on Ethereum in 2020, similar DEXs derived from the Uniswap model quickly followed, with SushiSwap emerging as a primary contender after introducing fee-sharing to its native token. In early 2021, the growth of Binance Smart Chain (now BNB Chain) was accompanied by the establishment of the Uniswap fork PancakeSwap as the top protocol on the chain by TVL.