I think the public chain Ethereum is the Windows of this open and decentralized internet, if we weigh security, scalability, speed, privacy, and decentralization... these dimensions to comprehensively score the protocol, it is usually the best /Generic solution.
However, compared to Ethereum, I can see several protocols based on each area. Of course, the fact that these protocols are specific to one dimension of a specific use case means they compromise on certain dimensions and are not built for a general use case.
For example, some large financial institutions like banks/exchanges need a protocol that doesn't need to be very decentralized, it doesn't need to be very fast, and it doesn't need to have low fees, but it needs to be ultra-secure, even quantum-resistant. Then Ethereum is very suitable for the above-mentioned economic system protocol, and currently, there is the most active DeFi ecosystem on Ethereum. A large number of DEXs and AMMs are built on Ethereum, and there are more innovative protocols.
On the other hand, AAA games will need a protocol that emphasizes speed and scalability. Otherwise, it can't even play. Currently BSC and Solana are extremely fast and have large AAA games built on top of them.
For NFTs, although many digital collections are built on Ethereum, some products of the fan economy are built on specific chains. Looking at the numbers, NBA Top Shot is currently on the Flow chain for over $700 million. Flow doesn't seem to outperform Ethereum in any technology, but they've amassed 200k active crypto gamers from CryptoKitties, NBA Top Shots, and more, it incentivizes game studios/developers and big brands to build on Flow as their gateway to Enter blockchain games and NFTs.
In addition to 3-5 protocols that stand out from 1-2 specific technical dimensions, I can also see 3-5 protocols built from the ground up for applications or businesses in a particular region or ecosystem.
ThunderCore has been here for 6 years, never had any security issues, and ranks third on DappRadar for "active users" after Ethereum and Solana. 8 of the 10 top dApps (by transaction) now run on ThunderCore.
Conflux is an innovative public chain system. Its main advantage is that it can increase the POW-based throughput rate to the order of thousands of transactions per second. But what they are doing in China is more of a compliant blockchain, and they have developed different application paths at home and abroad.
Aptos has designed a new technical path to improve parallel processing capabilities. But its development is still in its infancy, and it has not achieved the promised high throughput. Most of the above DeFi and NFTs are still repeating things on Solana, and I look forward to seeing more innovations in the technical dimension.
Solidity as a public chain is the easiest to learn program language, but developers can easily make mistakes that lead to millions of smart contracts being hacked. We can't find a way to tell if a program is correct on solidity. Therefore, in order to ensure the correctness of the program, we have no theoretical tools and can only rely on empirical tools, such as using developer experience to test. However, due to the limitation of gas, an attacker can perform an attack by adjusting the value of gas so that the execution stops at an intermediate step, or cause the leakage of the key.
Rust is not built for smart contracts, but a scientific program language that is very popular in the scientific community because it is powerful in some data science experiments that are not possible in Solidity.
Move is a program language built for security and scalability and object-based parallel computing. And open source ensures its security through static calls, virtual machine sandboxes, etc. But from a programming language point of view, it is equivalent to separating the application logic from the library. This is good for safety. Because the library is relatively pure, good for formal verification, and has easy-to-use validators, I think its disadvantages in security completely outweigh the advantages in flexibility.