This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Gladys Tiffany
Let me pour you a coffee 
and tell you about my 3 AM coding nightmares trying to build the same damn dApp on both chains. This ain’t your grandma’s blockchain comparison – it’s the raw, sleep-deprived truth you only learn through pain. 
First Impressions That Totally Catfished Me 
When I first saw Avalanche’s “Ethereum but faster!” pitch, I was like “Hell yeah! 
” Boy, was I naive…
-
Avalanche’s C-Chain promised EVM paradise
but delivered RPC endpoint roulette 
(47 options and they all break differently) -
NEAR’s weird account model confused me at first… until I realized I never had to explain 0x5FbDB231… again
Reality check: Both chains are like that hot Tinder date – great in theory, messy in practice. 
The “I Want to Quit Web3” Moments 
Avalanche’s Special Brand of Torture
- Contract works flawlessly in Remix
- Deploy to Avalanche…
- “Reverted” with zero context
-
6 hours later – turns out it was a gas estimation quirk
Meanwhile on NEAR:
- Error messages actually try to help (shocking!
)
- But then you realize “Wait… where’s my comfy Ethers.js blanket?
”
Subnets vs Shards: Pick Your Poison 
Avalanche: “Just launch your own subnet!”
- Fine print: You’ll need 2,000 validators or sell a kidney
NEAR: “We handle sharding magically!” 
- Hidden cost: Debugging cross-shard calls requires a PhD in distributed systems
Sh*t Nobody Warned Me About 
-
Wallet Wars
- Avalanche: “Just use MetaMask!” (said the outdated docs from 2021)
NEAR: “Here’s our wallet!” (users look at you like you’re speaking Elvish)
Dependency Hell
Avalanche: NPM packages that actively hate each other
NEAR: “You wanted a basic library? Check this unmaintained GitHub repo from 2019”
The Works-on-My-Machine Lie
Avalanche testnet vs mainnet might as well be different blockchains
NEAR’s sandbox is great until you need to test anything interesting
The Cold Hard Truth 
After wasting weeks of my life:
-
Avalanche = Ethereum with cheaper gas and new creative ways to fail
-
NEAR = Powerful but makes you relearn everything like some coding amnesia victim
The real answer? It doesn’t matter as much as you think.
Your actual problems will be:
- Users who can’t install wallets to save their lives
- Gas fees that mysteriously spike right after you demo
- That one obscure bug that only happens on Tuesdays
Pick one and build. The chain won’t be your biggest headache – people will be. 
Still stuck choosing?
- Want familiar but janky? Avalanche
- Want powerful but undocumented? NEAR
Either way… welcome to Web3 hell 
We have cookies 
(but they’re NFT-gated)
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Gladys Tiffany