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This is a list of blockchains - decentralized, cryptographic databases - and other distributed ledgers.
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This is a list of blockchains - decentralized, cryptographic databases - and other distributed ledgers.
| Name | Date created | Created by | Native cryptocurrency | Consensus algorithm | Programmable? | Private? [Note 1] | Permissioned? [Note 1] | Finality | Ledger state | Notes | Refs. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | January 3, 2009 | Satoshi Nakamoto | PoW with Nakamoto Consensus | Yes (scripts) | No | No | Probabilistic | UTXO | First and most well-known blockchain of all; BTC is the most valuable token in terms of market share. | , [1] [2] | |
| Litecoin | Oct 8, 2011 | Charlie Lee | LTC | PoW | Yes (scripts) | Yes | , [1] [3] | ||||
| Primecoin | Jul 7, 2013 | Sunny King | XPM | PoW | Work is finding long Cunningham chains of prime numbers | ||||||
| MazaCoin | 2014? | Payu Harris, AnonymousPirate [4] | MAZA | Initially created for the Oglala Lakota Tribe, [4] but never quite used for that purpose | |||||||
| Namecoin | ? | NMC | Allows users to register names; precursor to NFTs | ||||||||
| Ethereum | Jul 30, 2015 | Ethereum Foundation (founded by Vitalik Buterin and others) | ETH 1.0 - PoW with Nakamoto consensus, ETH 2.0 - PoS with supermajority | Yes | No | No | ETH 1.0 Probabilistic, ETH 2.0 Economic | Account-balance | ETH is the second most valuable token in terms of market share; switched to PoS (the “merge”) on September 15, 2022; progenitor of Ethereum Classic | [1] [5] | |
| Arbitrum | ? | Offchain Labs | ETH | Optimistic rollup | Yes | EVM-compatible Layer-2 on Ethereum | [6] | ||||
| Base | ? | Coinbase | ETH | Optimistic rollup | Yes | EVM-compatible Layer-2 on Ethereum | [7] | ||||
| Optimism | ? | Optimism PBC | ETH | Optimistic rollup | Yes | EVM-compatible Layer-2 on Ethereum | [6] [7] | ||||
| StarkNet | ? | StarkWare | STRK | ZK-rollup | Yes | Layer-2 on Ethereum | [8] | ||||
| Linea | January 2024 | ConsenSys | ETH | ZK-rollup | Yes | ? | zkEVM-compatible Layer-2 on Ethereum | ||||
| Polygon zkEVM | ? | Polygon Technology | ETH | ZK-rollup | Yes | zkEVM-compatible Layer-2 on Ethereum | |||||
| XinFin | June 1, 2019 | XinFin Fintech, XDC Foundation | XDC | XDPOS | Yes | No | No | immediate | XDC Network is an layer 1 EVM compatible, environmental friendly, near zero transaction cost with high speed settlement blockchain platform. | ||
| Peercoin | Aug 19, 2012 | PPC | PoW | Yes (scripts) | No | , [1] [9] | |||||
| Ethereum Classic | Jul 20, 2016 | ETC | PoW | Yes | No | No | Split from Ethereum due to The DAO hack earlier that month | [1] | |||
| Bitcoin Cash | Aug 1, 2017 | BCH | PoW | [10] | split from Bitcoin | ||||||
| Cardano | ADA | DPoS | Yes | No | No | Probabilistic | UTXO | , [1] [11] [12] | |||
| TRON | Jun 24, 2018 | TRON | DPoS | Yes | No | , [1] [13] | |||||
| Tezos | Jun 30, 2018 | Arthur and Kathleen Breitman | XTZ | PoS | Yes | No | , [1] [14] | ||||
| Bitcoin SV | Nov 2018 | BSV | PoW | Yes (scripts) | No | split from Bitcoin Cash, itself split from Bitcoin | [1] | ||||
| Lightning Network [ relevant? ] | 2018 | n/a | ? | Layer-2 on Bitcoin | |||||||
| Algorand | Jun 10, 2019 | Silvio Micali and others | ALGO | PoS | Yes | No | No | Immediate | Uses a verifiable random function to choose random validators for consensus | [15] | |
| Solana | March 16, 2020 | Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal | SOL | PoS with Proof of History (PoH) | Yes | No | No | Immediate | Account-balance | [16] | |
| $PC | Sep 16, 2019 | $PC | PoS | Yes (scripts) | No | No | $PC future well-known blockchain | [17] | |||
| Polkadot | May 26, 2020 | DOT | Started with PoA then moved to PoS | Yes | No | No | Parachains on Polkadot support smart contracts, but not the relay chain. | [18] [19] | |||
| Avalanche | ? | Emin Gün Sirer, Maofan "Ted" Yin and Kevin Sekniqi | AVAX | ||||||||
| MobileCoin | Dec 6, 2020 | MobileCoin Inc. (founded by Josh Goldbard and Shane Glynn) | MOB | ||||||||
| Internet Computer | ? | DFINITY Foundation (founded by Dominic WIlliams) | ICP | Computation is very cheap; can host websites | |||||||
| DESO | Jan 18, 2021 | Nader al-Naji (aka diamondhands) and others | DESO (formerly BTCLT, CLOUT) | social media; flagship app BitClout; name acquired in Sep 2021 | [20] | ||||||
| Terra Classic | ? | Do Kwon and others | LUNC (formerly LUNA), UST | Formerly Terra until May 2022; ecosystem collapsed in May 2022 (UST depegged to near-zero and LUNA also went to near-zero) | |||||||
| Terra 2.0 | May 28, 2022 | LUNA | New blockchain created following the collapse of Terra. | [21] | |||||||
| Stellar | Apr 6, 2016 | XLM | BFT | ? | ? | Yes | ? | [9] | |||
| EOS.IO | Jul 1, 2017 | ? | EOS | DPoS | Yes | No | ? | ? | [9] | ||
| LBRY | ? | LBC | |||||||||
| Ripple | June 2012 | Ripple Labs | XRP | BFT | No | No | No | Immediate | Account-balance | Blockchain is known as XRP Ledger. Smart contract capabilities are being added. | , [22] [23] [24] |
| Stacks | ? | STX | |||||||||
| Vertcoin | ? | VTC | |||||||||
| Hedera Hashgraph | ? | HBAR | Yes | No | Yes | Account-balance | Uses a directed acyclic graph instead of a chain per se | ||||
| Zcash | Oct 28, 2016 [9] | ZEC | PoW | Yes | uses zero-knowledge proofs for privacy | ||||||
| Monero | Apr 18, 2014 | XMR | PoW | No | Yes | , [1] [9] | |||||
| Bitcoin Gold | BTG | PoW | Yes (scripts) | No | [1] | ||||||
| Dogecoin | DOGE | PoW | No | No | [1] | ||||||
| Hyperledger Fabric | ? | Linux Foundation | N/A | BFT, PoA | Yes | Yes | Yes | Immediate | Account-balance | ||
| R3 Corda | ? | R3 | N/A | PoA (by notaries) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Immediate | UTXO | ||
| Polygon PoS | ? | ? | MATIC | PoS | Yes | No | No | Immediate | Account-balance | network anchored to Ethereum | [7] |
| Binance Smart Chain | ? | Binance | BNB | PoS and PoA | Yes | No | Yes | Immediate | ? | Binance Smart Chain is now merged with Binance chain and called BNB chain. Validators on BNB chain are chosen by BNB Beacon chain validators who are permissioned. Hence, BNB chain is considered permissioned. | [25] |
| Quorum | Nov 22, 2016 | ? | Ether | PoA with supermajority voting | Yes | Yes | Yes | Immediate | Account-balance | Enterprise version of Ethereum | [26] |
| Aptos | Oct 12, 2022 | Aptos Foundation | APT | BFT | Yes | No | No | Finality? | Ledger state? | [27] | |
| NEAR | 24 Sep, 2020 | NEAR Foundation | NEAR | Started with PoA then moved to PoS | Yes | No | No | Finality | Account-balance | [28] | |
| IOTA | Jul 11, 2016 | IOTA Foundation | MIOTA | PoW/TaPoW[ clarification needed ] | No | No | Yes | Immediate | UTXO | Smart contract capabilities are being added. | , [1] [29] [30] |
| Nano | October 4, 2015 | Colin LeMahieu | XNO | Open Representative Voting | No | No | No | Instant (less than1 second) with deterministic finality | Account-balance |
Bitcoin is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Nodes in the peer-to-peer bitcoin network verify transactions through cryptography and record them in a public distributed ledger, called a blockchain, without central oversight. Consensus between nodes is achieved using a computationally intensive process based on proof of work, called mining, that requires increasing quantities of electricity and guarantees the security of the bitcoin blockchain.
A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it.
Ripple is a real-time gross settlement system, currency exchange and remittance network that is open to financial institutions worldwide and was created by Ripple Labs Inc., a US-based technology company. Released in 2012, Ripple is built upon a distributed open source protocol, and supports tokens representing fiat currency, cryptocurrency, commodities, or other units of value such as frequent flier miles or mobile minutes. Ripple purports to enable "secure, instantly and nearly free global financial transactions of any size with no chargebacks". The ledger employs the native cryptocurrency known as XRP.
Proof-of-stake (PoS) protocols are a class of consensus mechanisms for blockchains that work by selecting validators in proportion to their quantity of holdings in the associated cryptocurrency. This is done to avoid the computational cost of proof-of-work (POW) schemes. The first functioning use of PoS for cryptocurrency was Peercoin in 2012, although the scheme, on the surface, still resembled a POW.
Ripple Labs, Inc. is an American technology company which develops the Ripple payment protocol and exchange network. Originally named Opencoin and renamed in 2015, the company was founded in 2012 and is based in San Francisco, California.
A blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of records (blocks) that are securely linked together via cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data. Since each block contains information about the previous block, they effectively form a chain, with each additional block linking to the ones before it. Consequently, blockchain transactions are irreversible in that, once they are recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without altering all subsequent blocks.
Digital Asset is a financial technology company founded in 2014 by Sunil Hirani, Don R. Wilson, Yuval Rooz, Shaul Kfir and Eric Saraniecki. It builds products based on distributed ledger technology (DLT) for banks and other financial institutions.
Hyperledger is an umbrella project of open source blockchains and related tools that the Linux Foundation started in December 2015. IBM, Intel, and SAP Ariba have contributed to support the collaborative development of blockchain-based distributed ledgers. It was renamed the Hyperledger Foundation in October 2021.
A decentralised application is an application that can operate autonomously, typically through the use of smart contracts, that run on a decentralized computing, blockchain or other distributed ledger system. Like traditional applications, DApps provide some function or utility to its users. However, unlike traditional applications, DApps operate without human intervention and are not owned by any one entity, rather DApps distribute tokens that represent ownership. These tokens are distributed according to a programmed algorithm to the users of the system, diluting ownership and control of the DApp. Without any one entity controlling the system, the application is therefore decentralised.
A distributed ledger is the consensus of replicated, shared, and synchronized digital data that is geographically spread (distributed) across many sites, countries, or institutions. In contrast to a centralized database, a distributed ledger does not require a central administrator, and consequently does not have a single (central) point-of-failure.
Digital Currency Group (DCG) is a venture capital company focusing on the digital currency market. It is located in Stamford, Connecticut. The company has the subsidiaries Foundry, Genesis, Grayscale Investments, and Luno. It also formerly owned CoinDesk.
Cardano is a public blockchain platform. It is open-source and decentralized, with consensus achieved using proof of stake. It can facilitate peer-to-peer transactions with its internal cryptocurrency, ADA.
Gavin James Wood is an English computer scientist, a co-founder of Ethereum and creator of Polkadot and Kusama.
Polkadot is a blockchain platform and cryptocurrency. The native cryptocurrency for the Polkadot blockchain is the DOT. It is designed to allow blockchains to exchange messages and perform transactions with each other without a trusted third-party. This allows for cross-chain transfers of data or assets, between different blockchains, and for decentralized applications (DApps) to be built using the Polkadot Network.
IOTA is an open-source distributed ledger and cryptocurrency designed for the Internet of things (IoT). It uses a directed acyclic graph to store transactions on its ledger, motivated by a potentially higher scalability over blockchain based distributed ledgers. IOTA does not use miners to validate transactions, instead, nodes that issue a new transaction on the network must approve two previous transactions. Transactions can therefore be issued without fees, facilitating microtransactions. The network currently achieves consensus through a coordinator node, operated by the IOTA Foundation. As the coordinator is a single point of failure, the network is currently centralized.
Robert A. Küfner is a German entrepreneur, author and investor. He is mentioned as a pioneer in the field of Bitcoin and blockchain technology.
Ouroboros is a family of proof-of-stake consensus protocols used in the Cardano and Polkadot blockchains. It can run both permissionless and permissioned blockchains.
Solana is a blockchain platform which uses a proof-of-stake mechanism to provide smart contract functionality. Its native cryptocurrency is SOL.
Three Arrows Capital was a Singapore-based cryptocurrency hedge fund which was ordered to liquidate on 27 June 2022 by a court in the British Virgin Islands. It was founded in 2012 by Kyle Davies and Su Zhu. The company borrowed billions of dollars to fund its trading, and according to July 2022 bankruptcy filings, faces $3.5 billion in creditors' claims. The fund appears to have lost in excess of $3 billion over 2021 and 2022, making its collapse one of the largest hedge-fund trading losses of all time.