Blockchain technology in on the rise and so are its applications, thanks to Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency for making blockchain a household name. Blockchain is not just an application. It is a technology that promises to bring trust, transparency, and accountability to digital transactions. Blockchain technology can be applied to almost any industry that involves digital transactions.
In this article, I will review some of the most popular blockchains in the word.
If you’re new to Blockchain, I recommend start reading What Is Blockchain Technology.
Blockchain starts with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is one of the most searched keywords in Google. The following chart shows the popularity of blockchains.
The following Table lists the Top 15 most popular blockchains in the world. The report is based on the past 90 days of activity.
Rank | Blockchain | Trends (Last 90 days) | Global volume | Traffic Rank | Reddit | Twitter | OverallScore |
#1 | Bitcoin | 45 | 11M | 14,497 | 1.0m | | 1.00 |
#3 | Ethereum | 5 | 2.0M | 26,614 | 423k | 438k | 0.26 |
#4 | EOS | 11 | 469K | 276,619 | 61.9k | 192k | 0.23 |
#5 | NEO | 4 | 410K | 128,762 | 97.8k | 316k | 0.22 |
#6 | TRON | 6 | 545K | 90,677 | 68.8k | 366k | 0.20 |
#7 | Litecoin | 3 | 1M | 233,038 | 199k | 437k | 0.20 |
#8 | Stellar | 3 | 278K | 58,476 | 98.7k | 260k | 0.20 |
#9 | Waves | 3 | * | 38,623 | 56.6k | 135k | 0.19 |
#10 | Monero | <1 | 361K | 84,112 | 151k | 313k | 0.17 |
#11 | Dash | <1 | * | 84,217 | 23.2k | 320k | 0.12 |
#12 | Cardano | <1 | 291K | 100,820 | 70.5k | 148k | 0.12 |
#13 | Verge | <1 | * | 294,930 | 53.7k | 305k | 0.10 |
#14 | NEM | <1 | 236K | 149,135 | 18.5k | 215k | 0.10 |
#15 | Tezos | <1 | 82K | 208,139 | 10.8k | 39k | 0.06 |
Please note, this report is based on an algorithm and data collected from various sources on the Internet. The rankings may change over time.
The Score of a blockchain is calculated based on the following factors.
- Keyword searches in Google
- Social media followers on various platforms
- Community size on platforms such as Twitter, Telegram, Discord
- Articles and content written on the blockchain
- Market adoption and valuation
- CMC ranking
- Buzz words and talk on the Web
- Meetup, user group events, hackathons, and conference participations
#1. Bitcoin
![Bitcoin King of Blockchain]()
Bitcoin is the king of blockchain. Bitcoin is the mother of all cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is the reason we’re talking about blockchain today. Bitcoin was created by Satoshi Nakamoto and was released on Jan 9, 2009. Bitcoin is written in C++ programming language. Bitcoin project is an open source software project available to download from Github. Several cryptocurrencies have been created using Bitcoin project and protocol. Blockchain has a limited supply of 21 million bitcoins.
Bitcoin is also a cryptocurrency, also known as digital currency, that is used for digital payments. Bitcoin’s market symbol is BTC. As of now, Bitcoin’s market cap is $64 billion. At one point in Jan 2018, Bitcoin’s market cap reached close to $330 billion when 1 BTC was close to US $21,000. Currently, 1 BTC trades around $3,600 according to CMC.
Bitcoin blockchain also has several forks. Some of the most popular Bitcoin forks are Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV, Bitcoin Gold, and Bitcoin Diamond.
Bitcoin is an open source project available on Github for public to download and get involved. Any developer can contribute to Bitcoin project. Thousands of developers have download Bitcoin project and have created their own versions of cryptocurrencies from the project.
Bitcoin was one of the most searched words on Google in 2018. Bitcoin’s global volume per month is 11 million searches with keyword difficulty of 96. United States it the most popular country for Bitcoin followed by Germany, India, UK, and Brazil.
Google Trends show a significant drop on blockchain products searches from Jan 2018 to Jan 2019. The following graph shows chart for Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum, EOS, and NEO from Jan 2018 to Jan 2019 and as you can see, the popularity of keywords have dropped to almost 95% within a year.
#2. Ethereum
Ethereum was created by Vitalik Buterin, Gavin Wood, and Joseph Lubin and was released to the public in 2015. Ethereum is written in Go, C++, and Rust.
Ethereum calls itself the “BLOCKCHAIN APP PLATFORM”. Ethereum is a decentralized software platform designed to create and execute digital smart contracts. Ethereum uses a new programming language called Solidity to write smart contracts. Ethereum blockchain is executed on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
Ethereum has a cryptocurrency called Ether. Ether is the underlying token that fuels the Ethereum blockchain network. Ether’s public symbol is ETH. As of now, Current market cap of Ethereum is $13 billion. Currently, 1 ETH trades around $126 according to CMC.
#3. EOSIO
EOS.IO, authored by Daniel Larimer and Brendan Blumer, was developed by a private company, block.one. EOS was released to the public in 2018.
EOSIO calls itself “The most powerful infrastructure for decentralized applications”. EOS is an open source blockchain protocol that simulates an operating system and computer and allows developers to build decentralized software applications. EOS.IO is written in C++.
EOSIO is open sourced licensed under MIT software license. The software provides accounts, authentication, databases, asynchronous communication and the scheduling of applications across multiple CPU cores and/or clusters. The resulting technology is a blockchain architecture that has the potential to scale to millions of transactions per second, eliminates user fees and allows for quick and easy deployment of decentralized applications.
#4. NEO
NEO was authored by Da Hongfei and Erik Zhang and was released to the public in 2014. NEO is a blockchain platform and a cryptocurrency. NEO blockchain is designed to build decentralized apps.
NEO’s tagline is “An Open Network For Smart Economy”. NEO is an open source blockchain project available to download on Github. NEO is written in C#. NEO supports major popular programming languages including C#, JavaScript, Python, Java and Go.
NEO blockchain uses NEO tokens on the network that generates GAS tokens. GAS tokens are used to pay for transactions on the network.
#5. TRON
Raybo was founded in 2014 in Beijing and became China’s first blockchain company. TRON foundation was established in Singapore in 2017 and in Dec 2017, TRON launched its open source protocol. Justin Sun is the founder and CEO of TRON. TRON launched its MainNet on May 31, 2018.
TRON wants to “DECENTRALIZE THE WEB” and brands itself as, one of the largest blockchain-based operating systems in the world.
Key features of TRON are high throughput, high scalability, and high availability. TRON prides itself in higher TPS rate of 2,000 transactions per second, compared to Ethereum and Bitcoin at 35 TPS and 6 TPS per second.
Summary
This article lists the top 15 blockchains in the world based on their popularity. Bitcoin is the most popular blockchain in the world.
If you’re new to blockchain, start with “What is Blockchain” https://www.c-sharpcorner.com/article/what-is-blockchain/ and then read “Do I Need a Blockchain.”
Further Blockchain Readings
This article lists the top 15 blockchains in the world based on their popularity. Bitcoin is the most popular blockchain in the world.
What Is Blockchain
Do You Need a Blockchain
Top 5 Blockchain Programming Languages
References
- Wikipedia
- Respective blockchain products websites and their documentation
- Various traffic analytics and reporting tools
- Social media websites
- Community websites and discussion groups