Bitcoin (BTC) is a consensus network that enables a new payment system and a completely digital currency. Powered by its users, it is a peer to peer payment network that requires no central authority to operate. On October 31st, 2008, an individual or group of individuals operating under the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto" published the Bitcoin Whitepaper and described it as: "a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash, which would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is hard fork (a community-activated update to the protocol or code) of Bitcoin that took effect on August 1st, 2017 that increased the block size to 8MB, to help the scale the underlying technology of Bitcoin.Nov 16th 2018: BCH was hard forked again and split into Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin ABC. Bitcoin ABC became the dominant chain and took over the BCH ticker as it had more hashpower and majority of the nodes in the networkNEO (NEO), formerly Antshares, aims to build a 'smart economy' by incorporating digital assets, digital identities, and smart contracts.
Developed by Onchain DNA, Neo's dual-token ecosystem can be used for creating dApps and ICOs. Its Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (dBFT) consensus algorithm is purportedly faster than the PoW used by Ethereum and Bitcoin.Ripple (XRP) is an independent digital asset that is native to the Ripple Consensus Ledger. With proven governance and the fastest transaction confirmation of its kind, XRP is said to be the most efficient settlement option for financial institutions and liquidity providers seeking global reach, accessibility and fast settlement finality for interbank flows.TRON (TRX) strives to build the future of a truly decentralized internet and global free content entertainment system that utilizes blockchain technology. The TRON Protocol represents the architecture of an operating system based on the blockchain which could enable developers to create smart contracts and decentralized applications, freely publish, own, and store data and other content. According to the TRON Foundation, the ecosystem surrounding this network specializes in offering massive scalability and consistent reliability capable of processing transactions at a high rate via high-throughput computing.Cardano (ADA) is a decentralized platform that will allow complex programmable transfers of value in a secure and scalable fashion. It is reportedly the first blockchain platform to evolve out of a scientific philosophy and a research-first driven approach, and one of the first to be built in the Haskell programming language. Cardano is developing a smart contract platform which seeks to deliver more advanced features than any protocol previously developed. The development team consists of a large global collective of expert engineers and researchers. The protocol reportedly features a layered blockchain software stack that is flexible, scalable, and is being developed with the most rigorous academic and commercial software standards in the industry. Cardano will use a democratic governance system that allows the project to evolve over time, and fund itself sustainably through a treasury system.Ethereum Classic (ETC)
After a loophole was exploited by a hacker on June 17th, 2016, resulting in millions of stolen Ether, Ethereum forked to a new chain that aimed to remedy the damages from the hack. Ethereum Classic is the continuation of the original Ethereum blockchain - the classic version.EOS (EOS) is a blockchain protocol powered by the native cryptocurrency EOS. The protocol emulates most of the attributes of a real computer including hardware (CPU(s) & GPU(s) for processing, local/RAM memory, hard-disk storage) with the computing resources distributed equally among EOS cryptocurrency holders. EOSIO operates as a smart contract platform and decentralized operating system intended for the deployment of industrial-scale decentralized applications through a decentralized autonomous corporation model. The smart contract platform claims to eliminate transaction fees and also conduct millions of transactions per second. EOS (EOS) is software that introduces a blockchain architecture designed to enable vertical and horizontal scaling of decentralized applications. The EOS software provides accounts, authentication, databases, asynchronous communication and the scheduling of applications across multiple CPU cores and/or clusters.Ethereum (ETH) is a smart contract platform that enables developers to build decentralized applications (dapps) conceptualized by Vitalik Buterin in 2013. ETH is the native currency for the Ethereum platform and also works as the transaction fees to miners on the Ethereum network.
Ethereum is the pioneer for blockchain based smart contracts. When running on the blockchain a smart contract becomes like a self-operating computer program that automatically executes when specific conditions are met. On the blockchain, smart contracts allow for code to be run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third-party interference. It can facilitate the exchange of money, content, property, shares, or anything of value. The Ethereum network went live on July 30th, 2015 with 72 million Ethereum premined.Dash (DASH), formerly known as Darkcoin until March 26th, 2015, is a privacy-centric digital currency with instant transactions. Similar to cash, Dash allows you to remain anonymous while transacting. Dash protects privacy by anonymizing transactions that are made over the network using a technology developed by the Dash team called DarkSend. DarkSend is inspired by the CoinJoin project that was birthed to anonymize Bitcoin transactions.
Using Dash, payments are private and cannot be tracked along with balances. Dash harnesses the power of its Masternode network to power an innovative technology called InstantX. When sending funds, users can use InstantX and transactions will be fully sent and irreversible within four seconds.
Dash was released on the 18th January 2014 with zero premine coins. It uses 11 rounds of hashing algorithm namely blake, bmw, groestl, jh, keccak, skein, luffa, cubehash, shavite, simd, and echo. As of the current design, there will only be 22 million Dash ever created, making it a deflationary currency.Litecoin is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency created by Charlie Lee. It was created based on the Bitcoin protocol but differs in terms of the hashing algorithm used. Litecoin uses the memory intensive Scrypt proof of work mining algorithm. Scrypt allows consumer-grade hardware such as GPU to mine those coins.
