The Web3 house includes many blockchains of various sorts and sizes. However what are the largest and hottest blockchains? And what are probably the most outstanding blockchain networks for builders? Nicely, answering the questions above is less complicated mentioned than completed, as there are a number of methods to measure a blockchain’s measurement and recognition. Nevertheless, if you happen to’re searching for a nuanced reply, be part of us on this article as we discover the largest and hottest blockchains when it comes to market cap, transaction quantity, ecosystem, and extra!
Overview: Greatest and Most Widespread Blockchains
In as we speak’s article, we’ll kick issues off by answering the query, ”What are the largest and hottest blockchains?”. In doing so, we’ll take a look at probably the most important blockchain networks when it comes to market cap, transaction quantity, and ecosystem. From there, we’ll discover probably the most outstanding blockchain networks for builders. Lastly, to high issues off, we’ll introduce you to Moralis’ industry-leading suite of Web3 API, as that is the simplest approach so that you can construct cross-chain suitable decentralized functions (dapps)!
In Moralis’ suite of premier APIs, you’ll discover many instruments that make Web3 improvement extra seamless. Some outstanding examples embody the Token API, Streams API, and many others. With these instruments, you possibly can construct dapps sooner and smarter, permitting you to avoid wasting each priceless improvement time and assets.
So, if you happen to’re critical about constructing blockchain tasks, contemplate trying out Moralis. You may enroll with Moralis freed from cost, and also you’ll achieve speedy entry to our industry-leading Web3 APIs!
What are the Greatest and Most Widespread Blockchains?
Offering an easy reply to the query, ”What are the largest blockchains?” is less complicated mentioned than completed. The rationale for that is that there are a number of other ways to measure the scale of blockchains. As an example, one blockchain may be the largest when it comes to market cap; in the meantime, one other may be the most important in terms of quantity.
Consequently, within the following subsections, we’ll take a look at the largest and hottest blockchains based mostly on three metrics:
- Market Cap
- Transaction Quantity
- Ecosystem
So, with out additional ado, let’s kick issues off by wanting on the greatest blockchains by market cap!
Greatest Blockchains by Market Cap
The crypto market includes many cash on a number of chains with an accrued complete market cap of about $1.4 trillion. Whereas some blockchain networks solely host a single token, different networks – comparable to Ethereum – are house to hundreds of cash. So, when measuring a blockchain’s market cap, we have to take this under consideration.
As such, to make issues as simple as doable, we’ll primarily focus in the marketplace cap of a sequence’s native token to find out which is the most important community. Nevertheless, the order stays the identical even with all tokens for every chain thought-about.
With that mentioned, listed below are the largest blockchains by market cap:
- Bitcoin: Though the Bitcoin blockchain doesn’t host as many tokens as different chains comparable to Ethereum, BNB Good Chain (BSC), and many others., it’s nonetheless the largest community by a mile in terms of market cap. In reality, Bitcoin has a complete market cap of about $740 billion, making up greater than 50% of the entire worth of the crypto {industry}.
- Ethereum: Ethereum is the second largest blockchain in terms of market cap. The chain’s native token, ether (ETH), has a complete worth of $244 billion, making up about 17% of the market share. Nevertheless, it’s value noting that the Ethereum ecosystem hosts quite a lot of extra tokens. But, even when taking these under consideration, Bitcoin stays probably the most important blockchain when it comes to market cap.
- BSC: The third largest blockchain is BSC (BNB Good Chain), and its native token, BNB, has a complete market cap of $35 billion, making up about 2.5% of the market share. Nevertheless, like Ethereum, BSC hosts an enormous community of extra cryptocurrencies. As such, in terms of the precise market cap of the BSC blockchain with all tokens thought-about, it isn’t all that far behind Ethereum.
Most Widespread Blockchains by Transaction Quantity
On the subject of transactions, it’s additionally doable to measure which is the largest blockchains in numerous methods. As an example, we are able to take a look at the entire variety of transactions, the variety of transactions over a given time interval, and many others.
Nevertheless, for this part, we’ll take a look at the largest blockchains by transaction quantity in USD over the previous month throughout all dapps and good contracts. Doing so provides us perception into the present state of the blockchain networks. However, based mostly on this, Ethereum stands out as probably the most important blockchain by transaction quantity:
- Ethereum: Ethereum is probably the most in depth blockchain community in terms of transaction quantity. On the time of writing, the entire worth of all transactions over the previous month quantities to roughly $115 billion.
- Arbitrum: Arbitrum is the second largest chain among the many greatest blockchains by transaction quantity. Over the previous 30 days, Arbitrum has had a complete transaction quantity of about $26 billion throughout all dapps and good contracts hosted on the chain.
- BSC: BSC is the third most important blockchain in terms of transaction quantity measured in USD. Through the previous 30 days, the community has had a complete transaction quantity of simply above $14 billion.
Greatest Blockchain Ecosystems
Have you learnt what number of blockchains there are? And have you learnt that there are various kinds of blockchain networks? Some blockchains are primarily used for transactions, whereas others help good contracts, permitting builders to construct decentralized functions (dapps)!
On this part, we’ll discover the three greatest blockchains that let you construct dapps. And we’ll measure the scale of a community by the variety of tasks hosted on the chain:
- BSC: BSC is probably the most important blockchain ecosystem in terms of the variety of dapps. This community hosts about 5.1K tasks, and a few outstanding examples embody PancakeSwap, Venus, and 1inch.
- Ethereum: The second largest blockchain ecosystem is Ethereum, and the community hosts roughly 4.4K dapps. Some examples of in style tasks on Ethereum embody Uniswap, Blur, and MakerDAO.
- Polygon: Polygon is the third largest ecosystem when it comes to the variety of dapps hosted on the blockchain. This community options about 1.9K totally different protocols, and a few examples are Aavegotchi, Tangible, and QuickSwap.
What are the Most Widespread Blockchain Networks for Builders?
Now, with an summary of the largest chains when it comes to market cap, transaction quantity, and ecosystem, let’s discover the preferred blockchain networks for builders. And we have now, in truth, already touched on three of them:
- Ethereum
- BSC
- Polygon
Nevertheless, we’ll dive deeper into every within the following sections to clarify what they’re and the way they work!
Ethereum: #1 Blockchain for Builders
The Ethereum blockchain launched again in 2015, and it’s a proof-of-stake (PoS) community designed to be scalable, safe, decentralized, and programmable. Ethereum natively helps good contracts, and the blockchain hosts an enormous ecosystem of dapps, ERC-20 tokens, NFTs, and different thrilling tasks.
Moreover, Ethereum is the go-to alternative for a lot of Web3 builders. However why precisely is that? And why do builders select to construct on Ethereum?
To begin with, Ethereum is broadly thought-about to be the primary programmable blockchain. And with a wealthy historical past, the community has had time to mature and evolve. As such, Ethereum at present options many outstanding instruments and assets that make dapp improvement considerably extra accessible.
A terrific instance is Solidity, the preferred programming language for writing Ethereum Digital Machine (EVM) suitable good contracts. This language options many Solidity instruments that make good contract improvement extra seamless. Different examples embody testnets like Sepolia and Goerli, in style IDEs comparable to Remix, Web3 wallets like MetaMask, and many others.
Another excuse builders are constructing on Ethereum is the community’s excessive safety. Ethereum has a protracted and robust observe document when it comes to safety, and its consensus mechanism is designed to maintain the community protected and forestall malicious assaults.
Moreover, the Ethereum community options its personal native cryptocurrency known as ether (ETH). ETH performs an important function within the Ethereum ecosystem, because it’s used to pay for transactions on the blockchain. Consequently, anybody seeking to work together with the Ethereum blockchain usually wants ETH of their pockets to pay related gasoline charges.
However, that briefly covers an summary of Ethereum; let’s now discover BSC!
BNB Good Chain (BSC)
BSC, or BNB Good Chain, was initially generally known as Binance Good Chain when it launched in 2020. Nevertheless, a few years later, in 2022, Binance Good Chain was rebranded as BNB Good Chain.
BSC is a part of the bigger BNB Chain ecosystem, which includes three extra chains and platforms: BNB Beacon Chain (a governance and staking layer), BNB Greenfield (an information storage platform), and zkBNB (a zero-knowledge rollup for scaling).
BSC is the EVM-compatible good contract execution layer of the BNB Chain ecosystem, and it operates on a proof-of-staked authority (PoSA) consensus mechanism. This can be a hybrid strategy combining options from delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS) and proof-of-authority (PoA).
So, why are builders constructing on BSC?
To begin with, BSC is understood for its excessive transaction velocity and low transaction prices. This can be a nice motivation for builders to construct on BSC, as the top customers received’t need to pay astronomically excessive gasoline charges to make use of dapps and different platforms on the community.
Another excuse is the truth that BSC is EVM-compatible. Which means the community helps EVM good contracts and protocols. Consequently, when constructing on BSC, builders can use lots of the identical superior instruments they’d use when constructing Ethereum dapps.
Now, with an summary of BSC, let’s dive into the final blockchain for builders: Polygon!
Polygon
The expansion of Ethereum has highlighted its scalability points. Throughout peak demand, gasoline costs can rise excessively, making it economically unviable to make small, frequent transactions. Happily, that is the place networks like Polygon enter the equation.
Polygon was initially launched as ”Matic Community” in 2017, and it’s a layer-2 (L2) scaling answer for Ethereum. Briefly, Polygon is a PoS sidechain operating parallel alongside the Ethereum mainnet. By way of numerous applied sciences, Polygon is ready to ship quick transaction speeds at a fraction of the price of Ethereum.
However, why are builders constructing on Polygon?
Polygon has a number of outstanding benefits, and the clearest examples are the excessive transaction speeds and low prices in comparison with Ethereum. This makes it low cost for finish customers to make use of dapps operating on the Polygon blockchain. What’s extra, very similar to BSC, Polygon can be EVM-compatible. Consequently, builders can use highly effective and superior Ethereum instruments to construct on the community.
To discover Polygon additional, try the next information on Polygon PoS vs Polygon zkEVM!
Widespread Blockchains for Builders – Which Blockchain and Instruments Ought to I Use?
On the subject of Web3 improvement, one of many first stuff you usually want to think about is which chain you need to construct your undertaking on. Nevertheless, what if you happen to didn’t have to decide on? Nicely, when working with Moralis, you don’t!
Moralis is an industry-leading Web3 API supplier, and all our interfaces are cross-chain suitable. Consequently, with Moralis, you possibly can leverage the identical instruments to construct dapps throughout all the largest blockchains, together with Ethereum, BSC, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Gnosis Chain, and lots of others!
In Moralis’ suite of Web3 APIs, you’ll discover quite a few interfaces for a number of use circumstances. And also you’ll discover three notable examples beneath:
- Pockets API: Moralis’ Pockets API helps greater than 500 million addresses. With solely single traces of code, you possibly can effortlessly get any pockets’s balances, transfers, NFTs, and many others. Consequently, that is the last word instrument for integrating Web3 pockets performance into your dapps. As an example, right here’s how straightforward it’s to get the native steadiness of a pockets with the
getNativeBalance()endpoint:
const response = await Moralis.EvmApi.steadiness.getNativeBalance({
"chain": "0x1",
"deal with": "0xDC24316b9AE028F1497c275EB9192a3Ea0f67022"
});- NFT API: The NFT API is the last word NFT knowledge analytics instrument for Web3 improvement. With this premier interface, you possibly can effortlessly question NFT balances, transfers, metadata, and extra. For instance, with the
getNFTMetadata()endpoint, you possibly can seamlessly get the metadata of any token:
const response = await Moralis.EvmApi.nft.getNFTMetadata({
"chain": "0x1",
"deal with": "0xb47e3cd837dDF8e4c57F05d70Ab865de6e193BBB",
"tokenId": "1"
});- Blockchain API: Moralis’ Blockchain API is the last word instrument for blockchain knowledge. With solely single traces of code, you will get the contents of any block, good contract occasions, logs, and way more. As an example, that is how straightforward it’s to get the contents of a block utilizing the
getBlock()endpoint:
const response = await Moralis.EvmApi.block.getBlock({
"chain": "0x1",
"blockNumberOrHash": "18541416"
});Try all our interfaces by visiting our Web3 API web page!
Additionally, do you know you could entry our APIs without spending a dime? So, enroll with Moralis and change into a Web3 developer as we speak!
Abstract: What are the Greatest and Most Widespread Blockchain Networks for Builders?
In as we speak’s article, we explored the largest and hottest blockchains throughout the next three dimensions:
- Market Cap
- Transaction Quantity
- Ecosystem
We additionally coated the largest and hottest blockchain networks for builders, the place we dove deeper into Ethereum, BSC, and Polygon!
In case you’d prefer to discover different networks, ensure to take a look at Moralis’ Web3 Wiki. The Web3 Wiki is the {industry}’s finest dapp retailer, and you need to use this instrument to find new blockchain networks for builders, dapps, and different Web3 tasks! Additionally, if you happen to’re critical about blockchain improvement, don’t overlook to enroll with Moralis. You may arrange your account totally without spending a dime, and also you’ll get immediate entry to all our premier Web3 APIs!
