Blockchain is becoming more popular and practical day by day. It first emerged in 2009 as Bitcoin, though it has turned to a mainstream technology in the present. Nowadays, blockchain platforms are known to have further functionality apart from Bitcoin, as it is used in in industries, healthcare technology, supply chain, logistics, and many other technology fields. Developers have designed and developed Blockchain Platforms to create efficient and transparent business processes, including transactions. According to experts, by 2025, the blockchain market size is expected to grow $39.7 billion. This tremendous growth makes the increasing need for blockchain platforms.
Although older blockchain platform faced challenges with energy consumption and speed, modern blockchain platforms, on the other hand, have been developed to help overcome these limitations and provide practical value for other business uses and applications. Experts indicate the most interest in areas that require multiparty cooperation or data exchange. Aspects of blockchain applications such as supply chain tracking, trade finance, digital assets and identity management are going beyond the pilot stage now. they also mention recent activities in using blockchain platforms for building certain functions of ERP, such as vendor management and supply chain management. Some others see the evolution of blockchain platforms to date to improve awareness of decentralized finance, or DeFi, for running new business models that pose significant threats to traditional banking, finance and supply chain finance.
Professionals in the field predicted that blockchain platforms could disrupt legacy supply chain businesses and technology processes. As an example, U.S. requirements for pharmaceutical companies to track and trace products and materials requires a new approach for supply chain participants to share and transact data more efficiently and with more transparency than before. It seems that blockchain technology is the answer. Accordingly, the top three blockchain frameworks for these functional use cases are R3 Corda, Hyperledger and Ethereum, with EOSIO and Quorum gaining ground.
Here we will discuss the 10 best blockchain platforms to consider.
1. Ripple
Founded in 2012, Ripple is an open-source protocol that is developed to support transactions in a cheap and fast way. It is not just a platform but also a currency. The platform’s own currency is called XRP. Ripple aims to connect banks, payment providers, digital asset exchanges and corporates using RippleNet. It offers nearly-free global transactions without any chargebacks.
Ripples or XRP, the native cryptocurrency of the blockchain, is one of the most popular cryptocurrency after Bitcoin and Ether. XRP is reported to be the faster and scalable than most other blockchains, with 4 seconds payment settlement versus 1+ hour in Bitcoin with the ability to 1,500 transactions per second compared to 3-6 for Bitcoin. It has over 100 million customers as well as 75 million clients in various stages of commercial deployment.
Key features:
- Developers strengthen XRP Ledger to develop creative software and products for gaming, web monetization, and content having the currency as the main part
- Users can use the Ledger to create digital wallets, safely store public and private passwords and interact with other blockchains to receive and send digital assets
- Businesses can develop robust finance applications on Ripple. The platform can also be used to send receipts, invoices, and other types of digital documents
- Companies can use it as a global currency account for transacting with and storing global currencies
- Users can build high-level exchanges where customers can trade and invest crypto and non-blockchain assets like ETFs, stocks, and commodities.
2. Coinbase Global (COIN)
Another leading Blockchain company is COIN, which offers a range of financial infrastructures such as transaction services and a number of technologies required in crypto economy on a global scale. COIN Company enables users, particularly retail users, to save, earn, invest, spend, as well as use different kinds of cryptocurrency.
In addition, the COIN platform provides a wide range of liquidity for dealing with crypto assets to institutions. This platform also allows users to create applications using cryptography. The design equips users to safely accept cryptocurrency assets as payment.
Key features:
- It is easy to use for cryptocurrency beginners. The main Coinbase website and mobile app are very easy to use and allow you to buy, sell, and exchange cryptocurrencies quickly.
- It supports for a large number of cryptocurrencies. Coinbase currently supports over 100 currencies for trading, and the number grows regularly.
- The platform offers opportunities to earn cryptocurrency. Users can earn interest on eligible balances, or get a small amount of a new currency through Coinbase Earn.
- It offers to lower pricing available with Coinbase Pro. Any user can switch to Coinbase Pro, that is an active trading platform with more features and low fees.
3. HIVE Blockchain Technologies Ltd. (HIVE)
HIVE Blockchain Technologies was founded in Canada in 2020 as a cryptocurrency mining company. The company owns all green energy-powered data center facilities in Canada, Sweden, and Iceland that is used to mine digital currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Key features:
- The network is built to store enormous amounts of data and make it accessible to users via time-based monetization.
- It enables users to publish original articles that are immutably preserved on the Hive blockchain. The rewards given to the users in the form of Hive tokens (HIVE and HBD) are dependent on the decentralized evaluation of the content by its readers and curators over a 7-day voting window.
- A plethora of dapps, APIs, and front-ends contribute to the widespread and transparent accessibility of data, transactions, and records. This current variety and utility guarantees that the ecosystem invites content producers, users, investors, and developers.
- Hive is the world’s first massively scalable delegated proof-of-stake blockchain that is entirely decentralized and user-controlled.
4. Ethereum , The first of Blockchain Platforms
Introduced in 2013, Ethereum, or ETH, is a leading blockchain platform nowadays. It allows users to create new financial applications, decentralize markets, make games, cryptocurrency wallets, etc. This platform aims to eliminate the third parties’ access who save data for further financial instrument tracking. Ethereum has the largest community of core protocol developers, crypto-economic researchers, cypherpunks, and mining organizations.
Key features:
- It gives the advantage of rapid deployment.
- It provides Smart Contracts Functionality and Turing completeness.
- It offers the feature of tokenization.
- It is a proof-to-work-based system.
- It supports Python and c++ programming languages.
5. IBM Blockchain
IBM is known as the pioneer company to use blockchain for creating efficient and transparent business operations. The blockchain platform of IBM has always been a popular platform to use. In this platform a managed and full-stack blockchain-as-a-service is provide which allows users to deploy their blockchain components in a user choice environment. Users can create, use, and grow their blockchain network by using IBM blockchain platform.
Key feature:
- It provides a 30-day free trial for users.
- It is connected to the free IBM cloud Kubernetes cluster.
- It is an open-source and community-based platform.
- It offers a permission network.
- This platform supports Go and Java programming languages.
6. Corda
Corda is best known as a business-oriented open-source blockchain platform initiative. Corda is used to create interconnected blockchain systems which allows safe and confidential transactions. It is known as an innovative contract platform. It allows accrete deals among firms and permits companies to keep track of transaction operations in a shared ledger, with no need for participating individuals to double-check their transactions after engaging with one another. It is mainly used in sectors like construction, health, and finance.
Key features:
- It provides higher security.
- This platform is agile and flexible.
- It is an open-source blockchain platform which provides open design and development processes.
7. Quorum
Quorum was established by J.P. Morgan in 2015 using Ethereum to manage not only use-cases demanding high-speed but also rising execution of confidential transactions with a highly secure community of people. Quorum is designed to develop and improve in tandem with Ethereum. However, it ignores the Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism, instead it relays on vote-based and other techniques to execute thousands of operations per second, considering the provided smart contracts and other networks. Quorum can handle the bulk of Ethereum changes swiftly and efficiently since it only alters Ethereum’s core to a limited extent.
Key features:
- It can swiftly handle tones of Ethereum changes.
- It is quite efficient.
8. Tron
5th in blockchain platforms, Tron is an operating system which is based on Blockchain. It mainly lets users build decentralized apps and exchange media assets. The TRX currency is widely used to access specific operating software functionalities. As a result, the token’s primary function is to be used on the Tron platform. Tron has one particular goal: to assist content producers to get better compensated for their labor. The platform follows a few ideas; the main one is that all information on the forum is open and not under the jurisdiction of central power. Content providers can gain digital assets, like the TRX currency or other currencies backed by TRX, in exchange for their work.
Key features:
- This platform is a high-performance one, handling 2000 transactions per second.
- Users are provided with high scalability and throughput.
- Multi-language extension functionality is provided.
- Users take the advantage of eliminating counterfeit chains.
9. Steller
Stellar is a digital currency technology-based payment protocol which handles millions of transactions every day. It enables cross-border payments between any two currencies taking few seconds. It shares the features of other blockchain-based coins. Furthermore, Stellar Development Foundation is just a non-profit organization dedicated to financial inclusion, tool advancement, and social projects in the Stellar system. The stellar staff produces programming for the Stellar network, while the software is separate from the company. It also provides the benefits of creation, trading, and sending digital representations of all forms of money, like, dollars, bitcoin, pesos, and much more. Also there is a small fee connected with every transaction execution. This charge is not intended to generate a profit. It serves as a deterrence to malicious behavior.
Key features:
- It is a decentralized and open database platfrom.
- It takes less than 3 seconds for confirmation of transactions.
- Steller allows multi signatures and smart contracts.
- It has a fixed 1% of annual inflation.
10. Tezos
Tezos is designed to provide safty and correctness of code for digital assets and high-value cases. As an open-source blockchain platform, it is used across the globe for creating a decentralized blockchain network. It performs the peer-peer transaction which deploys intelligent contacts. It works as a self-governing blockchain platform. Since the self-amending cryptographic mechanism of Tezos is different, it is unique from all other blockchain platforms.
Key factors:
- It makes use of the self-amendment protocol.
- It gives delegated proof of stake consensus mechanism and on-chain governance.
- It has smart contracts and formal verification.
11. Hyperledger Fabric
This platform uses a modular architecture to create applications and solutions. It includes a membership service and consensus and presents a wide range of modular and versatile designs which can be used for various industrial uses. It provides a network of networks. Members of the fabric network can take the advantage to use network work together in this platform. Hyperledger Fabric gives its user a secure and scalable platform to support their confidential contracts and private transactions.
Key features:
- It is highly modular and offers a low latency of finality.
- It can support solidity and EVM.
- It supports multi-language intelligent contracts.
- It includes pluggable consensus and queryable data.
12. Hyperledger Sawtooth
It is also an open-source blockchain project co-founded by Hyperledger and the Linux Foundation. It employs an innovative consensus mechanism known as Proof of Elapsed Time which can be used in conjunction with hardware-based safety measures technologies to permit “trusted execution environments” of program code to execute in stable strongholds, encrypted spots of computer memory. The most typical applications of it include constructing supply chain operations and adapting Sawtooth for technical reasons, such as new consensus techniques. There is a Sawtooth Library, which lets programmers of customized distributed ledgers select and choose whatever parts of Sawtooth to employ in their applications.
Key features:
- It permits users to use Sawtooth Library while coding.
- It presents Splinter for networks.
13. Multichain
MultiChain is a version of Bitcoin, that is open source, and offers a simple operation. It is used to create customized blockchains Platforms, both private and open. It provides a carefully chosen mix of functionality plus enhancements used by enterprise and commercial users. It also promises compatibility for local assets and the storing of more significant amounts of random information. Furthermore, it presents consensus-based permit administration for consortial blockchains as an alternative but distinctive solution. Since parameters cannot be altered after complete establishment of the network, the chain should be customized by amending a straightforward text file prepared by multichain-util, which should be achieved before executing multichain for the first moment.
Key feature:
- It includes enormous tracked and verified assets on the blockchain, used to perform safe multi-asset and multi-party transactions.
- It is widely used for data streaming, data sharing, timestamping, and encrypted archiving.
- It follows Github.
- It supports c, c++, Python, and JavaScript programming language.
14. EOS
EOS is a popular blockchain platform which is used to design and develop scalable and secure applications. It offers the user dApps’ hosting and smart contracts capability. It also provides the decentralized storage of enterprise solutions to help the user solve the scalability issues experienced with Ethereum or Bitcoin.
Key features:
- It presents better usability and governance.
- It supports multiprocessing.
- It offers flexibility, measurability, and upgradability to users.
- It follows a permission schema.
15. Open-chain
This is an open-source blockchain platform which is developed to manage digital assets in a secure, robust, and scalable manner. It makes use of Partitioned Consensus, with a single authority for valid transactions. This platform is designed based on client-server architecture, to make it more efficient and reliable. There is no miner involvement in this platform, so the open-chain blockchain platform provides direct, accessible, and instant transactions.
Key features:
- It includes a modular design and allows free transactions.
- It is highly scalable.
- 2-way pegging is provided with the gateway.
- It includes and supports intelligent contracts functionality and a unified API.
Conclusion:
Blockchain Platforms come in different types and, therefore, users need to recognize the suitable type of blockchain required. On the other hand, different platforms support many other languages which makes users choose a perfect platform to use their choice of programming language. Considering the increase in usage of blockchains, it is an excellent decision to start learning about them.
