The Magnificent Seven
The Magnificent Seven A closer look at functional attributes of blockchain platforms The Magnificent Seven1 Following a whitepaper published in late 2008, the Bitcoin system came into being in 2009, and the underlying technology became what we refer to as Blockchain today. 1 The top seven cryptocurrencies covered a good variety of attributes that are essential to gain a more thorough understanding of the potentials offered by this new technology. The Magnificent Seven 1 Since then, a variety of different cryptocurrency platforms have been created, and based on data from CoinMarketCap (https://coinmarketcap.com/), as of 27 March 2021, there were 8,964 crypto tokens in existence, with a total Market Cap of over USD$1.6 Trillion. The top seven cryptocurrencies made up around 80% of the global market capitalisation: Market Cap Token Symbol (billion USD) % Bitcoin BTC 1,026.8 59.23 Ethereum ETH 0,196.2 11.32 Cardano ADA 0,040.2 02.32 Binance Coin BNB 0,039.1 02.25 Tether USDT 0,038.5 02.22 Polkadot DOT 0,030.4 01.75 XRP XRP 0,025.8 01.49 80.58 Rest of 8,957 tokens 19.42 Bitcoin alone represents nearly 60% of the total cryptocurrency value, with Ethereum being the second highest by value. However, these cryptocurrencies are not in fact the same: value aside, they differ in some interesting ways, which in turn affect their “function” and value proposition. Asset Smart Token Year Type Minable Consensus2 Limit Backed Contract BTC 2009 Native Yes POW No 21m ETH 2012 ERC-20 Yes / No3 POW | POS No Y none ADA 2017 Native No POS No Y 45bn BNB 2017 ERC-20 No Tendermint No 100m Multiple Forms: USDT-Omni, USDT 2014 USDT-TRON, No NA USD none USDT-ERC20 and USDT-EOS DOT 2017 Native NPOS No Y none Ripple XRP 2012 Native No Transaction No 100bn Protocol Source: https://icorating.com/ and https://coincodex.com/ 2 In simple terms, consensus mechanism is a means of authenticating and validating transactions on a Blockchain (or distributed ledger) without having to trust or rely on a central authority.
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