Blockchain technology has reached a milestone where every industry is looking to benefit from its decentralized and transparent nature. With blockchain being implemented across almost every sector, demand for blockchain protocols is at its peak.
Understanding the rapid growth of blockchain platforms, many blockchain development companies have started R & D on emerging blockchain protocols to build a better blockchain ecosystem. We have also researched thoroughly and come up with a list of top blockchain protocols based on their ecosystem, technology stack and solutions they offer.
We have been working with various blockchain protocols and helping them build a better ecosystem. With expertise in working with different blockchain platforms, we have curated a list of the following top 20 blockchain ecosystem protocols:
1. Stellar
Stellar is an open blockchain network for storing and transferring money. The platform makes it possible to create, transfer and trade digital representations of all types of money – dollars, bitcoins, or anything of value.
Stellar blockchain has no owner; the public owns anything that is on the Stellar blockchain. The platform runs across an open, decentralized network and handles millions of transactions every day.
Similar to Bitcoin and Ethereum, Stellar depends on blockchain to keep the network in sync. The Stellar network has a native digital currency, the lumen required in small amounts for making transactions and initializing accounts.
Stellar is a collection of Stellar Core Nodes, which are computers that maintain a common ledger of balances and accounts and listen for incoming transactions. Using the Stellar Consensus Protocol, the network agrees to implement a valid set of transactions to update the ledger.
Each transaction implemented to the Stellar ledger incurs a small fee which is essential to prevent bad actors from spamming the network and the ledger gets updated every 3-5 seconds.
Following are some of the key features of using the Stellar blockchain platform:
Scalability and high performance
Stellar network executes transactions with the help of consensus achieved through nodes. The consensus is achieved only within a few seconds, making transactions possible in 3-5 seconds. It does not allow mining, therefore, making the speed faster as compared to other cryptocurrency networks.Thousands of transactions executing at once make the stellar network a highly scalable blockchain protocol.
Open source and decentralized database
Anyone can participate in Stellar network functioning without the need for a central authority. Diverse stellar nodes come together and verify online transactions in the ledger.Multi-currency transactions
It is one of the significant advantages of Stellar blockchain as one can execute transactions in any currency they want and the system performs the forex process automatically. It performs so by finding someone who wants to exchange in the same currency.If there is no direct exchange available, it executes various actions to map the transferred currency. Its cryptocurrency, Lumen allows stellar blockchain to execute transactions in multi-currency efficiently.
2. Polkadot
Polkadot is a blockchain protocol that allows various blockchains to run independently within one network, secured by a shared security ecosystem.
Polkadot is a multichain application environment where cross-chain registries and computation are possible. It can transfer the data across open, public, permissionless and private blockchains, making it possible to develop apps that get permissioned data from a private blockchain and use that on a public blockchain.
Polkadot combines a network of heterogenous blockchains called parathreads and parachains. Polkadot Relay Chain secures these chains that are connected with external networks via bridges.Polkadot’s Relay Chain is developed with Substrate, a blockchain-building framework that distills Parity Technologies’ learnings developing Ethereum, Bitcoin and other enterprise blockchains.
Poilkadot’s state machine is compiled to WebAssembly (Wasm), a high performant virtual environment. Its networking uses libp2p, a cross-platform network framework for p2p apps. The platform’s runtime environment is programmed in Rust, Golang and C++, making it accessible to a wide range of developers.
Following are some of the key benefits of the Polkadot platform
Unique security model
Polkadot implements a unique security approach by allowing blockchains to pool their security which implies that the blockchains’ security is applied to all. Blockchain developers can think about securing their blockchain from day one by connecting to Polkadot.Transparent on-chain governance
Updates to the Polkadot protocol take place in a fork-free way using transparent on-chain voting. Therefore, Polkadot protocol development never halts due to the lack of a clear process.A relay chain uses a sophisticated governance mechanism to establish a transparent, binding and accountable process for upgrading the network and resolving disputes.DOT tokens help in participating in governance decisions, including voting, bonding and drafting proposals.Trustworthy consensus algorithm
Polkadot uses its original GRANDPA (GHOST-based Recursive Ancestor Deriving Prefix Agreement) for a secure and resilient network.Under fair network conditions, GRANDPA finalizes blocks quickly. However, under bad network conditions, GRANDPA finalizes large-sized blocks at a time when the partitions resolve.3. Ethereum
Ethereum is an open-source blockchain platform used to build and deploy decentralized applications. The platform allows users to create agreements or execute transactions without the involvement of third parties.
Ethereum blockchain protocol is known for sending and receiving values across the globe. Apart from payments, Ethereum is a marketplace for financial services, games and apps that cannot steal your data. Ethereum has its own cryptocurrency known as Ether (ETH) which is used to pay transaction fees and computational service fees. Miners can mine ETH after the transaction is validated on the Ethereum platform.
Mainly, three types of applications are built on top of the Ethereum protocol. The first kind of application is financial apps, providing users with more ways of managing and entering into contracts using their money. It includes financial derivatives, saving wallets, wills and sub-currencies.
The second type is semi-financial apps where money is involved, but it also has a non-monetary side. An example of this category is self-enforcing bounties for solutions to computational issues.
The third kind of application is an app such as decentralized governance and online voting, which are non-financial.
Here are some of the key benefits of the Ethereum blockchain ecosystem:
Immutability
Any third party cannot alter or manipulate the data once recorded on the Ethereum blockchain.Security
Having no single point of failure and secured with cryptography, applications built on the Ethereum platform are protected against fraudulent activities and hacking.No downtime
Ethereum-based dApps never face downtime and can never be switched off.Tamper-proof
Ethereum-based dApps are based on a network built around the principle of consensus, making censorship impossible.4. Hedera Hashgraph
Hedera is the widely used enterprise-grade public network that uses Hashgraph consensus, a faster and secure alternative to blockchain consensus mechanisms.
Hashgraph achieves high throughput with more than 10,000 transactions per second and low-latency finality using gossip about gossip protocol and virtual voting. Once the consensus is achieved in the network, the transaction becomes immutable and is available on the public ledger for everyone to access it transparently.
Hedera network services are APIs that allow developers to mint tokens, create accounts and add data to the ledger. Every API has a transaction fee based on the required storage and processing. SDKs of Hedera make it easier for developers to access the API in their favorite programming language.
Here are some of the reasons why should you use the Hedera Hashgraph platform
Fair
Hedera Hashgraph is fair, ensuring the order of transactions representing the transaction order received by the community. The platform ensures no single user is allowed to block the transactions flow into the community.Secure
Since Hedera Hashgraph is an asynchronous Byzantine fault-tolerant, Hedera Hashgraph possesses the highest level of security. Achieving a high level of security at scale is a fundamental advancement in the field of distributed systems.
Fast
Hedera Hashgraph is fast, just the speed of your internet. With the capability to handle hundreds of thousands of transactions per second and validate more than one million signatures per second, time to finality for the Hedera platform is evaluated in seconds, not minutes, hours, or days.
As blockchain technology is growing rapidly, new ecosystem protocols are coming to the market with additional features. Working with leading blockchain platforms has made us the experts in building a blockchain ecosystem from scratch.
We, at LeewayHertz, do not only help our clients build blockchain applications, but we can also upgrade the entire blockchain platform with our team of experienced and certified blockchain developers.
Our Blockchain R & D team can help you launch a scalable and secure blockchain platform and drive millions of investors and developers to your blockchain platform.
