Blockchains have gained popularity recently as an avenue for investments. Bitcoin, an example of the fast rising blockchain, has been available for several years now. Its fame and success have attracted different companies to try their luck in the Blockchain market.
Today there are tens of such films aiming at providing a variety of unique services in various sectors of the economy. Some of the popular services include payments, loan services, marketing among others.
With that in mind, some of these films seem to be performing better than others. Below are some of the promising blockchains to watch this year:
Bitcoin is no doubt the mother of all blockchains. It is the first decentralised peer-to-peer payment platform often perceived as cash for the internet. Currently, there are already 15.5 million Bitcoins in circulation across the web.
As the platform was starting out, the system was public and users were made to know that there will be eventually 21 million of them. It remains a mystery what will happen after the 21 millionth Bitcoin is minted.
Although rumour has it that the mining plates may automatically self-destruct, it remains to be seen. Even then, Bitcoin popularity is massive and definitely a promising blockchain to watch.
Ethereum is often referred as the next Bitcoin. Ether, the Ethereum blockchain, operates as a public blockchain featuring smart contracts. Currently, Ethereum is being tested or implemented by enterprise software.
Other giant companies like IBM and Microsoft have adopted Ethereum and are happily using some of its services. Although still new, Ethereum has attracted thousands of interested users. In fact, Google trends indicate that Ethereum is more searched online compared to Bitcoins.
Litecoin came into existence in October 2011. The aim behind its introduction was to become a ‘silver’ version of the Bitcoin, which would rather be identified as the ‘gold.’ (Litecoin was to improve The Bitcoin) the reason Litecoin seems to be a promising blockchain is the high volumes of transactions it can handle as a result of its fast block generation.
This comes as an advantage to merchants. For instance, you only need to wait for just 5 minutes for two confirmations. Whereas, it would require 10 minutes to wait for a single confirmation on Bitcoin. So, Litecoin is going places and will no doubt be a success soon.
Ripple is a payment protocol. The platform is built on an open source Internet protocol with its currency unit being XRP. Ripples aim at enabling secure, instant yet free global financial transactions.
These operations can be of any size, and the best part is that there are no chargebacks. As of 2016, Ripples has been ranked the third largest film dealing with cryptocurrency. This means the future is bright for the Ripple Transaction Protocol.
According to the Bitshares website, they define their film as an industrial grade financial smart contract company.
Financial institutions are mainly the users of bitshares since it supports key economic uses as opposed to other blockchains. That could explain why a giant company like Open Ledger adopted this platform for its implementation.
Otherwise called MAID, the platform aims at providing a decentralised safe network on the internet by tapping on computing resources not yet used. Tasks to be utilised by the servers include HTTP, ssh, SCP, FTP, SMTP, pop3, IMAP among others.
The most interesting idea with MAID is the farming concept where users can share their computer as a distributed Dropbox or Google Drive. The future for MAID seems bright as it has already hit the top 5 mark in the market capitalisation of the Cryptocurrencies.