If understanding Blockchain was not enough, there are way more platforms which provide a lot more than the Blockchain that helped to build Bitcoin.
The blockchain is an example of a Decentralized Platform, which was used to build the Bitcoin, initially when Bitcoin was not as popular as it is today, there were not a lot of issues that came up with the platform(Blockchain).
But with the great hype and popularity of the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin’s network started to grow, and there were a lot of factors that made the Blockchain of the Bitcoin exposed to.
|Platforms||Industry Focus||Governance||Ledger Type||Smart Contract||Consensus Algorithm||Security||Which Languages are being Used For Development||Daaps, Projects and Services built on the platform||Launch Date(When it was ready)|
|Ethereum ||Cross-Industry||Ethereum Developers||Permissionless||Yes||Proof-of-Work (PoW)||ECDSA||Go, C++, Rust,Solidity||Crypto-Kitties, Ether-Bots,EthLend||30 July 2015
|HyperLedger Fabric||Cross-Industry||Linux Foundation||Permissioned||Yes||Pluggable Framework||ECDSA||Go,LevelDB for storing contracts, CouchDB support in Beta, Java support in Beta||Fabcar(platform whereHyperLedger's Apps and Smart Contract are written)||11 July 2017|
|EOS||Cross-Industry||EOS Developers||Permissionless||Yes||Delegated Proof of Stake(DPOS)||ECDSA||C++, Rust compatible, Solidity||Tokenika,OracleChain,Everipedia, EOS Commander||3 June 2018|
|Hashgraph||Financial Services||Hashgraph Developers||Permissioned||Yes||Byzantine Fault Tolerance(BFT)||ECDSA||Java, Python||KittenCatch,Fair Auction Ledger,Ground Zero||13 March 2018|
|R3||Financial Services||R3 Consortium||Permissioned||Yes||Pluggable Framework||ECDSA||Kotlin, Java||TradeX(Distributed Ledger Patform), Voltron||30 Nov 2016|
|Ripple||Financial Services||Ripple Labs||Permissioned||No||Probabilistic Voting||ECDSA||Java||X Current, X Rapid, X Viva||2012(initial release)|
|Quorum||Financial Services||Ethereum Developers & JP Morgan Chase||Permissioned||Yes||Majority Voting||ECDSA||Java, Git||Solutions in Develeopment Stage||April 2018(Effective release)|
|IOTA(Tangle)||Internet-of-Things||IOTA Tangle Developers||Permissionless||No(Currently working as a layer on top of the platform)||Markov Chain Monte Carlo(MCMC)||PKI X.509||Java,C++, Rust, Go||MatchX||5th May 2017|
|Lisk||Cross-Industry||Lisk Foundation||Permissionless||Yes||Delegated Proof of Stake(DPOS)||EdDSA||Java||Moosecoin.io||24 May 2016|
|Aeternity||Cross-Industry||NEO Governance Admin||Permissionless||Yes||Hybrid Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) algorithm||ECDSA||Java, (HTML was used for developing Aeternity), C++, Python||Aeon||30 June 2018|
|Stellar||Cross-Industry||Zcash Foundation||Permissionless||Yes||The Stellar Consensus Protocol||EdDSA (Ed25519)||Java, C++||P2P Lending, MicroInsurance, conditional cash transfers, time banks (these are some of the products and services developed)||2014(Initial Release)|
|Cardano||Cross-Industry||IOHK Foundation||Permissionless||Yes||Ouroboros||EdDSA||Java, Plutus||Xyo Network||Sep 29 2017|
|NEO||Cross-Industry||NEO Foundation||Permissionless||Yes||Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance(DBFT)||ECDSA||Java,Kotlin,Go, Python||Antshares ICO(now known as NEO)||Feb 2014|
These are the very fundamental factors, a Blockchain Developer, Enterprises, and Governments who want to implement the decentralized technology as a platform for their business and country would look for, basically, these are the factors they decide upon.
Now we have briefed about 13 decentralized platforms with a very basic introduction to the platform, and a table which would give you one-stop information about everything you want to know about the decentralized platforms.
Ethereum is a peer to peer network which aims to be a platform on which anyone can create applications for value and data exchange. Its technology is based on “smart contracts”, programs that run on Ethereum and execute transactions of value and information.
Some of the interesting application of Ethereum are:
- Identity management
- Trust and Transparency
Hyperledger Fabric is an open-source distributed blockchain implementation. The heart of HyperLedger Fabric is an important piece of its architecture is chaincode. Chaincode is the term for programs that run on top of the blockchain to implement the business logic of how applications interact with the ledger. Since chaincode implements logic agreed on by members of the blockchain network, it is sometimes called smart contracts.
EOS is a decentralized platform based on the blockchain technology, and is coded by block.one. It aims to allow for commercially-friendly, decentralized applications (DApps) to be created. Daniel Larimer, CTO of EOS, recognized that while DApps are a novel concept that has received much attention in the past year, there is little practical use for them until they are as competitive as the current centralized applications in the market.
But even though EOS is seen to be one of the fastest developing platforms.
Hashgraph is “a data structure and consensus algorithm”. Not “cryptocurrency”, “blockchain”, or “protocol”. Hashgraph is more like a low-level building block than a complete system. It is a consensus protocol, but do not specifically describe any applications or use cases.
They follow gossip about gossip and virtual voting method of consensus algorithm and we still need to see some of the best use cases of this very platform.
Corda was first built to record, manage and automate financial agreements. Cash, corporate bonds and credit default swaps are implementation of the platform. But the first practical implementation was a different instrument: the Interest Rate Swap (IRS). Corda’s suitability for this use-case was one of the data points that convinced us we had the right. This platform is aiming at providing scalable an flexible solutions to the financial industry
Ripple is a distributed, real-time payment protocol for anything of value. It’s a shared public database, with a built-in distributed currency exchange, that operates as the worlds first universal translator for money. Ripple is back-end infrastructure and not a consumer facing product. Ripple is not a currency. Ripple’s products are providing wide scale solutions to the global businesses and has even partnered with some of the biggest names in the banking industry.
Quorum is an Ethereum-forked variant Blockchain that lends itself exceptionally well toward transacting privately between nodes on a decentralized network (while maintaining consensus). Quorum is a private/permissioned, blockchain based on the official Go implementation of the Ethereum protocol2. Quorum uses a voting based consensus algorithm, and achieves Data Privacy through the introduction of a new “private” transaction identifier.
Quorum is being governed by the JP Morgan Chase and Ethereum Developers, if you are someone who wants to indulge into FinTech apps, Quorum can provide you a platform for the same that might cater to your requirements.
IOTA is a revolutionary new transactional settlement and data transfer layer for the Internet of Things. It’s based on a new distributed ledger, the Tangle, which overcomes the inefficiencies of current Blockchain designs and introduces a new way of reaching consensus in a decentralized peer-to-peer system.
It uses Markov Chain Monte Carlo(MCMC) consensus mechanism for verification of the transaction, personally this is the first time we are seeing this as a consensus algorithm.
Aeternity is a new platform for decentralized apps (Dapps) launched in testnet in 2017. It also held a successful token offering in 2017 for its Aeon (AE) token. The project focuses on increasing the scalability of smart contracts and Dapps. It accomplishes scaling by moving smart contracts off-chain. Instead of running on the blockchain, smart contracts on Aeternity run in private state channels between the parties involved in the contracts.
Aeternity includes several other features that set it apart from other smart contract and Dapps platforms. Notably, it includes a decentralized oracle machine that brings in data from outside sources for use in smart contracts. It also uses prediction markets for various voting and verification purposes within the platform.
The website of Stellar says,”Stellar is a platform that connects banks, payments systems, and people. Integrate to move money quickly, reliably, and at almost no cost.” It claims to be an open-sourced, distributed payments infrastructure, built on the premise that the international community needs “a worldwide financial network open to anyone.” Stellar Lumens will fill this need, connecting individuals, institutions, and payment systems through its platform.
“Cardano is making possible fast, direct transfers that are guaranteed to be secure through the use of cryptography,” says Cardano’s website. Cardano is more than just a cryptocurrency, however, it is a technological platform that will be capable of running financial applications currently used every day by individuals, organizations, and governments all around the world. The platform is being constructed in layers, which gives the system the flexibility to be more easily maintained and allow for upgrades by way of soft forks.
NEO is a next generation smart economy platform (formerly Antshares), also popularly known as Chinese Ethereum, has paced its way into the cryptospace. NEO is one the decentralized platforms which uses Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus protocol for defining the consensus rules of the platform,allows the system to resist the Byzantine Generals problem and maintains consensus even if some nodes bare malicious intentions.
Hope this article gives all of the information you ever needed for selecting a decentralized platform.
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