These are 20 of the largest layer 1 blockchains in the world. And today I’m going to be ranking them in a tier list. I’ll be filling out this chart which goes from S tier to D tier. With S tier being God tier aka the absolute best projects and D tier being trash aka projects I wish would just disappear.
Cardano ADA
I’ve been a longtime critic of Cardano and I think my biggest gripe is that their valuation is divorced from their fundamentals. Me being the fundamentals guy that’s something I care about a lot. I’m also not a fan of Charles’s style – which I describe as over promise but under deliver. I can’t be fair though; they deserve some props for their recent progress. They do have smart contracts out now and some early tractions with their Dapps so that’s why I’m ranking them C tier. If you asked me a year ago, I would have put them D tier but they’ve improved so I had to move them up. If they’re able to roll out their scaling upgrades as planned, then who knows I may move them up yet again.
Solana SOL
I really wanted to rank them high, but I just can’t. They have way too many network issues that they haven’t fixed yet. I’m talking about DDoS attacks or full-on outages. These are serious too because some of them last for days and have hurt their DeFi users. Like if you can’t send through transactions to top off your loan then you’d get liquidated for no fault of your own. But besides that, there’s still a lot to like about Solana. They have a popping developer Scene, and they’re backed by the formidable Sam Bankman-Fried and it’s FTX empire. When their network is running smoothly it truly is a joy to use. So that’s why I’m putting Solana at B tier but if they ever do fix their network issues then I’m moving them up for sure.
Near Protocol NEAR
They are kind of early in terms of adoption. But there’s a lot to like about them. They have a stellar team and their sharding technology is quite impressive. They also have a new algo stable coin called USN. It is super interesting, not quite as risky as LUNA’s UST, but maybe a little bit risky. Besides that, they have an amazing developers experience where Devs can earn royalties from their smart contracts. And us end users can enjoy a gas free experience. so that’s why I’m putting near protocol as A tier – they are borderline A tier though. definitely not close to S tier.
Terra LUNA
you know before it’s epic collapse I probably would have put them at B tier or even A tier because of their rocket ship growth. I really liked some of their apps like their CHAI payments app or Mirror protocol. But at last, they bet their entire ecosystem on their algo stable coin, which caused it all to collapse so it’s an easy D tier for Terra/LUNA. They had an arrogant founder who the market humbled. And while it sucks that so many people got hurt by this, I’m just glad that it crashed before it got so big that it would have taken down the entire crypto space.
Fantom FTM
This project I’ve always had mixed feelings about. On one hand they’ve experienced a massive DeFi boom during the bull market. They had a strong incentives program that got builders to come, and it seemed like developers genuinely enjoyed building on Fantom. But on the other hand, their move to DeFi always seemed a bit opportunistic to me. For the longest time they were focused on the IoT and smart cities like IOTA was. But when Andre Cronje came, he pushed them towards DeFi instead. That turned out to be a smart move which helped their adoption rocket. But they also had an over-reliance on Andre who’s a true rock star in the DeFi space, but he’s known for being fickle and hopping from project to project. So it was no surprise when he announced his departure a few months ago, and subsequently caused ftm’s price to crash. that’s why I’m putting Fantom at B tier.
Binance Smart Chain BSC
Speaking of opportunistic, BSC may be one of the most opportunistic projects out there. CZ and Binance decided to launch their own network when they saw Ethereum struggle with demand. They literally just cloned Ethereum but tweaked some parameters to make it faster and cheaper. But they never really thought about the consequences of that. Like how the state of the network would get too bloated, and how validators would struggle with operating it. So as time passed a lot of issues popped up and people called out the Binance devs for not even fixing the most basic issues. It looks to me like BSC is an afterthought for Binance. And they don’t really care to dedicate the time and resources to improve it. Besides that, it’s just a super centralized project and their ecosystem is full of rug pulls and meme coins so it’s an easy C tier for me. I just can’t get myself to like it.
EOS
they were famous for their yearlong ICO, raising a record four billion dollars. But I have a bone to pick with them because they raised so much money and didn’t even do anything valuable with it, besides making their founders rich. Remember how they had a constitution, that was laughable. Their governance process was also a complete mess. Now their devs have all left and it’s honestly a ghost town. The market has really spoken because EOS wasn’t even able to reach its previous all-time high, even in a new bull market. So I’m putting EOS in the D tier, crypto would be better off without them.
Stacks STX
Honestly, I really like their team and their mission of building on Bitcoin. Their proof of transfer is a fascinating system that ties their consensus protocol to bitcoin. Their CityCoins project that launched in Miami and New York was a cool idea, but honestly, it’s just been crickets when it comes to adoption. Maybe because builders don’t care about being tied to Bitcoin at the end of the day. Stacks also made a big mistake by becoming the first ever registered ICO with the SEC, because they kind of admitted that they were a security. So U.S. exchanges were unwilling to list their token for the longest time. For these reasons I’m putting Stacks at C tier.
Avalanche AVAX
They have a great team and interesting technology. I like their fast time to finality and how their novel consensus mechanism makes them more resilient to certain types of attacks. They made a great decision of having an EVM compatible chain out of the gate because that’s helped them get some solid adoption. There’s been some debate on Twitter, as to whether or not Avalanche’s design is truly the best approach. But a lot of that is just theoretical so we’ll have to wait and see. For now, I’m giving them an A tier rating.
TRON TRX
This project was honestly just a massive grift for Justin Sun to get rich. Did you know that he sold a ton of his TRON for Ether and now he owns more ETH than Vitalik Buterin. I think that says everything about his intentions if he prefers to hold ETH over TRX. Also, Justin just copies everything that’s successful like TRON’s whitepaper was a copy of Ethereum’s whitepaper. In his new stable coin USDD is a copy of LUNA’s UST. He pretty much added zero value to the space. When TRON acquired BitTorrent, one of their executives said that “TRON was a marketing machine, layered on a thin veneer of technology”. That sums it up perfectly for me. Off to D tier the garbage tier for TRON.
Kadena KDA
A lesser-known project that had quite the vocal community during the bull market. I always felt that it was a bit overhyped by its supporters though. They have this interesting technology called Chainweb which lets them use proof of work like Bitcoin but with much faster speeds. They also created their own smart contract language and they claimed to have solved the blockchain trilemma, like every project does. But their super high TPS numbers are actually misleading, because it depends on them using a private chain in their calculations. And there’s also concerns about their network design, leading to broken composability and longer time to finality. Their team is just okay in my opinion and their tokenomics isn’t the best. So for those reasons I’m putting them at C tier.
Polkadot DOT
Their approach has always been slow but steady. In late 2021 they started rolling out their Parachain and right now they’re auctioning off their 18th Parachain as we speak. I kind of like their whole relay chain Parachain model. Because that lets chains share security but also stay flexible, like different apps can customize their chains as need be. Gavin Wood the founder of Polkadot is also widely respected across the crypto world. So I put polka dot on A tier, but it is a borderline A tier like NEAR protocol because they need more growth and adoption before they are solidly A tier.
Waves WAVES
This project has been around since 2016 but they were never really able to find their footing. Initially they were focused on letting people launch their own custom tokens, but now they’re more focused on your typical DeFi and NFT stuff. Recently they got some buzz because of their algo stable coin called neutrino. People wrote on Twitter that it was unsustainable like LUNA/UST. All I know is that neutrino lost its peg for quite some time and is still not all the way back at one dollar yet. So waves is C tier for me.
Elrond EGLD
This project’s not bad. They have full sharding implemented and they’ve built their own virtual machine which they say is much better than the Ethereum virtual machine. Staking is quite easy to do in Elrond and they also have a maximum cap instead of perpetual inflation. so that’s a good stuff but they also have some negatives too. Like their team is just okay and there’s barely any external Devs building in their ecosystem. That’s why the team has to resort to building out their own DeFi primitives and that’s not a good approach because that’s going to take them forever. So while I respect Elrond I’m going to have to put them in the B tier.
Internet Computer ICP
They might have had the worst token launch of all time. ICP hit the market at super high prices and then proceeded to dump 95% even during the bull market. People accused the team of misconduct and the whole thing left a bad taste in our mouths. Also I’m not a fan of their marketing approach, they’re super buzzword-heavy and they decided to rename everything. Like they call their smart contracts “Canister” instead. People have wondered if they are even truly crypto because they require KYC for their identity solution, and their code is closed source. I just don’t think they’re going to ever accomplish their goal of reinventing the internet so it’s off to the D tier.
Radix XRD
This is definitely a lesser-known project but I’m a fan of their technology. They are building the best blockchain for DeFi and to achieve that they want to maintain atomic composability at all times. They also have their own smart contract language called Scrypto, that’s supposedly better than solidity. Personally, I’m waiting for their next upgrade called Babylon. Because that’s when their smart contracts go live so until then I can only put them in C tier. If Babylon rolls out smoothly and some traction begins. Then I will upgrade them.
Cosmos ATOM
One of the biggest projects in the interoperability space. There are so many notable projects built using the cosmos SDK. Like Binance smart chain, Terra, and Crypto.com chain were all built using their SDK. Now those projects don’t necessarily have to use the ATOM token, but if they enable the IBC bridge to connect to other projects then they will have to buy ATOM. So while the ATOM token isn’t the best at capturing value. It is looking better and better as more projects enable their bridge. Also, it’s a testament to their architecture that Terra can completely shut off their own blockchain without affecting the other projects across the cosmos universe. So for those reasons and because they have a ton of Devs in their ecosystem, I’m putting them A tier.
Algorand ALGO
Their founder is a famous professor from MIT and they’ve built some impressive technology. They are more focused on enterprise and government use cases though. Like supporting central bank digital currencies so it’s no surprise that they’re more centralized, like their relay nodes are permissioned. Because of their enterprise focus they don’t have a lot of stuff for the retail audience and that’s why you don’t see a lot of people cheering for Algorand on social media. Overall it’s quite centralized and I’m not too excited about it so off to C tier.
Harmony ONE
They have sharding, they’re fast and cheap, and they have good partnerships too. There’s a pretty cool game that runs on their blockchain called DeFi Kingdoms but their network still has some issues, because they’re not able to handle a big wave of activity hitting their network at once. So for that reason I put them in the B tier.
Ethereum ETH
My only S tier coin. ETH is the most beautiful layer one blockchain out there and it’s what got me into crypto in the first place. It’s the most well-known, most adopted and the most Devs choose to build on it without being bribed by token incentives, it also just works. It doesn’t have huge outages like Solana and it just chugs along. Yes, it has expensive gas fees but people are willing to pay for that, so that should tell you something about their product market fit. Also their issues will eventually be fixed when the merge comes, and when roll-ups become more mature. So I don’t care if it’s expensive and slow. For now just ask yourself, out of all these layer ones which ones will still be around 10 years later, my bet is on Ethereum. For that reason, it goes in the S tier.
