Blockchain is not a niche technology, nor is its business adoption a barrier anymore. I agree that mainstream media is excessively enthusiastic in reporting other “pressing” matters (AI, for example), but blockchain is quietly shaping the next wave of the business revolution.
It brings unprecedented levels of trust, transparency, and security in corporate environments. Take finance, banking, supply chain, medical, real estate, and more; blockchain implementation can underpin part of, if not the entire business.
And since you are spoilt for choice, let me make it easy by this well-researched summary about the following blockchain platforms, their strengths, and use cases.
- 1. Ethereum
- 2. Ripple
- 3. Cardano
- 4. Stellar
- 5. Hyperledger Fabric
- 6. Corda
- 7. Tron
- 8. Solana
- 9. Chainlink
- 10. EOSIO
- Show less
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1. Ethereum
It won’t be wrong to assume Ethereum as the mother of all blockchain platforms. This has got an extremely functional developer ecosystem, a vast community, and endless possibilities for any business eyeing web3.
There are tons (literally!) of alternate financial systems built over Ethereum, presenting strong and “decentralized” substitutes to the centuries-old centralized setups.
With Ethereum’s DeFi (decentralized finance), you can let your customers transfer money, borrow funds (with or without collateral), trade Ethereum-based cryptocurrencies (such as Tether & USDC), buy insurance, and more. And you don’t have to fear high gas fees, as you can simply harness Ethereum’s goodness on layer 2. This has multiple “secondary” networks built over the base Ethereum (layer 1), offering the same rock-solid security posture at a fraction of gas fees (average transaction cost as low as $0.001 compared to $0.13 on the Ethereum mainnet).
Developers offer these services as dApps (decentralized applications), which are powered by smart contracts (auto-executing code when preconditions are met). This can mean transfer of ownership, booking a vehicle, issuing shares, sending money, or anything else, based on the contract rules. This takes any intermediary out of the equation, paving the way for transparent and immutable workflows.
Ethereum also features stablecoins, whose value is tied to fiat currencies, precious metals, other cryptocurrencies, and even nothing but simply algorithms. The idea is to have crypto tokens without substantial risks and volatility.
Likewise, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are a blockchain novelty that started with Ethereum. Benefiting from Ethereum’s network security and smart contracts, businesses can use NFTs to represent anything physical or virtual—a land parcel, an art piece, or a domain name—to authorize legitimate ownership and subsequent transfers. You can implement NFTs for supply chain tracking, real estate deals, storing medical records, and more.
As of this writing, Ethereum has $98.8 billion stashed in its DeFi ecosystem and $62.58 billion staked to protect its value.
2. Ripple
Ripple’s flagship product is international payments, covering over 90 markets and 50+ currencies. This is aimed at (traditional, digital & neo) banks, crypto businesses, and fintech firms, looking for payment channels to quickly (under 5 seconds) settle transactions 24/7.
Ripple allows your customers and partners to manage, trade, and sell digital currencies and tokens. This is supported by real-time transactions and tracking. Furthermore, the network has its own stablecoin, Ripple USD (RLUSD), which is 100% backed by cash and cash equivalents to fend off crypto volatility. It enables peer-to-peer and business fiat-to-RLUSD on/off ramps on the XRP Ledger and Ethereum blockchains.
Ripple can also help you offer crypto and digital asset custody solutions to your clients. This is enhanced with bank-grade security (such as air-gapped cold storage) and flexible deployment (client-hosted, hybrid, or cloud) and key management (MPC or HSM) options. Ripple’s custody allows you to open additional revenue streams by offering trading, staking, and related services.
Though it has plans to introduce smart contracts on its XRP Ledger mainnet, Ethereum-compatible smart contracts are already live on its XRPL EVM sidechain. This can handle over 1000 transactions per second with its 3.5 seconds of average block time. Plus, businesses get the goodness of all Ethereum libraries, smart contracts, and development tools. This lets developers build cross-chain apps that can work through the network of EVM chains.
Currently, XRP is the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, just behind Bitcoin, Ether, and Tether.
3. Cardano
Cardano is a proof-of-stakes (PoS), smart contract-enabled blockchain, which has varying use cases, including identity management, DeFi, supply chain management, and decentralized data storage.
Its digital identity services are offered via its Veridian platform—an identity wallet businesses can use to identify individuals, groups, and even machines. This supports Android and iOS and comes with local signing and (an optional) biometric authentication. Likewise, it also features a cloud agent that you can deploy in a multi-tenant setting, including on-premises and public clouds. With its Cardano blockchain integration, developers can use smart contracts to couple identity with digital assets and dApps.
Likewise, Cardano has “Reeve” for tamper-proof accounting powered by its immutable blockchain ledger. The best part about Reeve is its ability to integrate with the existing accounting systems and granular access controls. It has built-in multi-stage validation to ensure data accuracy. Reeve also allows business owners to be selective and choose which information to store on-chain without jeopardizing sensitive data.
Cardano lets developers create, use, and destroy custom tokens without using smart contracts at all. You can create these assets using preferred names, mint as many as required, and burn whenever they end up serving their purpose. Notably, these tokens are different than NFTs, which in turn stay on the blockchain permanently.
Following Ethereum’s footsteps, Cardano developed Hydra, a layer 2 made for quickly settling payments with “near-zero” fees. This is an open-source protocol, enabling developers to build products that can sync with the existing Cardano infrastructure, including dApps and wallets. It also features multi-party agreements with instant settlements.
You can discover over 100 Cardano developer tools in popular programming languages and frameworks, such as C, Go, JavaScript, Python, Kotlin, Rust, and more.
4. Stellar
Stellar has “anchors” (~payment service providers) with payment “rails” (~channels) to support 24/7/365 global payments across geographies in their local currencies.
Its primary use cases are international payments, underpinned by over 300k cash-to-crypto on/off ramps. This covers personal settlements, business invoices, payroll, treasury management, social/enterprise payouts, and more. Stellar provides real-time tracking, near-instant delivery, and excellent scalability. You can allow recipients to open on-demand wallets and compensate thousands in a single send.
Businesses can also rely on Stellar to tokenize real-world assets, such as securities and commodities. Stellar comes baked in with features, such as KYC and freeze & clawback, granting superior operational control.
Stellar works on a PoA consensus mechanism, which helps it offer unmatched transaction speed at a nominal expense of $0.00056 per transaction.
Finally, Stellar has vast DeFi possibilities, where you can connect it to other blockchains and wallets and build/leverage protocols to fit your specific business needs. Stellar’s DeFi is powered by Soroban, which is its smart contract platform in Rust. Developers benefit from ready-to-use SDKs, CLI, local sandboxing, and RPC servers to build, test, and publish quickly.
5. Hyperledger Fabric
Developed and hosted by The Linux Foundation, Hyperledger Fabric is a made-for-enterprises open source distributed ledger. Fabric’s key strengths are pluggable consensus and a highly modular architecture, which allow its deployment across industries, including banking & finance, healthcare, and supply chain.
Another differentiator is that developers can deploy smart contracts on Fabric using “standard” programming languages, such as Java, Go, and Node.js. This helps in avoiding additional training expenses in domain-specific languages.
Fabric is a permissioned network, making it suitable for closed-loop deployments, where no participant is unknown and untrusted. To preserve sensitive data, participants can build a subnetwork, where only channel members can access the data and chaincode (smart contracts).
You also get support for EVM chains (and Solidity) for developing cross-chain applications.
However, since it’s not always easy to deploy open source projects, you can leverage the same goodness with the IBM blockchain platform, which is a bespoke commercial offering of Hyperledger Fabric.
6. Corda
Corda is an open, permissioned DLT platform built for global banks, governments, and financial institutions looking to tokenize assets and currencies.
It lets developers write smart contracts in popular programming languages (Java and Kotlin) and integrate with existing systems using RESTful APIs and via RPC. Corda has a unique approach to consensus. It checks every transaction for validity and uniqueness before stamping it to its ledger.
Corda can work with existing systems and has data privacy protocols to limit sensitive information to stakeholders.
Currently, Corda is home to 400+ dApps (called CorDapps) and over $10 billion on-chain assets. Besides, Corda’s network powers more than 1 million transactions per day. Multiple mainstream institutions leverage their tech stack, including HSBC, the World Bank, and the Central Bank of the UAE.
7. Tron
Tron is a DAO-governed blockchain with high throughput and scalability, making it a good fit for businesses searching public networks for application deployment.
It uses a delegated proof of stake protocol (dpos), supports smart contracts, and has a native cryptocurrency known as Tron (TRX). Tron network can handle up to 10k transactions per second (with side chain support) and has about 100 million dApps users presently. The main Tron Network alone peaks at about 2000 transactions per second.
Tron has a separate side chain, DAppChain, to support energy-efficient, secure, and quick dApp operations. This sidechain deploys the same consensus mechanism as the Tron main network and fully supports smart contracts. Developers can build on-chain/cross-chain apps on DAppChain with its Java SDK.
Fundamentally, the Tron network is run by 27 super representatives, who are responsible for transaction validation and broadcasting. Users can check the current list of these “bookkeepers” on Tron’s blockchain explorer.
Tron also features a Layer 2, BTTC (BitTorrent Chain), for better scalability and reducing transaction costs. Plus, every transaction is approved after multiple signatures, ensuring greater security. Another important objective is to provide cross-chain compatibility. BTTC lets apps interoperate among Ethereum, Tron, and Binance Smart Chain (BSC).
As of this writing, the network hosts over 290k user accounts and has supported over 10 billion transactions since its launch in 2018.
8. Solana
Solana is a proof-of-stake blockchain that helps you cater to multiple use cases, including finance, entertainment & gaming, and art. Its native cryptocurrency, SOL, is the seventh largest by market cap, valued at over $55 billion.
It has 88+ games live right now, including Star Atlas, Aurory, and Gamerboom, to name a few. Solana supports leading game development environments with SDKs for Unity and Unreal Engine. These SDKs have RPC and NFT support. Moreover, Solana also lets developers deploy Turbo (another game engine) for building low-resolution 2D games.
Solana comes with an excellent toolkit for building financial applications. Businesses can deploy permissioned environments and customize them further with geofenced nodes, private instances, and more.
Another feather in Solana’s cap is token extensions. These modular programs are built into the core protocol to provide enterprise-grade security and flexibility without any third-party plugins. Currently, there are over a dozen token extensions that allow developers to limit transfers between users, disallow changing account ownership, freeze tokens unless specific conditions are met, and more.
Businesses can benefit from Solana by tokenizing real-world assets and allowing international exchange with a 400ms average settlement time and a nominal spend of $0.013 per transaction.
You also benefit from state compression on Solana to mint 1 million NFTs for a mere $110. Consequently, Solana is home to over 6 billion NFTs minted by 530+ creators with net earnings exceeding $1 billion.
The live data on its website indicates it’s handling over 4k transactions per second with an average fee of $0.0025 per transaction. Right now, it has 1300+ validator nodes to keep the network decentralized and secure.
9. Chainlink
Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network that can connect all leading public and private blockchains to external systems and other blockchains. It lets smart contracts interact with off-chain data and events with baked-in security.
Its cross-chain interoperability protocol (CCIP) allows off-chain systems to communicate with blockchain smart contracts for sending data and transferring tokens to any public/private blockchain. Likewise, Chainlink’s “Functions” can trigger on-chain actions by linking them to off-chain events, and “Proof-of-reserve” can provide automatic yet transparent asset verifications.
This helps developers build DeFi applications for varying use cases, such as trading, decentralized exchanges, insurance, and banking.
Besides, it’s VRF (verifiable random function) provides cryptographically secure random numbers for smart contracts. This tamper-proof randomness makes Chainlink a developer favorite for their gaming and NFT projects.
A few more Chainlink use cases include automating policyholder payouts (~insurance), carbon tax credits, and on-chain asset verification.
As of now, Chainlink’s native token is the number one oracle token (and 13th overall) by market cap.
10. EOSIO
EOSIO is an open-source platform suitable for both public and private blockchain networks. EOSIO uses delegated proof of stake (DPOS) as its consensus mechanism, allowing for a higher transaction rate at a lower cost.
Developers can write smart contracts in C++, without learning a domain-specific programming language. These contracts can be updated in real time without troubling the blockchain network. That said, EOSIO-powered blockchains also have provisions for immutable smart contracts.
Developers can stop others from modifying smart contracts by creating custom permissions for highly sensitive projects. On the other hand, it also supports distributing authority to change smart contracts to multiple accounts.
Currently, EOSIO powers two public blockchains (EOS and Telos) and over 400 applications, such as Upland and Defibox.
Some more blockchain platforms with their target domains and use cases:
11. Polkadot: DeFi, real-world assets (RWAs), DePIN, AI, & Gaming
12. Avax: DeFi, Arts, & Gaming
13. Neo: Automated asset management with smart contracts
14. Kaia: Blazing fast transaction settlement and EVM compatibility
15. XDC Network (formerly XinFin): Global trade finance and payments
What Is a Blockchain Platform?
A blockchain platform is a digitally distributed, immutable ledger enhanced with self-executing code (~smart contracts). These platforms feature varying levels of user access, decentralization, and security based on their type: public, private, hybrid, and consortium.
| Attributes | Public | Private | Hybrid | Consortium |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Accessibility | Permissionless and open to everyone | Restricted to authorized entities | Selective accessibility | Limited to pre-approved organizational members |
| Decentralization | Decentralized | Limited to the governing institution | Limited decentralization | Restricted to the controlling organizations |
| Security | High, if a network is big enough | Varies, but less than public blockchains due to centralization | Medium to high, better than private blockchains | Secure within the consortium setup |
| Scalability | Poor due to all network coverage | Highest scalability | Moderate, better than public blockchains | Better than public but less than private |
| Use Cases | Cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and public documents | Healthcare data, internal voting, SCM, financial records, etc. | Financial services, real estate, and healthcare | Banking, edtech, finance, research, etc. |
Key Features to Look for in Blockchain Platforms
Migrating your project, partially or fully, to a blockchain platform can be an intimidating and risky investment. That’s why you must know the impact of such a transition upfront and have the basics brushed up.
- Scalability: Public blockchains are mostly a no-go for most businesses because of their low scalability (~operations per second). Therefore, based on the need for public exposure, you can choose either a hybrid, consortium, or entirely private implementation.
- Security: This is an essential parameter that business owners partly sacrifice for better scalability (the blockchain trilemma, remember!). Opt for maximum decentralization, effective authentication, and transaction encryption.
- Interoperability: Check if a blockchain supports oracles or has side chains if you need cross-chain inter-connectivity. Likewise, investigate the blockchains’ interoperability with existing, off-chain systems.
- Smart Contract Support: If your business needs more than basic transactions, then you must consider whether the platform is smart contract compatible. Besides, you must check the supporting programming languages and if your developers have the related expertise. It’s best if you can work with a blockchain platform that has smart contract compatibility with mainstream programming languages.
- Consensus Mechanism: This directly impacts how secure and quick the network behaves in confirming transactions. PoS, DPoS, PoA, and PoW are some of the more energy-efficient alternatives to PoW (Proof-of-Work).
The Road Ahead…
Blockchain adoption, though, carries significant benefits for specific domains (such as finance and banking)—it heavily depends on how you balance the three vital factors: security, scalability, and decentralization. Moreover, the core principles, permissionless and decentralized, don’t always align with all business practices.
In your shoes, I would look for case studies in my domain and even collaborate/demo with BAAS (blockchain as a service) providers to see the exact benefits I may reap with blockchain tech. And as always, do a pilot before making any serious blockchain move.