Ethereum ($ETH)— $23.3 Billion

Summary

Ethereum is an open-source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform and operating system featuring smart contract (scripting) functionality. It supports a modified version of Nakamoto consensus via transaction-based state transitions.

Ether is a cryptocurrency whose blockchain is generated by the Ethereum platform. Ether can be transferred between accounts and used to compensate participant mining nodes for computations performed. Ethereum provides a decentralized Turing-complete virtual machine, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which can execute scripts using an international network of public nodes. “Gas”, an internal transaction pricing mechanism, is used to mitigate spam and allocate resources on the network.

 

Notable Members [ 10 / 10 ]

Ethereum’s team is the holy grail of cryptocurrency. Led by the top research scientists in each field and with Vitalik serving as the “Jesus” or “Elon Musk” or cryptocurrency, Ethereum has the best known team in the whole space. While many of the original founders have left and many of the team members did not come from substantial backgrounds, they have all made names for themselves.

Vitalik Buterin, University of Waterloo. Co-Founder of Ethereum, Co-Founder of Bitcoin Magazine, Thiel Fellow, Forbes 30 Under 30, OmiseGo Advisor, Augur Advisor.

 

Joseph Lubin, Princeton University. Co-Founder of Ethereum, Founder of ConsenSys.

Jeffrey Wilcke, HKU. Co-Founder of Ethereum, Lead Go-Client Developer.

Dr. Galvin Wood, University of York. Creator of Solidity, Founder of Parity Technologies, Author of Polkadot Whitepaper.

 

Joseph Lubin, Princeton University. Co-Founder of Ethereum, Founder of ConsenSys.

Vlad Zamfir, University of Guelph. Researcher at Ethereum, Lead Developer of Casper

Team Composition Rating

Research Staff — 10.0/10.0

• Excellent Research Staff and Developer Community

Notable Team Members — 10.0/10.0

• Vitalik Buterin is the Elon Musk of Cryptocurrency

Industry Relations — 10.0/10.0

• Ethereum Enterprise Alliance Group has over 500 Companies

Website: https://www.ethereum.org/

Cardano ($ADA) — $2.23 Billion Market Cap

Summary

Cardano is an open sourced multi-layered blockchain-based computing platform developed by IOHKthat can be used for both financial transactions and distributed computing. Cardano’s native cryptocurrency token is ADA and its platform can be used to create and run smart contracts, DApps, and more.

For Cardano, a new proof-of-stake algorithm called Ouroboros was designed. The fundamental difference between Ouroboros and Ethereum’s Casper or other similar algorithms is the manner in which recipients of block rewards (validators) are chosen.

For a blockchain to be secure, the means of selecting a stakeholder to make a block must be truly random. An innovation of Ouroboros to produce the randomness for the leader election process is to do this by way of a secure, multiparty implementation of a coin-flipping protocol.

Notable Members [ 8.86/ 10 ]

Cardano is not a company, but rather a group of three organizations:

IOHK(research & development — 160+ people), Cardano Foundation (non-profit that controls trademark, oversees the other two companies, and works with the community — 30+ people) and Emurgo (for-profit company focused on developing commercial ventures on the Cardano ecosystem, something similar to Consensys for Ethereum — 40+ people).

However, leading the forefront of Cardano is Charles Hoskison, a researcher who needs no introduction.

Charles Hoskinson, University of Colorado Boulder. Co-Founder of Ethereum, Co-Founder of BitShares, Co-Founder of Ethereum Classic.

Team Composition Rating

Research Staff — 9.0/10.0

• Triad company with large amounts of developers

Notable Team Members — 10.0/10.0

• Charles Hoskinson co-created Ethereum, BitShares, and Ethereum Classic

Industry Relations — 7.6/10.0

Website: https://www.cardano.org/en/home/

Telegram Open Network ($TON)— ICO Stage

Summary

Telegram Open Network (TON) is a fast and inherently scalable multi-blockchain architecture. TON can be regarded as a decentralized supercomputer and value transfer system. By combining minimum transaction time with maximum security, TON can become a VISA/Mastercard alternative for the new decentralized economy. The TON system will integrate a number of services: from joint file storage to anonymous Internet surfing, all of which can be accessed using tokens, issued by the project.

Notable Members [ 9.13/ 10 ]

Dr. Nikolai Durov , University of Bonn, Co-Founder of Telegram, Co-Founder at VK, Author of the Telegram Open Network Whitepaper

Dr. Pavel Durov, University of Bonn, Co-Founder of Telegram, Co-Founder at VK, World Economic Forum Finland Representative

Research Staff — 8.1/10

• Hard to give a rating because many things are unknown about the project. Given their implied resources, shouldn’t be difficult to find the right researchers

Notable Team Members — 9.3/10.0

Industry Relations — 10.0/10.0

• Telegram is one of the biggest messaging apps in the world and has over 200 million users. Adoption of the network and partnerships can come with ease.

Website: https://telegram.org/

ZCash ($ZEC) — $701.3 Million Market Cap

Summary

ZCash is a decentralized and open-source cryptocurrency that offers privacy and selective transparency of transactions. ZCash payments are published on a public blockchain, but the sender, recipient, and amount of a transaction remain private.

ZCash is based on peer-reviewed cryptographic research, and built by a security-specialized engineering team on an open source platform based on Bitcoin Core’s battle-tested codebase. ZCash’s over Bitcoin is the addition of privacy. ZCash uses advanced cryptographic techniques, namely zero-knowledge proofs, to guarantee the validity of transactions without revealing additional information about them.

Notable Members [ 8.8/ 10 ]

ZCash’s team is by far doing the most research in Zero-Knowledge Privacy and cryptography. In the team contains many University Professors and PostDocs working on the development of the project.

Zooko Wilcox, CEO and Founder of ZCash, CEO of Least Authority Enterprises, Lead Developer of Mnet Network, Developer at SimpleGEO, Developer at Mojo Nation.

Eli Ben-Sasson, Professor at the Computer Science Department at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, ZK Researcher, Co-Founder of the SCIPR Lab

Professor Alessandro Chiesa, Massachusetts Insitute of Technology, Famous Faculty Member in the Computer Science Department at UC Berkeley, Co-Founder of SCIPR Lab.

Matthew Green, John Hopkins University, Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute, Creator of Charm, IEEE Security Committee, Founder of TrueCrypt

Team Composition Rating

Research Staff — 10.0/10.0

• Many Famous Professors and Lab Researchers.

Notable Team Members — 9.8/10.0

• Vitalik and Gavin are part of the advisory board.

Industry Relations — 6.7/10.0

Website: https://z.cash/

Skynet ($SON) — ICO Stage

Summary

Skynet is an integrated platform for large-scale intelligent IoT interconnection comprised of the first RISC based blockchain chip and well as a multi-chain decentralized network. Skynet provides an horizontal sharding architecture that enables instantaneous transaction speeds and modular throughput to handle large workloads.

With a license-free, open-patent, and open-source philosophy, Skynet expects to deploy billions of their chips and interconnect them with their network. With an embedded crypto hardware wallet, tensor processors, and hash accelerators, the blockchain chip will enable the mass production of low-cost smart IoT devices that could securely sign transactions, learn advanced neural network models, and leverage the utilities of distributed ledgers.

Notable Members [ 8.56/ 10 ]

Alexander Shi, University of California Berkeley, CEO and Founder of OpenSingularity Group, Founder of Skynet, RISC-V Foundation Technical Committee, UCSD Deep Learning Researcher, Intel and Amazon Robotics

Dr. Jae Jung, University of California San Diego, Executive Director and Vice President at Samsung Electronics, CEO of NeoPace Telecom, Research Fellow Samsung,

Professor Jun Zhang, University of Nanjing, Professor of Computer Science at University of Nanjing, Head of Nanjing’s Computation Lab, Award Winning Artificial Clustering Researcher

Dr. Carl Shi, University of California, San Diego, Vice President of Qualcomm, Leader for Qualcomm Ventures, Inventor of 400 Patents, Top 50 Inventors Worldwide

Research Staff — 8.5/10.0

• Having over 500 patents shows the teams ability to innovate. Many professors and researchers in the hardware field.

Notable Team Members — 7.2/10.0

• Executive Director of Samsung and Tech Giant Executives

Industry Relations — 10.0/10.0

• Background leading semiconductor companies implies many industry relations.

Website: https://skynet.co/