Ready to explore beyond Bitcoin? As the OG (original gangster) of cryptocurrency, Bitcoin paved the way for the explosion of altcoins we see today. Altcoins provide new innovations, use cases, and investment opportunities that even Bitcoin can’t offer.
We get it – diving into altcoins and their wild west landscape can seem daunting. With over 18,000 to choose from(!), how do you separate altcoin gems from dust? Don’t stress, my friend. We’ve uncovered the top 10 altcoins to pay attention to right now based on development activity, real-world use potential, mission alignment with global trends, and more.
Top 10 Crypto Altcoins
1. Ethereum – The King of Smart Contracts and Dapps
As the second largest cryptocurrency behind Bitcoin, Ethereum has earned the name “the king of altcoins” – and rightfully so! Released in 2015, Ethereum brought programmable smart contracts and decentralized applications (dapps) to life. Instead of solely focusing on peer-to-peer payments like Bitcoin, Ethereum allows developers to build and deploy code-based programs and apps on its blockchain. This opened the floodgates to a wave of innovation!
Ethereum’s native token, Ether (ETH), hit an all time high of $4,891 in 2021. But as any crypto investor knows, prices can swing wildly. In 2022 amidst crypto winter, ETH prices dropped over 55% to trade between $1,000-$1,700. Despite volatility, many believe Ethereum will surge over the next decade as its technological capabilities are unleashed.
In fact, the value behind Ethereum and its smart contract tech has attracted institutional interest from the likes of JPMorgan and UBS. Not to mention billions in development dollars! Before merging with ConsenSys, leading Ethereum software company Infura raised over $100 million from investors. The Ethereum Foundation itself holds over $1 billion to fund projects and grow the ecosystem.
As web3 and dapps become more mainstream, Ethereum remains firmly planted as the industry backbone. No wonder why many refer to Ethereum as the “Microsoft of blockchain”. But can Ethereum maintain its advantage as competition heats up? Keep reading to find out!
Ethereum in Action
Here’s a snapshot of cool things being built on Ethereum’s smart contract blockchain:
- Decentralized Finance (DeFi) – From trading crypto assets to lending and borrowing with interest, DeFi provides financial services without big banks! Leaders like Uniswap and AAVE are built on Ethereum.
- DAOs – DAO stands for decentralized autonomous organization. DAOs allow global users to coordinate, fund projects, and manage communities peer-to-peer. Top DAOs like MakerDAO and Friends with Benefits run on Ethereum.
- NFT Marketplaces – Non-fungible tokens aka NFTs took the world by storm! From profile pictures to digital art and gaming assets, NFT marketplaces like OpenSea and Rarible thrive on Ethereum.
- Metaverse Worlds – Virtual worlds like The Sandbox and Decentraland offer a glimpse into the 3D metaverse future! These Ethereum-based platforms allow users to play games, buy virtual land, and create NFT assets.
And this just scratches the surface of apps choosing Ethereum as their blockchain home! However, conduction all these transactions isn’t without costs.
2. Solana – Blazing Fast and Ultra Low Fees
As the saying goes, time is money! Ethereum has delivered on its promise to birth Web3, but its Achilles heel is slow transaction speeds and congestion leading to outrageous gas fees.
Enter Solana – a competing L1 blockchain focused on one thing: speed! Released in 2020, Solana uses cutting edge tech like proof-of-history and tower BFT to achieve record throughput. We’re talking over 65,000 transactions per second compared to Ethereum’s 15. Transactions also finalize in around 13 seconds with predictably low fees of $0.00025 on average.
This raw speed and scalability attracted developers in droves! Within two years, Solana outpaced all L1s for developer activity besides Ethereum. Over 13 million transactions were conducted across 800+ Solana projects in 2022 alone!
Beyond raw horsepower, Solana prioritizes easy-to-use infrastructure and cross-chain compatibility. Initiatives like Solana Mobile Stack, Solana Pay, and cross-chain bridges aim to make building on Solana simple for both developers and end-users.
Betting on Solana
Venture dollars reveal investor optimism in Solana’s future. In 2021, Solana Labs raised $314 million from backers including a16z, Polychain Capital, and Alameda Research. Top VCs view Solana as a long-term player in Web3, not just a speed demon!
Retail traders fueled a 66x surge in Solana’s SOL token during the 2021 bull market mania. SOL hit an all time high of $260 in November 2021 before retreating 80%+ during 2022’s bear winter. This brutal correction wiped over $167 billion from Solana’s market cap at peak! Still, Solana remains a top 10 project by market cap and enthusiasm is brewing for SOL to reclaim its former highs over the coming years.
Limitations and Controversies
However, Solana’s obsession with speed comes with centralization tradeoffs. Requirements for special computing hardware makes running validating nodes costly, leading to less than 1000 validators compared to Ethereum’s 400,000+. Solana also suffered several lengthy network outages in 2022, raising questions on its stability.
Co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko embraces pragmatism over decentralization purism:
When the Solana network goes down, it’s not like your life savings are gone or your identity is gone. It’ll come back up and then we’ll figure out how to not have that problem again”
Other controversies like insider token unlocks, VC funding debates, and hacks / exploits have created distrust in SOL. But Solana soldiers on as one of the most feature-rich and performant blockchains – when it’s up!
3. Cardano – Taking It Slow With Peer Reviewed Science
In crypto land’s race to innovate, Cardano is apparently driving Miss Daisy! With core development starting in 2015, Cardano took a “slow and steady” approach.
The Cardano blockchain finally launched smart contract capability in September 2021 via the Alonzo hard fork. Why so long? Well unlike Ethereum and Solana’s “move fast and break things” ethos, Cardano emphasizes meticulous academic peer review. Think of Cardano as blockchain with training wheels!
Cardano was founded by Charles Hoskinson, co-founder of Ethereum turned “spiritual leader”. Every crucial element of Cardano from its Ouroboros proof-of-stake consensus to extended UTXO accounting model is published in academic papers. This healthcare-like rigor aims to perfect Cardano’s design before official releases.
Time will tell if slow and steady wins the race as Cardano plays catchup. Nonetheless Cardano’s token ADA grew into a top 10 cryptocurrency during the last bull run hitting an all time high of $3.10 in 2021. The jury is out on whether Cardano’s semi-academic approach will allow it to achieve its lofty promises…
4. Polygon – Scaling Ethereum Like a Boss
We’ve hammered home Ethereum’s Achilles heel – it’s slow and congested! Unfortch gas fees often make transacting and dapp testing cost prohibitive for regular users.
Polygon offers a simple solution: Layer 2 scaling! Instead of starting a brand new blockchain from scratch, Polygon leverages Ethereum as a trust/security layer while handling fast and cheap transactions off-chain. Projects simply deploy onto Polygon using near identical Ethereum tooling while gaining blazing speed and fractional fees.
The results have been explosive! Over 7000 dapps including trading platform 1Inch, NFT game Neon District, and metaverse world Decentraland chose Polygon. By Q2 2022, over 135 million total transactions and $5 billion assets flowed through Polygon offloading congestion from Ethereum mainnet.
Yet Polygon retains flexibility across L1s. The recent “Polygon Supernets” initiative bridges assets and data across multiple chains including Solana, BNB Chain, Avalanche and even Cardano.
5. MATIC Mania
Speculators boosted Polygon’s MATIC token into the stratosphere during the 2021 NFT/metaverse bubble. MATIC exploded from under $0.01 in late 2020 to over 600x gains peaking at $2.92 in December 2021. Even after declining 80%+ from its high, Polygon boasts a multi-billion dollar market cap and remains the leading Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum by far.
6. Shiba Inu – Memecoin Madness or Doggy DAO Potential?
What?! A memecoin cracked the top 10? Has the world gone mad?! Well, yes actually. 2021’s crypto mania minted millionaires overnight and birthed a new asset class – memecoins.
Shiba Inu symbolizes this speculative frenzy. Launched in August 2020 by the pseudonymous Ryoshi, SHIB started as an “experiment in decentralized spontaneous community building”. In other words – a joke mimicking Dogecoin with zero utility.
Flashforward to peak silly season in October 2021. A single $8000 investment in SHIB at launch ballooned to $5.7 billion in barely one year! SHIB rocketed into the top 10 cryptos beating all odds.
But don’t write off meme magic just yet. The power of community catalyzed real products that make SHIB more than mere hype. Shibarium Layer 2, Shi metaverse land, Shibanet DAO, and even consolidation into a potential “global stablecoin” reveal dynamic potential ahead.
Who’s laughing now? SHIB maintained a multi-billion dollar market cap even amidst the 2022 bear carnage. With over 1.19 million hobbyist investors holding bags, SHIBA INU continues woofin’ its way into Web3 relevance.
7. Cosmos – The “Internet of Blockchains”
Sharding. Proof of Stake. Tendermint consensus. As blockchain progresses, fancy crypto terms keep piling up! But what do they all actually mean?
In a nutshell – scaling solutions for blockchain’s thorny trilemma. Secure decentralization, fast speeds, low fees. Choose two only says blockchain dogma! Well Cosmos aims to shatter this constraint once and for all.
The Cosmos network functions as a development ecosystem for crafting versatile blockchains tailored to any use case. Whether you want blazing DeFi transactions, decentralized governance, or metaverse interoperability, Cosmos provides the modular framework and SDKs for your specialized chain.
Interoperability reigns supreme in Cosmos’ vision for an “Internet of blockchains”. Using the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol, Cosmos bridges let independent blockchains interlink for seamless cross-network collaboration.
Already chains like Terra home of algorithmic stablecoin UST, privacy project Secret Network, and computing network Akash sprang from Cosmos SDK. As specialized chains boom, Cosmos promises the connective tissue to weave them together.
8. Polkadot – Connecting Private & Public Blockchains
We’ve hammered home blockchain’s limitations around scalability and interoperability. Polkadot offers another road towards the promised land – a sharded multichain universe!
Created by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood, Polkadot’s core innovation is the relay chain. This coordinator chain handles security and consensus for specialized blockchains called parachains that lease slots via auctions. This parallelized design can handle 1000 – 1 million transactions per second shared across chains!
By separating execution from validation, Polkadot enables both public and private parachains to coexist. Even permissioned enterprise and institutional chains can join the Polkadot ecosystem by leasing parachain slots or parathreads.
The range of Polkadot parachains demonstrate flexible utility from smart contract hub Moonbeam and cross-chain messaging protocol Interlay to identity project Idavoll and privacy chain Oasis.
Bonus: Polkadot Parachains auction slots using its native token DOT instead of dollars! DOT has delivered a top 10 crypto market cap due in part to this critical governance / auction utility.
9. Avalanche – Blazing Speed and Smart Contracts
Thus far we’ve seen how scalability crusaders like Solana and layer 2 darling Polygon achieve speed. But what if you desire low latency *plus* Ethereum-style smart contracts? Enter Avalanche.
Like Cosmos and Polkadot, Avalanche utilizes a subnet architecture. Launched in 2020 by AVA Labs, Avalanche consists of three blockchains: The Exchange Chain (X-Chain), Contract Chain (C-Chain), and Platform Chain (P-Chain). This division of labor unlocks 4500+ transactions per second and sub 1-second finality while supporting Solidity contracts and Ethereum Virtual Machine compatibility.
Avalanche’s native token AVAX connects the ecosystem through staking, transaction fees, and governance. Speculation on future growth boosted AVAX into the top 10 during 2021’s bubble before a brutal 80%+ bear decline.
Nonetheless developer activity flourished in 2022 with over 350 projects choosing Avalanche for blazing fast & low cost DeFi, NFTs, liquidity pools, synthetic assets and more. SushiSwap migrating $150 million TVL to Avalanche demonstrates eco-level traction.
10. Tron – builder of the metaverse
Maybe you’ve seen the movies? In a distant corner of the crypto-verse lies Tron – an ambitious blockchain building the next generation metaverse, one pixel at a time.
Conceived by charismatic founder Justin Sun in 2017, Tron started as a fork of Ethereum before pivoting to its own architecture. By prioritizing high throughput and negligible fees, Tron seeks to one day become the decentralized infrastructure for global digital entertainment.
Flash forward to 2022 – how’s that working? Well… mixed bag. Adoption is growing, but far slower than the hyperbole. Via low cost scalability, the Tron network processes over two million daily transactions across a bourgeoning ecosystem of platforms and protocols spanning DeFi, NFTs, stablecoins, oracles, storage, IoT and more.
Flagship project TronDAO distributes $10+ million monthly to fund community development. There’s even mergers with content platforms like BitTorrent to monetize media via crypto and bypass gatekeepers.
Yet some write off Tron as more flashy marketing than substance while critiquing aspects of its decentralization. Nonetheless Tron remains hellbent on strategic seeding its version of the metaverse – even partnering with brands like Manchester City FC and Amsterdam’s Dance Event!
11. Uniswap – King of Dex Trading
When evaluating altcoin potential, exchanges reveal real world usage. As the breakout decentralized exchange of Web3’s early days, Uniswap led the charge popularizing features we take for granted – automated liquidity pools instead of order books. No KYC account signups. Swap instantly without middlemen.
As the crypto bull market kicked into overdrive from 2020-2021, trading volume on Uniswap exploded from $2.2 billion to $660+ billion! This meteoric growth cemented Uniswap as the DEX king commanding up to 50% total DEX marketshare at peak.
Uniswap accomplished this via its elegantly simple yet powerful design. Anyone can supply any token pair as liquidity on Uniswap v3 earning trading fees from swaps. Top pairs include not just bluechips like ETH/USDC but also trendy altcoin pairings.
Critically Uniswap moves in harmony with Ethereum. Being an on-chain automated market maker means Uniswap transactions catalyze Ethereum’s entire DeFi economy. Oh and UNI governance token? Decidedly too – with UNI embedded into the protocol’s mechanisms.
12. The Graph-indexing for Web3
Last but not least comes The Graph – the hidden engine empowering your favorite dapps! Think of The Graph as decentralized search infrastructure for organizing blockchain data.
Recall how Google simplifies searching the messy World Wide Web via crawling indexed pages? Well The Graph similarly constructs an organized map of blockchain data flows by handling the indexing.
This allows dapps on Ethereum, IPFS, Polygon, Optimism and other chains to query The Graph instead of their entire blockchain every single time. Saving this arduous legwork facilitates rapid dapp response and more complex blockchain interactions previously impossible due to sheer time needed to fetch all data.
The Graph is already integrated across leading Web3 products powering search capability for Uniswap, Aave, Synthetix and more titans managing billions in value. Even legacy institutions like JPMorgan utilize Graph. Early mover advantage makes The Graph poised to remain the critical search and indexing infrastructure tying Web3 together.