Editors at Investinblockchain.com have written an article claiming that only 36 of the top 100 commercially-traded digital tokens and blockchains they studied, “actually had working products that are providing real value.”
In the article, “Cryptocurrencies In The Top 100 With Working Products That Are In-Use,” authors John Bardinelli and Daniel Frumkin claim they used “a bit more rigorous” process than is typical to identify blockchains with authentic “working products.”
For the purposes of the Bardinelli/Frumkin study, a functional blockchain was defined as:
- active and available to the public
- having a main net that that has been actively utilized and developed for a while, meaning it is, “bumping the version numbers well above 1.0”
- is used on a daily basis by businesses and individuals for dapps (decentralized applications, like ‘CryptoKitties,’ digitally collectible cartoon cats), for smart contracts, or for digital currency transactions
New and much-hyped chains like EOS, VeChain, and Ontology did not make the cut because they, “aren’t actually being used by any significant measure”:
“In other words the mere existence of a product does not necessarily mean that the product is working. After all, is a foundation really doing any work when there is no weight on top of it? Likewise, a dapp platform that has a mainnet but that doesn’t have any noteworthy dapps on top of it isn’t considered ‘working’ by this criteria.”