This will be a long read. This is really a thought dump. I will try to divide it into subheadings and not ramble or rant too much but no promises. I have done a lot of research into this for various reasons. Mostly financial and development purposes.

Origins

Anyone ever wonder why this thing called crypto or blockchain is blowing up? Why are billions being invested in things like Bitcoin or Ethereum?

And I mean really. Not the ridiculous financial gains from the market or random buzzwords that 9 out of 10 people don't understand and 1 out of 10 know is nonsense speak.

99% of people in this space are now here to gamble their life saving or get rich quick.

There is NO practical reason why Bitcoin is the most popular and expensive cryptocurrency other than it was the first. Sure Bitcoin had a purpose when it was created. It has largely failed. The only thing Bitcoin is good for now is "a store of value" and what does that mean? It means some very rich and powerful people have put a lot of money into it in order to get more rich and more powerful. It also means those that do not know any better are sinking their life savings into something they know nothing about, hoping it continues to go up in value.

You could say the same about stocks for most people I suppose. People give their money to a broker and hope what they bet on rises in value. But there is a difference. Stocks represent companies actually producing a product or service. Bitcoin represents basically nothing but a digital value. It does not even serve its original purpose of being a digital currency. Sure you can kind of spend it at some places, but the fees make it infeasible as an every day currency.

I'm not a crypto naysayer by any means. In fact I am quite the opposite. I fully believe it is the future in basically every way. It is the next internet. It is the future of worldwide currency.

But it saddens me that the few legitimately useful projects based on the technology do not get the same kind of attention. There really are some great projects out there that are solving the problems that Bitcoin was meant to solve and failed. There are also those that took the underlying technology and found even bigger purpose. But there really is not a perfect platform. Yet.

My point thus far is that so many coins are useless, not valueless, just useless. And Bitcoin, Doge... in fact, most of the top coins fall into this category.

Going to try to stop ranting about them now and focus on more useful coins. Coins with purpose. Platforms based around the same technology, but doing it better or expanding it.

First Evolution

Ethereum, Tron, etc... are what come to mind as the second tier of the technology. Some are just forks of Bitcoin that add some features, like Namecoin. Some are long lasting. Ethereum has done a lot in the space. It is high value, second only to Bitcoin, but also has purpose. If I'm not mistaken, it is the first platform with smart contracts. Many believe this is the most important thing to have for distributed application development.

I don't want to say anything negative about this round of the technology. They at least have purpose. Some implemented it better than others. Some are more popular than others. But they all have some pretty serious problems. The biggest problem being that those creating them have tunnel vision (IMO.) Every developer believes their project is doing it right and cannot be bothered to recognize the problems. I will hand it to Ethereum though, the 2.0 move to PoS is definitely a good try. Ethereum's biggest problem was when its fees rival that of Bitcoin itself! PoS could help solve that. Ethereum still does not have it all figured out either though.

What Is Good Then?

I still self-debate on what a perfect platform would be. But there are a few features that I think are extremely important.

The most important and most overlooked by the top coins is feeless transactions. I actually went to a discord to ask a project's developers if they had considered a feeless approach. Not going to name names. They essentially laughed me out of the server. Fear of spam attacks, disbelief, etc... yet, here we are on Hive, a thriving ecosystem based on a feeless transaction blockchain. I mentioned Nano specifically to them. And compared its size and userbase, which was something like 100x their own, but they still were snide about it. Granted Nano did recently suffer a pretty big spam attack, but has since recovered and evolved to prevent future similar attacks. There will always be problems to overcome after all. Some projects with fees thrive, so I'm sure some people will doubt this is an important feature, but I really think to build a worldwide network or currency, the transactions must be feeless, not near feeless, but actually feeless.

Another feature that is important is decentralization. But aren't all these platforms decentralized? Not exactly. Everyone likes to think they are. And to an extent you could say yes to that question. But it isn't that simple. For example, there was a point, before the recent crackdown that half a dozen farms in China, had they chosen to cooperate, could have basically taken over the entirety of the Bitcoin network. Frankly, I am EXTREMELY surprised this did not happen. This is actually the biggest problem among all the existing platforms. All traditional proof of work type platforms are very much in danger of losing the network, much more than they like to admit. Even newer platforms are in danger of this in other ways. Nano for example uses a consensus among a dozen or so representatives. It is a DPoS network. There are 2 exchanges that have enough power to run the network. Should they choose, they could essentially take over the Nano network. Hive is really no exception to this. We all know what happened on Steem. Hive has a little more protection now but even if no one takes over the network, how decentralized is it really if everything is run by the couple dozen witnesses? Proof of Stake type networks do solve a lot of issues that Proof of Work networks have. Decentralization is sacrificed for this. The best example I have found for decentralization is a project I doubt anyone reading this (if anyone at all reads this) has heard of called Nimiq. It is not the greatest at everything but it does employ a unique in-browser node. Effectively making everyone that logs into the service running a node that actually plays a part in the consensus. I think decentralization is important because it is what makes this technology unique. I want the power spread across as many nodes as possible, otherwise, what's the point? Just use a bank with a dozen branches. Or a centralized server host...

Speed. The next feature I think is important. Who wants to wait a day for their transaction to clear? cough Bitcoin cough. For payment methods, waiting a few seconds is acceptable. Minutes not so much. This knocks out so many coins. Unless you're willing to use an intermediary service of some kind, most projects have a 5-10 minute or more transaction time. These are usually those with fees as well. So on top of the crap fees you are also having to pay for a service to facilitate the transaction so the customer doesn't have to wait a day for full confirmation. Many of the feeless options actually solve this too. Nano, Hive, Iota, etc... are capable of processing as many transactions as Visa, just as fast or faster, for free.

Resource Sharing. Another good feature. This is definitely a second tier feature but it is something decentralized application developers can use. Things like IPFS or BTT. People don't really think about it the same way but there are also many projects that share resources for distributed computing. Render farms, compute power for math problems and such. This is all similar technology that can be used to combine computer power of some kind to accomplish something. So why not have a platform that rewards the sharing?

There are of course other features but this is getting a bit lengthy so I'm going to just move on.

Best Projects

I'm currently building a game @chibititan. I really plan to include some features that utilize blockchain(ish) technology. So I've narrowed down my options to a few of what I consider the best options.

Hive - Hive IS the current front runner. The work being done on the core as well as the ecosystem is impressive. I do not think it is perfect by any means. I do have something like $8000 invested in it, so I'm clearly rooting for its success. The biggest problems I have with Hive is the decentralization, some community drama issues, and there is no clear development kits for the platforms I need. I can mostly get over the drama issues. I'm iffy on the decentralization. I plan to look into developing my own solutions for SDK/API on the platforms I need, and share with the community. Hive DOES have feeless transactions, Hive-Engine for second layer development, fast transactions. It also has a lot of other things I didn't mention above, like the ability for new users to earn without having to buy. I think there is even a funding system that projects can use to build Hive apps and get paid?

Iota - Iota is a close second. It is not quite to the point Hive is in maturity for the ecosystem and such. But when they finally finish coordicide and main net the 2.0 features it will be a great contender. Feeless and fast transactions. Smart contract platform. They also have some nice development going on around the ecosystem. They have a Ecosystem fund that developers can apply for. They also have a C client code base, so developing on the platforms I am going to target will be much easier to get started with. If this was a year from now, Iota may be the closest to perfect on this list. But it is not and definitely still has problems of its own. Like actually earning mIota.. not easy short of buying.

Nano - Nano is the first feeless coin I found. I also really like the core of its technology. It is not as decentralized as they want it to be but might be good enough. Nano however, is strictly a currency. Its devs and zealots are very testy about it even being mentioned to expand. On the one hand, I agree, it is almost a perfect currency platform. On the other this is what I'm talking about when I say tunnel vision. I don't see Nano getting the mass adoption they want, strictly being a currency. It is great, but it is also a lot easier to just use a Visa... I mention nano here because I do still like it a lot. The issue with using it would be the amount of development it would take to build up a tier 2 system around it.

EOS - Another feeless coin. I actually know very little about it. I have not looked into it as much as I should, but it really just seems to lack in each area when compared to the others here.

Nimiq - Nimiq is a really cool project. It does not get the attention it deserves. It does NOT have feeless transactions. Which is the main reason I will probably not use it for anything. They are even upgrading to a 2.0 PoS version and will still have fees, this is a huge mistake IMO. But the decentralized, run a node inside your browser thing is just so cool to me. I have to include it here. And honestly, if I were strictly a web 3.0 developer/enthusiast. It may be my top pick.

Xaya - Xaya is another cool project. It does not have feeless transactions and is based on Namecoin. Huge mistake IMO. But it is the only project I know of working on solutions for real time blockchain gaming. They have created a technology they call game channels. It is really just P2P network gaming that sends a few blockchain transactions mixed in with the normal networking messages. But it is still a very interesting project.

Custom - The final option I've explored is starting my own custom project. I know. I know. There are enough why make another? Like I've been saying all along. None of these are perfect still. And any decentralized application developer probably will admit this. They choose what they think is best for their project but there is always going to be features they wish they had. And honestly, I don't think a custom project would please everyone either, but it would check all my own boxes. A resource sharing network that has fast, feeless transactions and everyone connected to the network is part of the consensus. Something that generates a currency for all users one way or another but is not so inflationary that the currency is useless. Maybe even a mechanism to prevent the currency from being expensive as well to keep the barrier of entry down. There are also a lot of other features I want to add. A three name username. A cross-domain user identity. Of course the problem with going the custom route is... lots of work. Many many hours have gone into the development of the existing platforms. Who am I to think I'm going to do as well or better than what exists and do it in any kind of useful timeframe.

I have typed enough. So I'm going to end here.

In conclusion, most of the crypto space is people gambling on useless projects. Will that ever catch up or will it just be the reality of finances going forward? I don't know. People are weird. What I do know is the technology is amazing and the future of everything and I want to be a part of it. As a developer. What I'm trying to figure out is how. And what I think the answer is going to be is Hive, unless I get a huge dose of ambition and roll something completely custom.