Bitcoin may be the supreme king of cryptocurrencies, but Ethereum held its own unique title, as the first choice digital token platform. CoinMarketCap’s data shows that as of publishing time, 94 of the top 100 currency tokens are running on the Ethereum blockchain.
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94% Of The Top 100 Altcoins Are Ethereum-based
The sheer number of top 100 ranked tokens built on the Ethereum platform illustrate an industry landscape in which Ethereum is the primary platform of choice for the crypto devs.
Of the top six non-Ethereum cryptocurrencies in the top 100 bracket, two are deploying the protocol known as Omni Layer. The other two are Stellar-based, and NEO-based. The most popular of stable coin, Tether, uses the Omni layer protocol.
Since its official launch in 2015, Ethereum has benefited from its pioneer advantages. Although cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin existed earlier than Ethereum, but bitcoins are not mean on providing the same functionality. or features of Ethereum offers. Although Bitcoin is primarily a payment instrument and is a store of value similar to gold, Ethereum was designed as a development platform.
Beside Ethereum’s track records, another important factor to the dominant position of Ethereum is it’s ERC-20 token standard. Although Ethereum tokens come in many standards, ERC-20 is currently the most commonly used.
In layman term, ERC-20 is a set of requirements that allows developers to make their tokens compatible with other tokens reside in the same ecosystem. One factor driving the popularity of the standard is that for a project, creating a digital token for decentralized applications(DApp) or initial coin offering(ICO) is a relatively easy method.
Recently, with the increasing support from cryptocurrency exchanges, ERC-20 tokens have been getting huge boost. As early as October 2018, Coinbase added support for its first ERC-20 token, adding 0x (ZRX). Since then, the arguably the most popular US-based Bitcoin platform started to support other popular ERC-20 tokens, such as Basic Attention Token (BAT), USD Coin (USDC), Loom Network (Loom), and Maker (MKR). The busiest ERC-20 token on the market today is Binance Coin.
Although critics of the Ethereum platform downplay its monopoly status, and the competing project will eventually replace it, the picture indicates has no real threat in sight – at least not in the leading tokens crowd just yet.