Top Blockchain Platforms Powering Blockchain Development

Blockchain is an emerging decentralized technology that can track, document, and facilitate transactions. Blockchain prevents fraud and tampering by employing a public ledger powered by a globally distributed record of historical transactions. There is documentation of all interactions and by design all such exchanges are time-stamped and rely on previous transactions for verification and execution.

Though originally blockchain was designed for use in financial transactions, it has found use in many industries like:

Through blockchain app development businesses can create transaction dependant apps that cut fraudulent activities.

Blockchain has played a revolutionary role in the world of technological innovations despite being a relatively new development. Some of the many types of apps that has emerged from blockchain are:

Blockchain scripting languages that have enough depth and power to support a wide variety of Web3 functions are what we refer to when using the term blockchain platforms. Such functions of blockchain app development include facilitating NFTs, carrying out transactions and creating smart contracts. Ethereum led the way in the creation and development of smart contracts which was one of the first few uses of blockchain platforms for purposes other than those related to cryptocurrencies. The leading blockchain platforms happen to be as follows.

Ethereum was the pioneer in blockchain smart contract development which is a P2P form of secure execution and verification of application code. Using smart contracts, transaction participants can interact with each other even when there is no central established authority. Smart contract records are characterized by being:

With smart contracts, transaction participants get complete ownership and visibility into the data associated with the transaction.

People can send and receive transactions after creating accounts in the Ethereum platform and spend Ether, its native cryptocurrency, as the associated costs of using the network.

The Linux Foundation started the open-source, permissioned blockchain platform Hyperledger Fabric in 2015. It is characterized by its access control and identity management features. These make it well suited for the following types of applications:

Sawtooth is another open-source project under the bigger Hyperledger development group. It works as an enterprise-level distributed ledger network for apps. Sawtooth is a BaaS (blockchain-as-a-service) which lets enterprises create and execute custom smart contracts without having to know the underlying core design. Further, Sawtooth features support for a few Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET) as well as Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) consensus algorithms.

The open-source payment technology Steller shares many similarities with Ripple including the co-founder of both the platforms Jed McCaleb. Besides being a technology meant to connect cross-border financial institutions, it also significantly cuts down on existing cost and time taken for such transfers. In early 2014 the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) emerged as a fork of the initial Stellar protocol. Also, while Steller is an open-source project Ripple is closed. The target market for both the platforms also differs with Ripple collaborating with existing banking institutions while Stellar is primarily meant to serve developing markets.

As per the market cap figures Cardano is one of the biggest cryptocurrencies out there. It marks a development in the idea behind Ethereum, a blockchain meant to be sustainable, flexible and scalable while supporting and facilitating smart contracts through blockchain app development. This will allow it to support DeFi apps, games, and of course new crypto tokens. The native cryptocurrency of the platform is ADA which people can buy or sell using cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase. The functions of ADA include:

The purpose driving the development of the Corda platform was solving real-world business problems in the stiffly regulated business market. Before Corda there was no blockchain framework meant to serve businesses. Corda is open-source and meant specifically for business purposes. Corda lets developers create interoperable blockchain networks while supporting industry-leading privacy features. With its special smart contract technology businesses can make direct value-based transactions.

OpenChain is relatively new among the blockchain platforms we discuss here. It is a form of distributed ledger technology under an open-source license that lets organizations issue and manage digital assets securely and scale them with ease. OpenChain employs a special Partitioned Consensus algorithm. There is room for a central authority for each OpenChain instance to confirm transactions and instances don’t need to have single centralized ledger. Such instances can communicate among themselves which means that different authorities can validate different requests for transaction based the asset being exchanged. As a result, every asset can have different asset controlling authorities.

A particular fork of Ethereum forms the basis of the Quorum blockchain network employing the private or permissioned distributed ledger technology. It serves to provide contract and transaction privacy by using a permissioned form of the Ethereum blockchain. Such privacy features are a result for its innovative “private transaction identifier” feature. Quorum is meant to use the existing blockchain technologies which will ensure that the status quo of the synchronization of the blockchain. The blockchain will continue to exist even if the Ethereum network is upgraded drastically in the future.

Are you a business that is trying to hire blockchain developers to create secure P2P real-time microtransaction and payment solutions? Do you want to develop self-executing smart contracts? Then the knowledge and skills of the blockchain development team of iSummation will help you leverage the power of decentralized blockchain based networks. Get in touch with us today!