Ultimate Guides

Compound is a blockchain-based decentralized banking application in which individuals borrow and lend crypto funds on the Ethereum network. Compound handles the details of matching borrower and lender, and it provides interest payments to lenders.

The decentralized finance (DeFi) sector has been growing and evolving over the last year with an array of new products emerging to offer investors novel ways of getting more bang for their buck, such as yield farming.

The Maker platform is an ecosystem for creating and hosting blockchain-based apps. More than 400 projects currently rely on Maker's Dai token, including wallets, decentralized financial applications, games, and more.

OMG is a Layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum. OMG Network’s Plasma engine executes smart contracts like Ethereum, but broadcasts only completed transactions to the public blockchain, reducing processing power, time, and costs.

Launched in 2018, the Tezos project started in 2014 as an experiment in using a decentralized self-governance mechanism to make decisions about rewards and other factors. The network is distinguished by its high staking rewards.

Uniswap is a decentralized crypto exchange consisting of smart contracts running on the Ethereum blockchain. Uniswap uses an automated protocol to create liquidity pools that allow users to swap cryptos without a central broker.

The EOS network allows IT developers to capitalize on their knowledge while creating decentralized blockchain applications. The network supports smart contracts and zero-cost transactions, which explains why some people call it an "Ethereum killer."

Blockchain-based financial apps can't do much if they are limited to data on the blockchain. Chainlink addresses that problem by establishing conduits for verified financial feeds and other data to be imported to the blockchain where DeFi apps can access them.

Polkadot is a scalable, secure network for creating purpose-built blockchains composed of custom or off-the-shelf components. Polkadot's audacious vision has earned its DOT coin a place in the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap.

Stellar is a decentralized peer-to-peer network that is optimized to support quick, inexpensive crypto purchases. Stellar makes it easy to create crypto versions of fiat funds so incompatible financial systems can interoperate.

The Tron network brings the dApp community 2,000 transactions per second and no transaction fees. Initially popular mainly in Asia, Tron has broadened its reach since purchasing the peer-to-peer content-sharing platform BitTorrent.

IOTA is a decentralized distributed ledger built specifically for the “Internet of Everything” – a unique type of network used for exchanging value and data between humans and computers. IOTA doesn't use blockchain – at least, not in the same way as most other projects.