The Tiers of Crypto: Where does your favorite blockchain rank in the pantheon?

[americanpegasus]

God-Tier  
These blockchains are the gold standard, built upon careful cryptographic principles with lots of support from esteemed mathematicians and computer scientists.  These are the true blue chips of crypto, coupling unique algorithms with clearly defined purposes for existence.  They may yet have flaws, but they are at least advancing the art, and all of them fairly launched with no premine/ICO nonsense.  Not only do I own these, I usually consider them as default units of account.  
  

• Bitcoin: The coin father of them all.  Original PoW algo, and a unique purpose for existence.
• Monero: The first crypto to significantly advance the art beyond Bitcoin with a unique mining algo and actual privacy, untraceability, and fungibility built in.

 
  
High-Tier  
These blockchains may have some technical hurdles to overcome, and/or may have launched with distasteful features such as ICOs, but they represent a quality project which aims to advance the space and do something unique and valuable.  I usually own at least some of these projects when I am looking for a quality investment.  
  

• Ethereum Classic:  The first major programmable blockchain, it may have launched with a strange ICO and perhaps the Turing complete nature makes it a nightmare of vulnerabilities, but it has a lot of potential to radically alter the way we look at decentralized computing.
• SIA: The premier blockchain for data storage, it could eventually rival massive cloud storage operations.
• IOC: A unique value proposal, IOC aims to be the glue that holds the other blockchains together with things like name registration and other advanced features.
• Bitcrystals: An innovative idea - release a collectible trading card game and use profits to buy and burn proprietary Counterparty tokens off the open market.

 
  
Mid-Tier  
These blockchains don't do anything really innovative but are highly supported clones of other popular projects.  They could conceivably hold some value going forward, or even move to high tier if they continue to innovate where their parent project does not.  
  

• Litecoin: The original clone coin, is still considered crypto-silver by many.
• Dogecoin: Very middle.  Still going. wow.
• Aeon: A Monero fork/clone focusing on pruning and lightweight operation.

 
  
Low-Tier  
These blockchains have significant issues with coin distribution or value proposition which aren't due to outright dishonesty or malice.  It is unlikely they will be viable in the long term, but there is a small chance I am wrong.  
  

• Steem: A core group of insiders hold 90% of the voting power and shower boobs and Bitshares posts with scrumptious crumpets while genuine quality content earns scraps!?  Oh boy, sign me up.
• Factom: So what would you say.... You do around here?

 
  
Shit Tier  
Scams, broken nonsense, and blockchains which bend to the whims of whales.  Stay away at all costs.  
  

• Dash: Ninja/Instamined garbage which uses a 'Masternode' pyramid scheme to incentivize protocol-level coin-mixing.  Unfortunately is highly vulnerable to Sybil attacks along with other potential attack vectors.
• VCash: The lead Dev has stolen code, radically fucked with the block rewards in early mining to his own benefit, and still hasn't produced an open source and verifiable proof of his miraculous claims.  Stay away.
• Ethereum Hardfork:  Programmable blockchain which will fork when necessary to protect the financial interests of whales and large holders, including bailing them out from bad code.  Essentially a centrally controlled cloud server to practice code on, but that doesn't mean the tokens should hold monetary value.
• Ripple: A premined and centrally controlled token by Google which has no value proposition whatsoever since its centrally controlled, and no fundamentally different than fiat held by a bank.

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[jwinterm]

Where does Nyancoin rank? Sub-shit tier? Poptart tier? Rainbow space tier?

[freshman777]

The media blackout of NXT is so funny. Conspiracy is strong in this one.
NXT didn't even make it to the Shit tier.
If you don't mention it, it will go away? Fat chance

[thejaytiesto]

Good thread. Bitcoin of course is the real gold standard. The entire planet will move around this blockchain the next decade. This is the real deal.

Monero is also a solid coin, but lack's the magical aura of Bitcoin because Monero is a fork from Bytecoin. It's the first, non forked, longest survivor and the extra coolness of an anonymous creator.

So I would say Bitcoin stands in a category of it's own.

[kiklo]

Info for Newbies, regulars already know.

Your Tiers of Crypto is strictly personal opinion:

BTC was the 1st popular one , and as such many holds strong feelings for it, even thru it is the oldest and slowest.  
China controls overs 70% of BTC mining, might as well just buy Chinese Yuan.

Monero while the design is very creative, it can not offer true anonymity , as their are too many non-anonymous ways to cross reference your identity.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1562630.msg15686764#msg15686764

Litecoin & Dogecoin still have utility use for MicroPayments which BTC no longer has.
So for this utility , they are superior to BTC in speed and function.

Ethereum, both versions, a scam being funded by some wall street types to steal money from investors, as it will require more resources than it will provide usefulness.
Watch it's Blockchain that grows over a gigabyte a month, plus no one seems to realize that it promotion of smart contracts will be a cluster fuck for this reason.
12 year old buys ethereum, and enters a contract, then goes to a court of law and have that contract nullified because they were too young to enter it.
Now Magnify this by every country in the world having different laws, another example Muslim sues you for a contract that gives you 40% interest from him, anything over 10% is outlawed by their sharia law. Their judge will Nullify that contract in their court system.
All of these nullifications will require constant hard forks and prove these smart contracts have Zero legal standing, and worthless.  

Ripple & Steem exactly matches your description.


 

[americanpegasus]

Kiklo you actually make a great argument for why Ethereum must respect its own code above all else.  It must show that it will not form for anyone to undo history - not a government nor a whale.  
  
This is why ETH is absolute trash at this point and ETC still passed the muster.

Where does Nyancoin rank? Sub-shit tier? Poptart tier? Rainbow space tier?

 
  
Actually would be mid tier, but it is a dead chain it would seem.  I wish it would use its tiny status to add some anonymity features from other chains.  That could make it thrive again.  Or maybe even relaunch as a Scrypt Cryptonote-esque clone coin.

[dinofelis]

Agree with OP, especially BTC (the one to rule them all) and Monero, the first truly anonymous untraceable cash.

In my opinion, ETH/ETC is fundamentally flawed with Turing completeness but I only realized that later.  Contracts have to come to a conclusion, and Turing completeness does not allow one to verify that automatically.

[d5000]

My favorite blockchain does rank about #1500 in the cryptocurrency pantheon. I think it is a little corn of sand crushed by the boots of Ethereum, Steem and others.

But it's time will come. You can see what it is in my personal message

PS: I think your ranking algorithm is a bit biased and over-simplified. Why Monero is higher ranked than Ethereum Classic? I agree somewhat of your classification of Ethereum Hardfork. The difference of "what it is" and "as what it's marketed" is abysmal.

[iamnotback]

God-Tier  
These blockchains are the gold standard, built upon careful cryptographic principles with lots of support from esteemed mathematicians and computer scientists.  These are the true blue chips of crypto, coupling unique algorithms with clearly defined purposes for existence.  They may yet have flaws, but they are at least advancing the art, and all of them fairly launched with no premine/ICO nonsense.  Not only do I own these, I usually consider them as default units of account.  
  

• Bitcoin: The coin father of them all.  Original PoW algo, and a unique purpose for existence.
• Monero: The first crypto to significantly advance the art beyond Bitcoin with a unique mining algo and actual privacy, untraceability, and fungibility built in.

 
  
High-Tier  
These blockchains may have some technical hurdles to overcome, and/or may have launched with distasteful features such as ICOs, but they represent a quality project which aims to advance the space and do something unique and valuable.  I usually own at least some of these projects when I am looking for a quality investment.  
  

• Ethereum Classic:  The first major programmable blockchain, it may have launched with a strange ICO and perhaps the Turing complete nature makes it a nightmare of vulnerabilities, but it has a lot of potential to radically alter the way we look at decentralized computing.
• SIA: The premier blockchain for data storage, it could eventually rival massive cloud storage operations.
• IOC: A unique value proposal, IOC aims to be the glue that holds the other blockchains together with things like name registration and other advanced features.
• Bitcrystals: An innovative idea - release a collectible trading card game and use profits to buy and burn proprietary Counterparty tokens off the open market.

 
  
Mid-Tier  
These blockchains don't do anything really innovative but are highly supported clones of other popular projects.  They could conceivably hold some value going forward, or even move to high tier if they continue to innovate where their parent project does not.  
  

• Litecoin: The original clone coin, is still considered crypto-silver by many.
• Dogecoin: Very middle.  Still going. wow.
• Aeon: A Monero fork/clone focusing on pruning and lightweight operation.

 
  
Low-Tier  
These blockchains have significant issues with coin distribution or value proposition which aren't due to outright dishonesty or malice.  It is unlikely they will be viable in the long term, but there is a small chance I am wrong.  
  

• Steem: A core group of insiders hold 90% of the voting power and shower boobs and Bitshares posts with scrumptious crumpets while genuine quality content earns scraps!?  Oh boy, sign me up.
• Factom: So what would you say.... You do around here?

 
  
Shit Tier  
Scams, broken nonsense, and blockchains which bend to the whims of whales.  Stay away at all costs.  
  

• Dash: Ninja/Instamined garbage which uses a 'Masternode' pyramid scheme to incentivize protocol-level coin-mixing.  Unfortunately is highly vulnerable to Sybil attacks along with other potential attack vectors.
• VCash: The lead Dev has stolen code, radically fucked with the block rewards in early mining to his own benefit, and still hasn't produced an open source and verifiable proof of his miraculous claims.  Stay away.
• Ethereum Hardfork:  Programmable blockchain which will fork when necessary to protect the financial interests of whales and large holders, including bailing them out from bad code.  Essentially a centrally controlled cloud server to practice code on, but that doesn't mean the tokens should hold monetary value.
• Ripple: A premined and centrally controlled token by Google which has no value proposition whatsoever since its centrally controlled, and no fundamentally different than fiat held by a bank.

Now put that in a two-dimensional matrix ranked by importance of impact:

Market Size	God-Tier	High-Tier	Mid-Tier	Low-Tier	Shit-Tier
Masses:				Steem
Finance:	Bitcoin	Ethereum Classic	Litecoin	Factom	Ethereum HF Ripple
Commerce:	Bitcoin				Dash
Niche:		I/O Coin Sia	Dogecoin
Unknown:	Monero	Bitcrystals	Aeon		Vcash

I would change and augment as follows (to complete the list of top coins from coinmarketcap.com):

Market Size	God-Tier	High-Tier	Mid-Tier	Low-Tier	Shit-Tier
Masses:				Steem
Finance:	Bitcoin	Litecoin	Ethereum Classic Stellar	Counterparty Factom Lisk NEM Ripple	Ethereum HF Nxt Waves
Commerce:	Bitcoin			Dash
Niche:	Namecoin		Dogecoin I/O Coin	Sia Storj Synereo Voxels	MaidSafe
Unknown:		Monero Peercoin	Aeon Bitcrystals BitShares		Bytecoin Rimbit Vcash

Perhaps you could move Nxt and Stellar to Low-Tier. Some argue that Ripple belongs in the Shit-Tier. I can't put Dash in Shit-Tier unless I put Steem there also due to both having huge sneaky mine shenanigans. Both Steem and Dash appear to have some valid R&D, so I place them in Low-Tier. Some would argue Steem is nearly Mid-Tier, but the highly uncompetitive distribution doesn't allow that IMO.

I can't put Monero in the God-Tier where there are so many unimplemented plans yet before it reaches strong anonymity and value hiding that Zcash will have on its launch. Afaik, Monero is still half-baked.

Note I haven't followed closely Aeon, Bitcrystals, and I/O Coin, so I am just parroting the OP on those.

[freshman777]

Thank you, iamnotback.
Nxt has been granted a mention, after my request

[BitcoinNational]

Where does Nyancoin rank? Sub-shit tier? Poptart tier? Rainbow space tier?

correct
Nyancoin  = Niche (market size) : Poptart_Rainbow_Space (sector)

[BillyBobZorton]

Where is Maidsafe? I think the project is really interesting and still has some potential left. Sure the devs need to prove themselves a couple things but I wouldn't count it off yet.

[raphma]

I respect your opinion but seriously, monero god tier and dash shit tier? both dash and xmr have some flaws so IMO they should be fighting at the same tier(and that tier, definitely wouldnt be god tier).

[TrueAnon]

WBB - soon to be the first "chainless" game in town *BOOM* - wait and see

I think it'll be taken well, especially since it'll run 100x better than anything in the market today.

[jwinterm]

WBB - soon to be the first "chainless" game in town *BOOM* - wait and see

I think it'll be taken well, especially since it'll run 100x better than anything in the market today.

Ripple and Stellar are chainless, and they're shit-tier, so it won't be first, whatever else it is.

Nyancoin actually had a maintenence release a few months ago to fix some old vulnerabilities and bugs, so I wouldn't say it's dead, but certainly niche at this point.

[dinofelis]

I respect your opinion but seriously, monero god tier and dash shit tier? both dash and xmr have some flaws so IMO they should be fighting at the same tier(and that tier, definitely wouldnt be god tier).

Dash and XMR both have the same goal.  But where DASH does it with a complicated network of aristocrats (because DASH is based upon bitcoin and coinjoin technology in a certain way), monero uses a totally new cryptographic concept, namely ring signatures (introduced by cryptonote), and as such, decentralizes cryptographically the half-centralized coinjoin technology in DASH.

Anonymity is absolutely needed to obtain fungible money, and to obtain cash-like properties, something bitcoin failed to provide.  Now, in the same way that bitcoin is traceable and has non-fungible coins unless they are mixed, but that until now, that seems to work, DASH has solved this problem but by re-introducing a form of centralisation and gouvernance.  Monero (in fact cryptonote) has solved this issue in a totally decentralized way for the first time, using ring signatures.    In fact, DASH did the best it could but the essential technology was lacking.  Ring signatures were the tech needed to allow for automatic anonymity.  It is still not used enough in crypto, because ring signatures have amazing potential in many domains.  I would think that the step from normal signatures to ring signatures is comparable to the step from symmetric crypto to public key crypto: a whole pan of possibilities opens up.  Where the step from symmetric to public key crypto allowed for matters like trust, ring signatures allow for matters like anonymity.

To give you an idea: if ethereum were build onto cryptonote, then the fork would not even have been possible to consider.  If ethereum were based upon the DASH system, it would have been possible if the masternodes colluded over it.

[ArticMine]

Monero has a critically important feature that is orthogonal to the privacy, anonymity and fungibility aspects of Monero. This is the combination of the Cryptonote adaptive block size with a tail emission. The tail emission ensures the security of the coin, since the Cryptonote adaptive block size relies on a penalty to the miner to increase the block size. This penalty is proportional to the base reward. If the base reward were allowed to fall to zero or become insignificant, as will be the case with Bytecoin for example, then the penalty would fail and in principle fees would tend to zero. In the latter scenario with little or no fees and little or no block reward there is no incentive to mine the coin and the coin becomes insecure. The reason I support Monero in the God-Tier is because in addition to the privacy, anonymity and fungibility aspects of Monero, Monero also addresses the blocksize scaling and fee market questions.

Bitcoin never addressed the question of what would happen when the block reward ran out, relying to a large degree on the assumption  that a fee market would somehow develop. This lies at the heart of the block size debate in Bitcoin. Without a tail emission I have not seen a viable long term solution to this issue from either side. Even with a fixed bock size there are many questions on how such a fee market can develop and there attack scenarios where it is economically favorable for a miner with say 5% of the hashrate to spam the network in order to increase fees. This would work for example if the blocks are on average 97% full before the spam attack. A very significant number of coins have simply followed Bitcoin with a fixed maximum money supply, with a falling base emission and have exactly the same problem with scaling and a viable fee market. Litecoin and Dash are good examples here.

There are two Cryptonote coins that have a tail emission as far as I know are Aeon and DigitalNote. Aeon has a tail emission that is a fixed percentage of the money supply (exponential "inflation") rather a fixed  amount tail emission per block as in Monero (linear "inflation") I actually prefer the linear model because over time the tail emission should reach an equilibration with lost coins. This would lead to an effective constant money supply for Monero. DigitalNote also has a constant tail emission as in Monero; however this tail emission is extremely small, when compared to the money supply. The question that is raised by DigitalNote is what is the minimum tail emission that is needed to secure a Cryptonote coin?

The next coin I will consider is Dogecoin. This "millennial social coin"; has already implemented the hard part of the Monero solution to blocksize scaling and a viable fee market; namely the tail emission. For this reason I would move Dogecoin up one tier. Implementing a Monero / Cryptonote style adaptive block size in Dogecoin is nowhere nearly as significant a breach of the social contract as for example adding a tail emission to Bitcoin.

Finally I will mention the Ethers. The Ethers differ most Bitcoin type coins in that they have an effectively infinite block size limit, combined with fixed fees "gas" in terms of ETH or ETC. This may address the blocksize and scaling issue to a large degree but in reality there is no fee market. These fees represent the cost of computing resources, such as processing power, digital storage, bandwidth etc. My take is that for this reason the Ethers will make a very poor choice for use as Money. The right to store say 1 KB of data on hard drive for 1 week would make for a highly inflationary form of money, if we consider for example how this cost has plunged over say the last 40 years alone. Granted in 1976 one could have done worse by holding the Rhodesian Dollar, which later became the Zimbabwean Dollar.

[americanpegasus]

I was half-shitposting when I made this topic (even though I stand by my opinion of the information in the OP) but some of the rest of you came and actually added some really important and educational comments.  Thank you!  

[bbc.reporter]

I have nothing against Monero. I do not think it is in the god tier yet. If you think it is then that is very very very arguable. It will be better to put it in high tier.

[Tacalt]

Good thread. Bitcoin of course is the real gold standard. The entire planet will move around this blockchain the next decade. This is the real deal.

Monero is also a solid coin, but lack's the magical aura of Bitcoin because Monero is a fork from Bytecoin. It's the first, non forked, longest survivor and the extra coolness of an anonymous creator.

So I would say Bitcoin stands in a category of it's own.

just getting back into Altcoins today and been checking out Monero all day had no idea it was a fork from Bytecoin, good to know, this has been the most promising coin of the day based on user rating alone, but I still need to do more research.