Public networks

On 21 Oct 2026 this site read CoinGecko's list of coins ordered by market value, in pounds. It walked down that list and kept a coin when CoinGecko's own categories called it a layer 1: a network with its own coin. It stopped at 12.

Dogecoin is the exception. CoinGecko does not call it a layer 1. It does call it proof of work, and Dogecoin's own site describes its own network, so it is kept.

Left out: stablecoins such as Tether and USDC, which CoinGecko does not call a layer 1; Figure Heloc, which CoinGecko classes as tokenised credit on another network, Provenance; and exchange or application tokens such as WhiteBIT Coin and Chainlink. Stellar was the next layer 1 after the twelfth, and is not on this page. Market values move. This page is the reading from that day.

• Base. Base has no coin of its own, so it cannot appear in that list. It is here because this site already reads its blocks, and because its own documents describe it as an Ethereum layer 2.
• Arbitrum One. Arbitrum One pays transaction fees in ether rather than a layer-1 coin of its own, so CoinGecko does not class it as a layer 1. It is here because this site reads its blocks and contracts (added 31 Oct 2026), and because its own documents describe it as an Ethereum layer 2.

Base is not part of the market-value order above. Coinbase built it. It is an Ethereum layer 2, built for stablecoins, payments, tokenised assets and controls over who may use a token.

Those controls cut both ways. There are pages for limiting who can hold a stablecoin issued there, and for pausing its transfers. A payment in ether is not the same thing as a token with those controls.

Arbitrum One is not part of the market-value order above. It is an Ethereum layer 2 rollup: a sequencer orders transactions on the child chain, compresses batches of them, and posts those batches to Ethereum.

Transaction fees are paid in ether (ETH). Arbitrum's documents say validators watch the posted state on Ethereum and can challenge a wrong result during a dispute window.

The paper that started it is titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”: people pay each other without a bank in the middle.

Anyone can run the software and try to publish a block. Publishing costs computing work, called proof of work, and the people who do it are Miners. The electricity that work uses is set out on the limits page.

Ethereum is an open public blockchain, launched in Jul 2015, and a place to run programs. Those programs are smart contracts: code anyone can call, which can create its own tokens and applications. Uses include finance, stablecoins, collectibles, games and social applications.

The coin is ether (ETH). A transaction fee is paid in ether. In 2022 Ethereum stopped using proof of work and moved to proof of stake: people lock ether for a turn at publishing a block, and can lose some of it if they break the rules. When the network is busy, fees go up.

BNB Smart Chain launched on 1 Sep 2020. It is a place for apps that run on the chain, including finance apps that do not sit inside one company.

The chain runs the Ethereum virtual machine, so a contract written for Ethereum can be moved across. BNB is the coin used to pay fees. People can stake BNB to take part in validation.

Twenty-one validators make the blocks each epoch, chosen by how much is staked with them. That is a small set of publishers.

The XRP Ledger is a blockchain that uses its own coin, XRP, to record payments and other financial transactions. The uses listed were payments, tokenisation, trading, and credit. The credit page was marked open for voting.

A new page of the ledger is added when 80% of the validators agree. That takes 4 to 6 seconds. Those validators are described as trusted. Anyone can run the software and connect.

The ledger was built over 2011 and early 2012. 100 billion XRP were created at the start. 80 billion were given to the company Ripple. In 2017 Ripple placed 55 billion XRP in escrow.

On Solana, a program is a smart contract. The program does not hold the data. The data sits in accounts, and a transaction asks a program to run. The same documents describe assets that are interchangeable and assets that are not.

Proof of history is a chain of SHA-256 hashes that puts events in order. Each block producer runs that chain to reach an assigned slot and produce a block. Solana is classed as proof of stake.

TRON is classed as a layer 1 and as proof of stake, and its coin is TRX. The current documentation site did not answer, so applications are not described.

Holders vote, and 27 super representatives produce the blocks. That is delegated proof of stake. An epoch is six hours, and a turn to produce a block is 3 seconds.

Zcash is a cryptocurrency with two kinds of address. A private address hides the sender, the receiver and the amount. A transparent address shows all three, as a Bitcoin payment does. The two kinds can pay each other.

It launched on 28 Oct 2016. The supply is fixed at 21 million ZEC, and the blocks are mined. It calls itself the first practical use of a zero-knowledge proof called a zk-SNARK. That is its own claim.

As the account stood, most wallets and exchanges supported only the transparent addresses, so a private payment is not what every wallet can do.

Hyperliquid is a layer 1 blockchain, split in two. HyperCore is order books for perpetual futures and for spot trades. Every order, cancellation, trade and liquidation is recorded on the chain. HyperEVM is a smart-contract environment of the kind Ethereum uses.

HYPE is the coin of that blockchain, with a stated maximum of 1 billion. The agreement method is called HyperBFT, and it is inspired by HotStuff.

Dogecoin is an open-source peer-to-peer digital currency. A note on its site says it was first meant to be a joke, and that it is meant to be used as money.

It can be used to pay someone, to buy goods and services, and to tip a person. Miners publish the blocks. A mining reward is 10,000 dogecoin a block.

CoinGecko does not tag Dogecoin as a layer 1. It tags it as proof of work. It is here because it is its own network.

Monero launched in Apr 2014, with no coins created in advance for the founders. The whole block reward goes to miners. It uses proof of work. The method, called RandomX, is meant to make specialised mining machines unusable.

The sender, the receiver and the amount of every payment are hidden, using stealth addresses, ring signatures and RingCT. On Bitcoin those three are on the public record. That is the point of the design, and it means the public record cannot show who paid whom, or how much.

Cardano is a proof-of-stake blockchain. The coin is ada. It has smart contracts, and governance on the chain written up as CIP-1694. The software is written in Haskell. The stated aim is financial and social applications, including for people without ordinary financial services.

The agreement method is called Ouroboros. Stake pools are chosen to produce blocks according to the stake they control.

The coin, also called NEAR, pays for transactions and for storing data. Staking it is how the network is secured. The network is proof of stake.

Validators check transactions and watch each other. A validator caught breaking the rules has its stake, or part of it, burned. The 100 validators with the largest stake produce the blocks.

The target is new NEAR equal to 2.5% of the supply a year, paid to validators, and transaction fees are burned. That target is the document's, on the day it was read.