Top smart contract platforms:
 a selection guide

Hyperledger was founded in 2015 by the Linux Foundation and 30 co-founding corporate members, including industry giants like IBM, J.P. Morgan, Cisco, Intel, and others. Hyperledger Fabric is a permissioned blockchain, meaning that user authentication is required and participants’ identities are known. This makes Hyperledger especially attractive for enterprises that deal with sensitive data and need to comply with data protection laws like the GDPR.

Hyperledger Fabric uses a Crash Fault Tolerance (CFT) mechanism, making it one of the most reliable networks. With CFT in place, the system can automatically detect node crashes and replace them, significantly reducing downtime. One of the most distinctive Hyperledger features is its modular architecture, allowing organizations to develop solutions for various industrial use cases. Similar to Ethereum, Hyperledger offers a wide array of tools, such as Hyperledger Composer, that streamline smart contract creation and deployment.

Polkadot was created by Ethereum co-founder and Solidity creator Gavin Wood. It is more of a blockchain ecosystem where various platforms are connected to each other rather than a distributed ledger in the traditional sense. Relay Chain lies at the core of Polkadot and ensures interoperability between various parachains and parathreads, allowing developers to build their own blockchains with custom governance.

Due to parallel processing enabled by parachains, Polkadot has high scalability. Polkadot functionality also includes bridge chains for connecting parachains to external blockchains like Ethereum. Polkadot has gained traction with developers as it offers software development kits (SDKs) and preconfigured templates, as well as supports many popular programming languages, including JavaScript.

Founded in 2017 by Arthur Breitman, Tezos addresses first-generation blockchain challenges, notably avoiding protocol forks, with a unique combination of on-chain governance and self-amendments. This approach facilitates organic growth and continuous improvement driven by stakeholder consensus.

Tezos is recognized as one of the most secure smart contract platforms because it uses formal verification, meaning that every smart contract is audited before deployment. Such a large-scale audit is possible because the code is written in Michelson, Tezos’ own programming language, and can be easily mathematically proven. This makes Tezos smart contracts especially useful for industries requiring exceptional accuracy in smart contract execution, such as finance and healthcare.

Stellar was launched by Jed McCaleb, who is also one of the Ripple founders, in 2014. Initially positioned as a platform primarily focused on financial transactions, Stellar has significantly broadened its scope in 2022 with the introduction of Soroban, its native smart contract platform. Soroban has been designed as an inviting environment for smart contract development, providing a range of plug-and-play SDKs, a local sandbox, and an RPC server. Scalability is one of Soroban's main priorities. The platform avoids serialization loops, which are repetitive processes where data is processed in a sequential order, causing delays and inefficiencies. On top of that, Soroban also supports multi-core scaling, which allows it to avoid state bloat, one of the most common blockchain challenges. Security is covered with the help of the partnership with Certora, a security firm that uses formal verification as its main method.

Solana was created by A-list software engineers from Intel, Dropbox, and Qualcomm in 2017. Similar to other new-generation smart contract platforms, Solana aims to solve scalability issues. Indeed, Solana has managed to achieve a record-high 65,000 transactions per second. The main reason for such a high throughput is that Solana uses an innovative combination of Proof of History (PoH) and Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanisms. In other words, instead of transactions grouped in blocks, every transaction resides inside its own block and becomes an input for the next transaction.

This way, it’s possible to identify which transactions were the first or last within a particular block. Moreover, with Solana’s Sealevel technology, smart contracts can be processed in parallel. Therefore, Solana is one of the fastest platforms on the market, which makes it attractive for Dapps that require instant outputs. Given its unprecedented scalability and transaction speed, Solana can be a good fit for a massive decentralized exchange or any other project that needs consistent performance regardless of the network load.

Polygon, the former Matic Network, is a Layer-2 scaling solution based on Ethereum that allows for faster and cheaper transactions than its mainnet. With the help of Proof of Stake side chains and a modified version of the Plasma framework, Polygon significantly increases transaction speeds without compromising security.

Polygon also prioritizes environmental sustainability, achieving carbon neutrality by retiring carbon credits. In a nutshell, Polygon can fit projects that need the reliability of Ethereum but require enhanced scalability and network efficiency.

Tron was launched in 2017 and positioned as a content-sharing platform from its inception. Some of the most apparent Tron advantages are a wide range of developer tools and high transaction throughput, up to 2000 TPS, attracting gaming and social media app developers to the platform. Tron employs a Delegated Proof of Stake consensus algorithm, ensuring improved scalability.

Founded by one of Ethereum’s co-founders in 2017, Cardano was created as a response to scalability and regulatory compliance issues other blockchain networks faced. Cardano differentiates itself from the competition by employing a research-driven approach and a peer-review process for its updates, meaning that verified experts in cryptography, computer science, and blockchain technology evaluate the proposed changes before deployment.

While it can slow down the blockchain development process, this calculated approach significantly enhances security. Cardano uses its own Ouroboros PoS, offering more energy efficiency and sustainability than many other blockchains.

Launched in 2019 by cryptography guru Silvio Micali, Algorand is a blockchain platform that is posed to tackle the blockchain trilemma and achieve speed, security, and decentralization simultaneously. It uses the state-of-the-art Pure Proof of Stake (PPoS) consensus mechanism, which allows for high TPS with minimal energy consumption.

Algorand is powered by its own Algorand Virtual Machine, allowing it to support smart contracts written in TEAL (Transaction Execution Approval Language). This, in turn, allows for creating scalable and rather complex smart contract applications, while maintaining the highest level of security.

Cosmos is an ecosystem of interconnected blockchains that relies on the innovative Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol for interoperability. The smart contract functionality is enabled by Cosmos SDK, a modular framework that allows developers to build customizable smart contracts using the Golang programming language.

Cosmos uses a byzantine fault tolerant consensus mechanism called Tendermint Core, which also powers one of the most scalability-demanding exchanges, Binance and Binance Smart Chain (BSC).