Top 3 Crypto Projects for 2022
The crypto world has seen tremendous growth, especially within the past few years. Ever since the inception of Bitcoin’s blockchain, we have seen literally thousands of altcoins and projects that have tried to get to the top and climb the crypto ladder.
Some of these projects have made the cut, while others have failed and will always just be a part of crypto's history. That said, today, we will be taking a look at the top 3 crypto projects that are worth your attention throughout 2022 and potentially even beyond.
We'll be going over Solana, Algorand, and Cardano, and hopefully, by the end of this, you'll see what makes them so special.
Solana (SOL)
Solana is essentially this web-scale blockchain that aims to provide quick, secure, and scalable decentralized applications alongside marketplaces.
This can be evident through the Solana ecosystem, which is already filled with over 500 DeFi and Web 3 applications, ranging from applications to games, and even non-fungible tokens (NFTs); if something is viral within the crypto world, the chances are high that it will eventually get built on Solana.
Solana is a platform that was founded in 2017 by Anatoly Yakovenko, who worked at Qualcomm before he managed to launch Solana.
The main way Solana stood out and attracted the attention of many developers is through its Proof-of-History (PoH) consensus, which is an algorithm specifically created to allow a higher level of efficiency and throughput rate. This means that having historical records of events of transactions allows the system to easily track them and keep track of orders as a whole.
Then there’s Tower BFT, which is a PoH-optimized version of PBFT (Practical Byzantine Fault Toleration), which takes advantage of the synchronized clock and prevents overhead and transaction latency.
The SOL token is the native cryptocurrency token that you’ll use on Solana, and it can be staked, where stakers can earn additional rewards. It can also be used to perform micropayments, known as lamports on Solana.
In any case, Solana is one of the largest crypto projects at the moment and is worth paying attention to for years to come, as it has the potential to climb high both in value as well as utility.
Algorand (ALGO)
Algorand was launched in 2019 and is a self-sustaining, decentralized, blockchain-based network specifically developed to support a wide range of applications. It is known due to the fact that it takes advantage of what is known as Pure-Proof-of-Stake (PPoS) as its consensus algorithm. Here, it distributes the ALGO cryptocurrency in the economy with each new block to everyone with a specific number of ALGO tokens within their wallets.
The ALGO token is the native cryptocurrency tokens that power the Algorand Ecosystem, where it can be used as a means of paying for the transactions alongside the smart contract computations on the network.
Algorand can even be used in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) applications which are built outside of its ecosystem through synthetic versions of its token. You'll probably see Wrapped ALGO, which is an ERC-20 token, for example, working with the Ethereum blockchain, just to name an example.
This is a project created by Silvio Micali, a computer scientist, and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor. Micali authored the Algorand white paper alongside Jing Chen in 2017, who is a Stony Brook University Professor.
Algorand is a protocol that's split across two layers, where Layer-1 is used to run the smart contracts, handle the atomic swaps alongside the rapid peer-to-peer exchanges of cryptocurrency tokens. The creation of new, Algorand-based assets happens at this layer.
Layer-2 is intended to run a larger, feature-filled smart contract network.
To participate in voting, users can stake ALGO to generate a valid participation key that allows them to become a Participation Node, where each node can coordinate through a Relay Node, which facilitates communication.
This is definitely yet another project that is re-shaping the blockchain's functionality and has introduced changes and innovations, which has helped put it on the map as one of the best crypto projects worth your attention throughout 2022 and beyond.
Cardano (ADA)
Cardano is a decentralized, Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain platform founded in 2017 by Charles Hoskinson, who is also the co-founder of Ethereum. It is regarded within the crypto community as one of the largest blockchain networks to successfully implement the PoS consensus mechanism, which proved to be far more energy-efficient than the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus found in other blockchain networks prior to it, such as Bitcoin (BTC) and even Ethereum (ETH) at the point of its launch.
Cardano also supports smart contracts and takes advantage of its native cryptocurrency token known as ADA to allow its users to participate in the network's operation.
The Cardano blockchain network is split across two layers. The first layer is the Cardano Settlement Layer (CSL) which facilitates and records all of the ADA transactions, while the second is the Cardano Computation Layer (CCL) which contains the smart contract logic, responsible for determining the rules as well as the conditions for each transaction.
Cardano uses Ouroboros, a specifically created PoS algorithm that creates blocks and validates transactions within the blockchain. This is a network divided into epochs and slots, where epochs represent the overarching timeframes and slots represent 20-second intervals. Throughout each slot, a leader is picked at random with the mission of adding a new block onto the blockchain.
There are three types of nodes that participate in the operation of the Cardano network, and these are Edge nodes, which are used to create cryptocurrency transactions, mCore nodes, which allow users to stake ADA and participate in the distributed governance; and Relay nodes which facilitate data transfers between mCore nodes and the public internet.
These crypto projects have truly introduced something unique and have managed to take the crypto world by storm through their various use cases and ecosystems. They are definitely worth just about anyone's attention, and it’s exciting to see what the future holds for Solana, Algorand, and Cardano.