Top 5 Blockchain Development Platforms 
Tags: blockchain, development, platforms
Published: 2021-08-21 16:58:03

In the past, blockchain development platforms were limited to one or two major players. That caused a massive upset in the financial sector; banks and businesses didn’t know what to make of blockchain; it was a new technology with almost frightening possibilities. 

As time has gone on, businesses and development companies have looked into the use cases and scenarios for which blockchain technology can be helpful. As a result, they started to research and development and found many more use cases than initially thought. 

Blockchain could be the revolution of self-driving cars. For example, self-driving cars rely on proximity sensors, cameras, radar, and sonar, among other things, to navigate somewhat flawlessly. There is one big downfall, though; they can only avoid what they see. With blockchain, they would communicate with each other, knowing where they are and avoid collisions before the driver even knew there was a possibility. 
Of course, that is not the only revolution we could see in the future of blockchain development. Even medical and supply chain businesses are looking into its use for data management and food supply. 

#What Do You Need From A Blockchain Development Platform?#

If you have a plan that requires blockchain, you will want the best development platform that you can find. However, before that, you need to know what you are looking for in a development platform. 

Before choosing the platform, there are a few things that you need to ask yourself. 

**1. What type of platform do you need?** 
2. How active is the platform?
3. Does the platform use Smart Contracts?
4. Is the platform scalable enough for your requirements?**

When you know what you need, you can start looking at the specific platforms for your project. 

#Top Blockchain Development Platforms - And What Do They Do?#

With over one hundred smart contract platforms to pick from, knowing which you want to use is a difficult decision. Here we list the top five blockchain platforms and how they could help your project. 

##Ethereum##

One of the most well-known Smart Contract platforms available, Ethereum has a massive following of people creating tokens and projects on their open-source blockchain. While ETH is the second-largest cryptocurrency on the market, the ERC-20 (Ethereum Request for Comments 20) token standard is the most active blockchain available. 
However, one of the downsides of the Ethereum blockchain is that it is a public or permissionless platform. Therefore, any project or token built on ERC-20 is for restricted access, not mass consumption. 
[Uniswap](https://uniswap.org/) takes advantage of the Ethereum platform by providing massive liquidity to all participants, allowing for an open financial market. 

##Elrond##

[Elrond](https://elrond.com), the Internet Scale blockchain is possibly the fastest (16k TPS on mainnet, and 263k on testnet), most secure, and ultimately scalable on the planet. The extremely low latency of 6 seconds provides almost instantaneous transactions, all at insignificant cost. 
Adaptive State Sharding and Secure Proof of Stake (SPoS) has created one of the most robust networks of all time, with zero downtime in its launch. Their plans for the network are immense, and the Elrond team planning and implementation are already in place. 
One of the newest projects on the Elrond network is [Black Hat Network](https://bh.network), creating an impressive rival to all Fiat marketplaces for the future world of cryptocurrency. 

##Cardano##

Cardano’s goals are similar to Ethereum due to [Charles Hoskinson](https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles) developing boh, except Cardano does things slightly differently. Cardano uses a Proof of Stake consensus. Ethereum, when launched, used Proof of Work, although they are moving to PoS. Furthermore, the programming language Cardano uses is Haskell (off the blockchain, allowing for Plutus on the blockchain), an apple and oranges comparison to that of Solidity with ETH. 
One of the primary ideas beyond Cardano is that they can handle many more transactions per second to that of Ethereum. For example, Cardano’s maximum fiscal TPS is around 290, whereas ETH is closer to ten. 
Cardano hosts Daedalus, a full node wallet, to independently validate every transaction for trustless operation and maximum security. 

##Hyperledger Fabric##

If you have an enterprise looking for a blockchain to build on, Digital Asset and [IBM Hyperledger Fabric](https://www.ibm.com/topics/hyperledger) may help. Fabric and its permission-based membership help businesses where data protection regulations are heavier than average, such as finance and healthcare.  
That helps reduce the number of trust levels, keeps the network and process clean, and allows for network scalability. 
The plug-and-play components of Hyperledger Fabric have helped some vast companies such as Amazon, Oracle, and PayPal. 

##Hyperledger Sawtooth##

Built similarly to Fabric, [Sawtooth ](https://www.hyperledger.org/use/sawtooth)is a permission mode of operation, built with Go and Java Smart Contracts made with Linux Foundation, ready for enterprise use. Sawtooth’s primary differences allow parallel transactions reducing transaction process times and aims for fully distributed ledgers.
Furthermore, Sawtooth also supports the use of permissioned and permissionless implementation, whereas Fabric only endorses the use of permissioned blockchain implementation. 
Telecommunication giants T-Mobile and Huawei already use Hyperledger Sawtooth, as do BondEvalue. BondEvalue used Sawtooth to create a fast, accessible, and technologically advanced bond management system. 

Featured image source: [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/cIX5TlQ_FgM)