Coinbase Coins for Beginners — A Short Summary List — Explained
In this article I will provide a short description of the coins listed on Coinbase (Pro), so that new people can inform themselves quick and easy. I hope this helps build a short overview. Please note that this is not investment advice and that you should always DYOR (do your own research). I am in no way affiliated with Coinbase or any subsidiary. This list may be incomplete and outdated when you read it.
I will not mention obvious cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash (hard-fork of Bitcoin), Litecoin (clone of Bitcoin), Zcash (private transactions possible).
Ethereum
Pioneering smart contract platform and advertised as the “world computer”. (Smart contracts are pieces of code that run on the blockchain which enable programmable money and the ability to write decentralized apps / dApps). Ether is the name of the native coin which is required to pay „gas” for the smart contracts to run. The genius founder and public figurehead of the project is Vitalik Buterin. A crowdfunding round took place in 2014 to raise the money required to build the platform. The network launched a year later. Ethereum made headlines when the infamous project “The DAO” was set up in 2016 and was hacked due to a bug in the code of the smart contract. This lead to a controversial hard-fork (split of the blockchain with following alternative futures) which reversed the transactions and returned the stolen funds. The original chain continued as “Ethereum Classic“. Ethereum was the main driver of “ICO-mania” in 2017 and the birth of utility tokens. There is an Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) which includes various Fortune 500 companies to build blockchains used by businesses. The next upcoming milestone is the release of “Ethereum 2.0“ which will include major and groundbreaking improvements.
XRP
Formally known as Ripple, XRP is known as the „banking coin“ as it helps the banks settle transactions faster. The XRP coins are issued by the central entity Ripple Labs Inc.
EOS
Founded by Dan Larimer (BitShares and Steemit) and developed by block.one, a company registered in the Cayman Islands. EOS aims to provide a scalable blockchain to run performance intensive decentralized applications. Marketed as a decentralized operating system it too can run smart contracts. Because of the architecture of a fixed set of 21 elected validators, it can handle millions of transactions per second. EOS raised $4 billion during a year long ICO between 2017 and 2018.
Cardano
Founded by Charles Hoskinson (Co-founder of Ethereum and past lead of Ethereum Classic) and developed by IOHK, Emurgo and the Cardano Foundation. Cardano aims to build a blockchain that lasts. They are taking a very serious research-driven approach, as they are releasing academic papers and peer reviewing all the code. Cardano claims to have developed the most secure proof of stake consensus algorithm, which unlike Bitcoin wastes energy by mining coins, they can secure the network by coming to a distributed consensus in a more efficient and secure way. The main focus of this projects is the security- and research-first approach, academic and scientific work, smart contracts, scalability and interoperability. Cardano has developed their own programming language to write smart contracts. It is a functional programming language and much closer to mathematical formulas, which has the benefit that you can verify the correctness of the code a lot easier. Cardano had an ICO in 2016 mainly for Japanese investors. A part of the network went live in 2017, but without some key features as these will be released step by step according to their roadmap.
Tezos
Founded by husband and wife Arthur and Kathleen Breitman and developed by various groups around the globe such as Nomadic Labs, Cryptium Labs, Tezos Commons, Toqueville Group (TQ), Marigold, Obsidian Systems, Cryptonomic, AirGap, TezTech Labs, Tezos Foundation and other individual developers. Tezos is the first blockchain of its kind which has implemented a formal governance process so that the community and stakeholders can come to final and binding decision on how to upgrade and improve the protocol. This upgrading process is done on the blockchain itself and involves a multiple step democratic voting process. This self-amending/-updating feature enables Tezos to evolve and upgrade itself over time and that updates and improvements can be done seamlessly, while other projects like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcash etc. have to go through a hard-fork. To incentivize developers to improve the core protocol there is an inbuilt funding mechanism, which allows the developer to attach an invoice which in-turn will be paid through the protocol itself once the proposal gets activated on the mainnet. Tezos is a smart contract platform with the main focus on security and formal verification for its institutional-grade smart contracts. They have developed a new programming language with security in mind, because the code can be formally verified (you can prove the code will run as intended). Tezos secures its blockchain through a novel consensus algorithm commonly known as “Liquid proof of stake“ (funds are liquid and not locked, more energy efficient than proof of work, more decentralized and more fair for large and small holders, 5%+ rewards per year). The Tezos Foundation received donations in 2017 and the money raised has grown (mainly due to the rise in price of BTC and ETH) to more than $500 million, which is at their disposal to sustain the project. Known prominent supporters are billionair Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (known from the Facebook settlement and the exchange Gemini) and visionary Olaf Carlson-Wee (Polychain capital).
Stellar (Lumens/XLM)
Originally based on the Ripple protocol but later re-wrote the consensus algorithm. Stellar is a decentralized payment network. Founded by Joyce Kim and Jed McCaleb (e-Donkey, Mt. Gox).
Cosmos
Marketed as the „internet of blockchains“, it is the first live blockchain with the Tendermint proof of stake consensus algorithm and the first network to support interoperability between blockchains. In the Cosmos network you can create new zones (parallel blockchains similar to sidechains) to exchange assets without the need for an intermediary. The native coin is called „ATOM“. They had their ICO in 2017. A somewhat similar project called Polkadot by Ethereum Co-founder Gavin Wood is still in development, which gives Cosmos a first-mover advantage.
Other coins and utility tokens include: Basic Attention Token, Civic, ChainLink, Augur, 0x, … which I won’t go into detail here.
