Six networks. Six jobs.

Ethereum added general-purpose smart contracts to a public chain. Applications — lending, exchanges, stablecoins, credentials — run the same way for every user. Proof-of-stake. Ether pays gas and secures the network.

Use cases. DeFi, tokenized funds, stablecoin issuance, on-chain credentials. Layer-2 networks scale execution and settle back to Ethereum. Spot Ether ETFs exist in the U.S.

Steward. Ethereum Foundation funds research. Client teams (Geth, Nethermind, Prysm, Lighthouse and others) are independent. Not a single-issuer product.

Market. About 50% below the late-August 2025 high as of late August 2026, with a strong bounce the same week Bitcoin reclaimed the $70–80k area.

Built for fast, cheap transfers. XRP can sit in the middle of a currency pair for seconds. Federated consensus. Settlement in a few seconds. Ripple is the commercial face — payments, custody, RLUSD — and a large historical holder. It does not “own” the ledger.

Use cases. Bank corridors, on-demand liquidity, tokenized Treasuries and stablecoins on XRPL, U.S. spot XRP ETFs with cumulative inflows reported in the low billions by mid-2026.

Company. Ripple. Sat in DTCC working groups and joined pilots moving tokenized Treasuries and card settlement across the ledger.

Market. Late August 2026 roughly 60% below the 2025 high after a violent year, among the stronger bounce names in mid-August.

Optimized for speed and low fees using proof-of-stake plus proof-of-history. Earlier years included outages. More recently it has been the busiest retail and tokenized-equity venue in crypto.

Use cases. Consumer payments, DeFi, and tokenized stocks / real-world assets. In 2026 Solana was reported as handling the vast majority of on-chain tokenized equity volume. Western Union selected it for a stablecoin settlement platform.

Stewards. Solana Labs originally built the client. Solana Foundation supports the ecosystem. Anza and others ship independent validator clients.

Market. Late August 2026 around $96, roughly two-thirds below the January 2025 peak.

Not a classic linear blockchain. Hashgraph consensus — gossip-about-gossip plus virtual voting — for high throughput, low fixed fees, and fast finality. HBAR pays fees and secures the network. Supply capped at 50 billion.

Use cases. Enterprise payments, provenance, identity, real-world asset settlement, and public-sector experiments including work tied to wholesale CBDC / tokenization projects.

Governance. Hedera Council — up to 39 global organizations, one vote each, each running a node. 2026 members have included Google, IBM, Boeing, FedEx, Dell, LG, Deutsche Telekom, Standard Bank, Nomura, Chainlink Labs, Accenture. Hedera Foundation funds ecosystem work.

Market. Far smaller than the first four names. Price has followed the 2026 risk-asset tape more than any single headline.

Designed to move small payments across borders and to issue assets — stablecoins, tokenized funds — that ordinary wallets can hold. Stellar Consensus Protocol. Fast and cheap. Related in origin story to Ripple; not the same system.

Use cases. Remittances, aid, stablecoin distribution, tokenized cash and funds. Less casino, more rails. SDF reported several billion dollars of real-world assets on the network by mid-2026.

Steward. Stellar Development Foundation, a non-profit. MoneyGram has used Stellar for a dollar stablecoin rail. DTCC commentary in 2026 pointed to Stellar as an early public-chain partner in tokenization work.

Market. Late August 2026 around $0.18 — still a long way from the 2018 print.