GMCI Layer 1 Index

Ethereum is the programmable chain whose community chose a recovery history after The DAO, then replaced proof-of-work with a live proof-of-stake engine without swapping ETH.

BNB began in 2017 as a Binance fee token, left Ethereum for Binance Chain in 2019 and became gas and stake on BSC in 2020. The 2022 Token Hub exploit and validator-coordinated halt exposed the human decisions behind its two-chain design; the 2024 Fusion and two burn mechanisms reshaped it again.

Solana grew from Anatoly Yakovenko’s idea for a verifiable clock into a fast proof-of-stake network; outages, FTX’s collapse and new validator clients then forced it to prove that speed, recovery and independence are different engineering problems.

TRON began with a 2017 content-platform sale, became an independent DPoS chain in 2018 and found its largest observable use as a rail for USDT. TRX now links resource fees, staking, SR elections, issuance and burns.

Cardano began as Hoskinson and Wood’s research-led, federated chain; successive eras moved block production, programmability and finally protocol-and-treasury decisions into wider community hands.

Telegram sold future Grams before a court stopped distribution and Pavel Durov ended the project in 2020. Newton developers carried testnet2 into The Open Network, while the separate Free TON became Everscale. Telegram later returned as the network's driving force and largest validator, and in June 2026 the existing Toncoin was renamed Gram without a token migration.

Hedera began with Leemon Baird's patented hashgraph algorithm and Mance Harmon's wager that global institutions could govern a public ledger. Accounts opened to everyone in 2019; the patents gave way to Apache 2.0 and then Hiero. Yet the live network still draws a firm line: HBAR stake influences consensus, while Council organizations decide software, nodes, pricing and treasury.

Mysten Labs’ five co-founders built Sui by turning Move resources into explicit onchain objects. The chain launched in 2023, changed its consensus engine, survived repeated validator-software halts and approved the Cetus recovery proposal with 90.9% of counted stake, excluding Foundation stake—events that make its speed, fixed supply and human control easier to separate.

Avalanche began with an anonymous consensus paper, then a Cornell team turned its repeated-sampling idea into a 2020 network with three specialized chains. Cortina later retired the live DAG, while Etna separated application-chain validation from the 2,000-AVAX Primary Network bond. AVAX still secures the Primary Network, where rewards mint and fees burn supply.

CRO's defining history is a supply reversal: Crypto.com celebrated a 70 billion-token burn in 2021, then Cronos governance restored 70 billion to a Strategic Reserve in 2025. The token now connects Cronos POS and Cronos EVM, while the zkEVM Alpha is winding down and the scope of the new Cronos App remains a product question separate from token-holder rights.

NEAR began as a code-writing AI experiment, became a staged sharded blockchain, and now supplies Chain Signatures and Intents for multichain actions. Its wider agent-economy thesis remains partly a roadmap, while NEAR's concrete roles are fees, storage, staking and value transfer.

Internet Computer runs canisters across subnet blockchains and lets NNS neurons change network rules, while DFINITY engineers, approved node operators, and each app's controllers retain different and consequential powers.

Silvio Micali’s team built Algorand around a new lottery for every block, then watched treasury, software and governance grow into separate centers of lasting power.

Aptos carries Move and Block-STM out of the Diem engineering lineage, but APT rights are defined by stake and governance code. Its 2026 supply-cap vote also shows why approved policy, executable payload and live protocol state must be checked separately.

Injective embeds spot and derivative orderbooks in a Cosmos chain. Its weekly winner-take-all Burn Auction evolved into a monthly Community BuyBack in October 2025; committed INJ is burned, but validator issuance continues and holders do not automatically receive exchange revenue.

Sei is a delegated proof-of-stake Layer 1 that grew from a Cosmos/CosmWasm trading chain into a parallel EVM. SEI pays gas, secures validators and carries governance weight; it is not equity in Sei Labs or a claim on Foundation reserves.

CFX is the uncapped native coin shared by Conflux Core Space and its EVM-compatible eSpace. PoW Tree-Graph orders blocks, PoS adds finality, and CFX pays fees, storage, staking and governance—but grants no equity, partner claim or protected price.

Tezos is a self-amending proof-of-stake blockchain whose native tez (XTZ) pays fees, secures baking and carries delegate voting power. Its protocol can replace itself after a five-period baker vote; staking and delegation assign different reward, lock and slashing rights, while Etherlink runs as a separately governed EVM Smart Rollup above Tezos layer 1.

MultiversX is the continuation of Elrond: ERD was redenominated 1,000:1 into EGLD in 2020, while the 2022 name change did not create another coin. Its biography separates sharded validation, fee-offset issuance, stake-based governance, validator upgrades and optional account guardians from corporate or redemption rights.

Casper Network is a proof-of-stake Layer 1 whose history turns upgradeability into a control question. CSPR pays execution costs and bonds validators; Highway gave way to Zug in 2025, while validator votes and staged node software—not token ownership alone—change protocol and issuance rules.

aelf separated applications into indexed chains and let ELF voters choose block producers. Its August 2026 incident showed the other side of that design: producers paused AELF and tDVV while investigators traced 155 transactions and five .NET payloads.

Zilliqa began as a 2015 sharding experiment, launched its chain and Scilla separately in 2019, then removed the old shards, migrated to proof of stake, and was forced by a 2026 signing failure to retire its last legacy transaction path.