Smart Contract Platform

Bitcoin is the issuerless network whose supply rule survived a 2010 overflow through repaired validation and voluntary adoption; BTC conveys spend control, not company or reserve rights.

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.

XRP began with a fixed 100 billion supply before Ripple took its present name. The company received 80 billion, later put 55 billion into ledger escrow, and ended its SEC appeals in 2025 with a $125,035,150 judgment still standing.

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.

Hyperliquid grew from Jeff and iliensinc’s self-funded trading team into a Layer 1 whose exchange lives in chain state. HYPE’s 2024 user distribution aligned traders with that system, while HLP and the JELLY vote revealed who absorbs losses and when validators can rewrite a market’s ending.

Zcash began with ceremony-dependent Sprout, moved through Sapling to Halo-based Orchard, then had to disable and repair Orchard in 2026. NU6.3 now routes new shielded value into Ironwood and seals Orchard to inflows. ZEC remains optional-privacy proof-of-work money; Ironwood prepares recoverability but is not itself post-quantum protection.

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.

Stellar began with a 100-billion-unit payment ledger and a nonprofit distribution promise, then replaced its Ripple-derived consensus after an early fork. SCP, anchors and Soroban now share one network but not one authority: validators choose trust and upgrades, issuers control issued assets, and XLM balances do not select validators or exercise those separate controls.

Bitcoin Cash was born when Bitcoin’s block-size dispute became an incompatible ledger on 1 August 2017. Its history runs through emergency mining rules, the 2018 BSV split, the BCHN’s 2020 rise and rejection of Bitcoin ABC’s later 8% coinbase path, and later CashTokens, adaptive blocks and a richer transaction VM.

Canton Coin (CC) is the public utility token of the Global Synchronizer, one synchronization service inside Canton’s privacy-enabled network of financial applications. Its balances are public, its supply changes through governed reward minting and fee burns, and holding it grants usage rights rather than a claim on Digital Asset, Canton Foundation or assets issued by Canton applications.

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.

Litecoin began in October 2011 with published code, a scheduled public mining start and only 150 disclosed early LTC. It kept Bitcoin's UTXO model while choosing Scrypt, 2.5-minute blocks and an 84-million issuance path. SegWit in 2017 and optional MWEB in 2022 show how its developers, miners and validating users coordinate changes without a token vote.

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.

OKB began with a one-billion-token design, shed 700 million unissued units, split chain duties with OKT, and later became X Layer's gas asset with a stated 21 million supply. The current implementation lacks mint and burn methods, but its Ethereum proxy remains upgradeable and OKX's fee-benefit descriptions vary by market and date.

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.

Bittensor uses a blockchain to settle stake-weighted judgments about work produced in independent off-chain subnets. TAO and dTAO alpha markets coordinate rewards, but neither Yuma scores nor token prices are objective certificates of intelligence.

MemeCore is a live EVM Layer 1 whose blocks are produced by seven stake-ranked validators. Its code calls the engine PoSA; its broader Proof of Meme vision adds vault and cultural rewards, some of which still depend on unpublished criteria.

MNT grew from BitDAO’s 2023 one-brand vote into the gas and governance asset of Mantle Network. The 1:1 conversion, treasury burn, ZK-rollup upgrades and mETH products are related chapters, but they confer different rights and depend on different administrators.

Worldcoin (WLD) sits beside World ID rather than inside it. An Orb creates a proof-of-human credential, TFH runs World App, and World Foundation stewards the protocol and community treasury; privacy, governance and token rights therefore have different control boundaries.

Polkadot moved from its 2020 relay-chain launch to coretime in 2024. It reports a 2.1 billion DOT cap from March 14, 2026, while official issuance figures conflict and JAM remains a proposed successor.

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.

POL is the successor to MATIC, but its 1:1 migration did more than change a ticker. Polygon PoS adopted POL for gas and Ethereum-based staking, ongoing emissions began under governed contracts, and the Agglayer role remains partly a staged product design.

Ethereum Classic is the proof-of-work EVM chain that preserved Ethereum's no-fork state after The DAO recovery fork. ETC pays gas and miners under the 5M20 emission policy; chain ID 61, ETCHash and client adoption define today's protocol, while its history includes replay exposure and repeated majority-hash reorganizations.

Pi Network turned a daily phone check-in into a long migration queue: app rewards become transferable PI only after KYC, verification and Mainnet migration. Open Network now permits external connectivity, while supply, node selection and holder rights still require careful distinctions.

Cosmos Hub is one sovereign proof-of-stake chain in the wider Cosmos ecosystem. ATOM secures and governs that Hub; IBC links sovereign chains through light-client proofs, while only separately approved consumer chains borrow Hub security.

Stable is a USDT0-gas Layer 1 whose STABLE token sits behind the payment flow as the staking and governance asset. Its 100 billion supply is documented, but the published vesting clock contradicts itself and current control concentration is not fully disclosed.

Kaspa is a proof-of-work blockDAG whose GHOSTDAG ordering keeps parallel blocks in one ledger history. It launched without a premine, but protocol influence still depends on miners, software authors, community-funded multisigs and operators adopting hardfork releases.

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.

Beldex began as a Monero-derived privacy chain and switched to masternode proof of stake in 2021. Its native privacy and issuance rules are visible in code, while foundation rewards, application claims and EVM bridges add separate trust boundaries.

Filecoin turns storage into both a paid service and consensus weight. Clients make deals, providers lock FIL and prove sectors, while FVM adds contract logic; holding FIL alone grants none of those service, governance or Foundation rights.

XDC Network is an EVM-compatible Layer 1 whose native XDC coin succeeded the Ethereum crowd-sale token XDCE through a one-for-one migration. XDC pays gas and secures a KYC-gated validator set, but it is not a claim on the trade-finance assets the network is marketed to support.

FLR now secures an EVM network whose validators also supply FTSO prices and FDC attestations. Its 36-month FlareDrop ended in January 2026; governance has approved lower inflation, while Foundation execution and a powerful FAssets multisig remain material controls.

ARB is the delegated governance token for Arbitrum One and Nova, but it neither pays their gas nor runs their sequencers. Its history is a map of divided authority among the DAO, Foundation, validators, upgrade executors and a 9-of-12 Security Council.

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.

HASH pays, stakes and votes on Provenance Blockchain; it does not represent the loans or securities recorded there. Governance burned 5 billion HASH in May 2026, leaving 95 billion on-chain, while published dynamic-inflation tokenomics remain distinct from the live zero-inflation parameters.

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.

Dash began as XCoin, inherited Litecoin 0.8 code from Bitcoin's family, became Darkcoin and then Dash. Today miners order blocks, collateralized masternodes lock transactions and blocks, and only masternode votes direct a 20% treasury; ordinary DASH ownership alone grants none of those operating or voting powers.

VeChainThor is a public smart-contract network whose 2018 VEN-to-VET migration created a fixed-supply staking asset beside the variable gas token VTHO. Hayabusa replaced its KYC Proof-of-Authority set with delegated staking in 2025, while proposal authorization, software execution and enterprise contracts remain separate from a holder's token rights.

Bitcoin SV split from Bitcoin Cash in November 2018 and inherited Bitcoin's UTXO and halving lineage. Genesis changed its rules and Chronicle specifies further changes, while signed node alerts can freeze or reassign outputs. Spending depends on the rules participating nodes accept.

NIGHT is Midnight’s public 24-billion-unit token; DUST is its private, non-transferable fee resource. NIGHT began on Cardano before Midnight mainnet went live in March 2026. The production chain still uses federated governance and up to 13 permissioned nodes, while community voting, Treasury spending and validator rewards remain phased features.

Gnosis began with prediction markets, built the missing wallets and trading rails, joined GNO to xDai, and then proposed retiring the validator model it had spent years assembling. GNO currently stakes and signals; a 2026 EEZ proposal could change the first role.

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.

Terra Luna Classic is the original columbus-5 chain's asset, renamed LUNC after UST collapsed and a separate phoenix-1 network took the Terra name. LUNC now pays fees, backs staking and votes, but its trillion-scale supply, adjustable burn tax and validator-run upgrades do not create redemption or corporate rights.

Monad's parallel EVM reached public mainnet in November 2025, then changed from 400 ms blocks and 25 MON rewards to 300 ms and 18 MON. Its deeper story is how Foundation-delegated stake, Category Labs code and validator adoption govern a chain whose token has no documented holder ballot.

Stacks is a separate smart-contract chain anchored to Bitcoin through Proof of Transfer. STX pays gas, miner rewards and Stacking participation; it is neither BTC nor a redemption claim on the signer-controlled BTC behind sBTC.

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.

Kite (KITE) is the utility and staking token of an EVM-compatible Avalanche-technology L1 for AI-agent payments. Its live Agent Passport gives software agents passkey-approved budgets and payment sessions, but Passport made Base its default settlement chain in July 2026, so using the product does not imply paying in KITE. KITE remains documented for native chain gas, validator and module staking, rewards and protocol governance. It grants no company ownership or redemption, while upgradeable staking contracts and owner-controlled cross-chain tokens preserve separate administrator powers.

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.

Humanity Protocol turns palm print or vein checks into reusable credentials and uses H for fees, staking and proposed governance. Its privacy white paper and binding policy describe different biometric-data paths; H ownership neither owns an identity nor guarantees yield, votes, redemption or company rights.

DCR powers Decred's unusual chain of consent: miners propose blocks, five tickets are called to judge them, Politeia frames budgets and policy, and on-chain votes activate code or release treasury funds. A liquid coin is not automatically a vote, equity share or treasury claim.

Plasma launched a stablecoin-focused EVM chain and XPL in 2025. Its payment products are live, but universal gas sponsorship, open validator entry and XPL delegation remain bounded or unfinished.

ULTIMA is the native fee and voting coin of Ultima Chain, a TRON-derived DPoS network with 27 block producers. Its economics also run through operator-mediated URC-20/URC-10 conversion and DeFi-U splitting packages, so a 100,000-coin headline does not by itself explain every representation, reward pool or holder right.

Optimism grew from OP Mainnet into the OP Stack and Superchain: shared code, upgrades, governance and chain revenue. OP votes and now sits beside a treasury buyback program, but it does not pay gas or grant a fixed share of fees; fault proofs remain bounded by a single sequencer and fast upgrade keys.

Starknet is a general-purpose Ethereum validity rollup whose Cairo execution is proven with STARKs and settled through Ethereum contracts. It is separate from StarkEx, StarkWare’s application-specific scaling service. STRK now pays all Starknet transaction fees, supports delegation and phase-2 validator attestation, and carries protocol voting power; it is not equity or a claim on StarkWare or the Foundation. The network has distributed sequencing components and a live S-two prover, but block production, proving and upgrade control have not yet reached the permissionless end state described in its roadmap.

Akash is an on-chain market for independent CPU and GPU providers. Tenants choose bids and fund leases in ACT; AKT secures validators, governs upgrades and funds, pays gas, and supplies ACT's oracle-priced burn-mint route.

Kaia is the EVM Layer 1 launched on 29 August 2024 after Klaytn and Finschia approved a merger. KLAY continued 1:1 on the Klaytn-based chain while FNSA moved through a one-way swap at about 148.079656 KAIA each; validator councils, delegated stake and the Foundation still determine most executable power.

IOTA is the native asset of a Move-based, object-oriented delegated-proof-of-stake network. Rebased preserved Stardust balances through a 1:1 ledger-state transfer in May 2025, but changed decimals, fees, staking and supply policy; it did not create equity or a redemption claim on the IOTA Foundation.

TEL is moving from a 2020 two-decimal ERC-20 into an 18-decimal, multi-chain gas asset scheduled for 24 September 2026. Its real biography spans a Swiss association, permissioned telecom validators, corporate wallet and remittance services, and a Nebraska bank—none of which gives an ordinary TEL holder a claim on company or bank assets.

THORChain moves native assets between chains through bonded nodes and threshold-signed vaults. Its biography follows RUNE from settlement asset to security bond, then tests that design against the 2021 router exploits, the 2025 THORFi default and the 2026 GG20 vault capture.

THETA is Theta Network’s fixed-supply staking coin, distinct from inflationary gas and reward coin TFUEL. Active validators need 200,000 THETA and compete for 31 slots; Guardians seal checkpoints with 1,000 THETA, while Edge Nodes sell compute or bandwidth and do not gain consensus power merely by running work.

CHZ began as an 8,888,888,888-token Ethereum issue and now pays gas and secures Chiliz Chain. Dragon8 made supply inflationary, while validator-gated chain governance and Socios Fan Token polls confer narrower powers than ownership of Chiliz or a sports club.

Zano is a privacy-first layer-one where standard transactions hide sender, receiver, amount and asset type. Its live hybrid PoW/Zarcanum consensus, uncapped issuance and issuer-controlled Confidential Assets make privacy distinct from ownership and governance rights.

eCash is the November 2020 Bitcoin Cash ABC chain expressed in XEC after a one-to-one-million redenomination, not a replacement token. SHA-256 proof of work writes its history while eCash Avalanche adds stake-weighted Post-Consensus and, since November 2025, Pre-Consensus. Its unusual story is also a story of policy: each block divides rewards among miners, protocol development, ecosystem funding and stakers.

APE began in 2022 as the ballot and ecosystem currency around BAYC, but its last decisive DAO vote in June 2025 abolished tokenholder governance and authorized the transfer of the remaining organization’s assets and operations to ApeCo. The fixed one-billion ERC-20 now functions chiefly as ApeChain gas and an ecosystem payment asset; it is not equity, a BAYC, an IP licence, a treasury share or a redemption claim.

Ozone Chain is a live EVM network with native OZO, chain ID 4000 and four published QBFT validators. Its public code shows QRN bytes entering Linux entropy and file-based peer permissioning; it does not show post-quantum user signatures. NTRU/Kyber documentation conflicts, token vesting is not proven onchain, and DAO voting remains undocumented.

Arweave uses AR, SPoRA and uniquely packed storage replicas to fund a permanent ledger. Its endowment is a protocol model with explicit assumptions, while gateways, content policies, upgrades and AO remain separate operational layers.

NEO is the indivisible governance asset of Neo N3, not GAS and not a Neo X gas token. Its story runs from Antshares in 2014 through a renamed 2017 network and a mandatory 2021 chain migration to a two-chain system whose votes, rewards, bridge and upgrade powers do not amount to equity in the organizations that build it.

Onyxcoin (XCN) changed units in the CHN conversion, kept the asset through a rename and expanded into Base and Onyx Layer 1. The stXCN voting route announced in 2026 is distinct from legacy Ethereum governance.

Vaulta is the continuing EOS blockchain under a new name and the native ticker A. Its 2025 one-for-one token swap preserved accounts, contracts and history; the Web3 banking strategy does not turn A into a bank deposit or a claim on partner assets.

The Graph is a blockchain-data indexing protocol whose subgraphs turn chain events into queryable APIs. GRT coordinates Indexers, Curators and Delegators, while the live protocol runs principally on Arbitrum and remains upgradeable through Council-governed contracts.

Derive grew from Lyra's options AMM into a three-part derivatives system: an OP Stack rollup, onchain margin protocol, and company-operated orderbook. DRV replaced LYRA at 1:1 and becomes governance weight only through stDRV; it is not equity or a withdrawal claim. A centralized matcher, permissioned sequencer deployment, external oracle data, bridges and upgrade paths remain distinct control surfaces.

Sentient brings search tools, model fingerprinting and AI challenges together in GRID. SENT’s proposed job is to fund and connect that work; its reserved 2% reward pool and separate minting ceiling describe different economic choices.

Nexus turned a general-purpose proving project into a finance-focused Layer 1. Its chain and NEX gas token are live; its exchange, USDX and mainnet proof coverage remain separate launches. That gap—and who controls the token and bridges while it closes—is the NEX story.

WEMIX grew from Wemade Tree’s 2019 blockchain-game platform into the native coin of WEMIX3.0. MIR4, the 2022 mainnet migration, a circulation-disclosure dispute, the 2024 Brioche burn and the 2025 PLAY Bridge theft each changed what users had to trust.

Sonic’s native S inherited Fantom balances 1:1 but added one-way migration, new issuance, validator staking, FeeM and an upgradeable Ethereum Gateway with distinct operator controls.

DYDX is the native gas, staking and governance token of the Cosmos-based dYdX Chain, not the same asset as Ethereum ethDYDX. The one-way migration bridge stopped receiving Chain recognition on June 13, 2025, and only 15% of current net protocol revenue is assigned to the validator/delegator distribution module.

RAIL is the Ethereum governance token at 0xe76c…a33d. RAIL is not required to use RAILGUN privacy, but RAIL itself may be shielded. Shielded commitments and zero-knowledge proofs protect private balances; locking RAIL grants voting power and conditional treasury-allocation eligibility, not ownership of other users’ pooled assets. PPOI checks selected lists, while governance controls upgrades, fees, verification keys and eligible tokens.

ZKsync developed from Lite’s Ethereum payments into Era and a network of public and permissioned chains. Its ZK token governs upgrades and token programs; Lite’s 2026 closure, a paused staking pilot and the planned EraVM transition show how much remains in motion.

GALA is the ecosystem token that survived a 2023 Ethereum contract replacement and became GalaChain gas. Its 50 billion cap, dynamic emissions, node rewards and burns coexist with upgrade, mint, pause and blocklist roles—and none gives holders ownership of Gala’s games, music, films or companies.

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.

PLUME is the gas and staking asset of Plume chain, but its biography cannot be reduced to “RWA token.” Ethereum PLUME, native PLUME and WPLUME are separate representations; the rollup, bridges, validator system, upgrade roles and legal issuer each control a different part of the promise.

DigiByte is a UTXO proof-of-work chain launched on January 10, 2014. Five mining algorithms share block production, DigiShield and MultiShield retarget difficulty, and DGB follows monthly subsidy decay toward a 21 billion cap rather than a four-year halving.

Horizen’s ZEN crossed three different systems: a 2017 privacy-focused PoW coin, the EON sidechain era, and a 2025 Base migration. Today ZEN is a capped ERC-20 and optional staking/governance asset; ETH pays gas on the live L3, and ordinary transfers are not private.

Qtum launched on 13 September 2017 with a difficult promise: keep Bitcoin’s UTXO ledger while running Ethereum-style contracts. Its Account Abstraction Layer made that combination work, but also committed the chain to maintaining two upstream traditions. Offline staking, FastLane and later Shanghai, Dencun and Pectra releases show how that original choice kept shaping QTUM.

XPR is the inflationary native coin of a gas-free DPoS chain; WebAuth, Metal Pay and Metal Blockchain are related Metallicus products, not holder rights.

BOT is the native coin of BOT Chain, an EVM network identified by chain ID 677. The chain already supports gas payments, validator staking, BDEX and a USDT bridge, while its agent launchpad and distributed-computing market were still planned in August 2026. The project publishes a 150 million supply ceiling, but privileged system roles can alter reward, burning and contract settings.

SOON detaches SVM execution for Ethereum, BNB and Base rollups, then reconnects it through roots, Hyperlane and LayerZero. Its multi-chain token, inflation, multisigs, governance and legal issuer reveal where control remains.

Pearl (PRL) is the native UTXO coin of Pearl Research Labs' proof-of-useful-work Layer 1, live since April 27, 2026. Its consensus checks matrix multiplication certificates, while the provenance and commercial usefulness of each workload remain a separate question.

BEAM is the gas, staking and governance asset of the Avalanche-based Beam gaming network. The migration converted 1 MC into 100 BEAM; this asset is unrelated to the Mimblewimble privacy coin of the same name.

Data Network is the renamed Story Network: a chain-ID-1514 Layer 1 whose native IP coin became DATA without a new token contract. Its supply, staking, DAO rights and Foundation controls survived the pivot from programmable IP toward traceable AI data.

QRL has used stateful XMSS signatures and Proof-of-Work since its 2018 mainnet launch. Its planned PoS successor is public testnet software, making migration and control boundaries as important as the quantum claim.

At 23:51 UTC on December 6, 2025—December 7 in Abu Dhabi—the public ADI repository removed its mint and burn functions. The foundation announced the token on December 8. The reviewed V2 left 999,999,999 units and the route from Ethereum to gas on ADI Chain, while a Safe requiring two of three signatures retained authority to replace the implementation.

PROM survived a data-market origin, a Polygon CDK chain launch and an AI-agent pivot; the fixed token is identifiable, while bridge reconciliation, live control and holder rights remain only partly public.

GAS is Neo N3’s divisible fee token, separate from the NEO ballot. Its monetary machine once made 5 GAS every 15 seconds and now makes 1 every 3 seconds; fees burn, network fees return to block producers, and a bridge carries GAS into a second governance system on Neo X.

Qubic issues one trillion native QUBIC units per weekly epoch and burns part of them. UPoW ranks candidates for 676 Computor seats, and 451 matching votes finalize ticks. Holding QUBIC does not confer a protocol ballot; reviewed sources do not grant Aigarth ownership through that holding.

AIOZ is one economic unit recorded on three kinds of ledger: an inflationary Cosmos/EVM mainnet coin and owner-controlled Ethereum and BNB bridge wrappers. The native coin stakes, votes and pays for DePIN services; wrappers cannot. Its biography is the accounting story that prevents bridge inventory, protocol minting and infrastructure revenue from becoming the same claim.

HoloToken (HOT) is a fixed-supply Ethereum ERC-20 created in the 2018 presale as a placeholder claim on future HoloFuel hosting credits. HoloFuel has not launched as a production hosting currency, Holo Limited currently offers no conversion or redemption, and current Holo hosting is priced and settled in USD or EUR.

xDAI is Gnosis Chain's native 18-decimal gas asset, minted and burned by a bridge now backed through Ethereum USDS/DAI flows. It is separate from GNO, the 1-GNO-per-validator staking asset, and its convertibility depends on 4-of-7 bridge validators plus an upgradeable 8-of-15 governor system.

KTA began as a fixed one-billion ERC-20 on Base, then acquired a second life as Keeta mainnet's native consensus balance. Official metadata connects the two through an operated anchor. Base ownership is renounced, but representatives, anchor APIs, native network permissions and a changeable community license remain separate control points; KTA is not equity or a bank deposit.

SUPER kept its contract while SuperFarm shed a no-code NFT-farm thesis, paused GigaMart and became SuperVerse; current value routes through games, staking and Blackhole, with owner and legal limits intact.

Kusama is a sovereign Polkadot-SDK network whose native KSM moved with balances, staking and OpenGov from the Relay Chain to Kusama Asset Hub in October 2025. KSM pays fees, secures validators, buys coretime and votes; it has no maximum supply, and current runtime parameters bound annual inflation between 2.5% and 10% around a 75% ideal stake ratio.

TFUEL is Theta’s spendable native fuel, not its governance stake. A five-billion genesis balance became 7,456,043,401 by September 5, 2026 because code issues fixed 48-TFUEL and 38-TFUEL block rewards while fees and Edge payments burn portions. THETA secures Validator and Guardian consensus; TFUEL pays gas, stakes to Elite Edge Nodes and settles EdgeCloud work.

ON pairs delivered proof software with a token story whose official one-billion allocation is not yet reconciled to 600 million Ethereum and 100 million BSC base units.

Linea began as Consensys' zkEVM rollup and later added LINEA, a token that shares L2 revenue with ETH burns but does not pay gas or vote on-chain. Its 2025 design replaced an earlier holder-governance promise with Consortium stewardship.

Metal Blockchain calls METAL a hard-capped Layer 0 coin, yet its current allocation page adds 71 million more tokens than the stated cap. Its real biography lies in that unreconciled ledger—and in the gap between holder governance, Foundation validators and subnet teams that actually ship upgrades.

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.

Mina's famous 22KB is a proof of the latest state, not a zip file containing every payment. Producers still need ledger state, archives keep history, and SNARK workers sell proof labor. That division made a small verifier possible—and made MINA an uncapped reward currency for the larger machine behind it.

ZIG began as a two-billion-token passport into Zignaly’s managed-trading platform. It now names a 2.5-billion native coin securing ZIGChain. The interesting history is the seam: old contracts, a decimal-changing bridge, new inflation and votes, and a platform whose trading marketplace has already changed course.

Flow is the proof-of-stake chain Dapper Labs began after CryptoKitties exposed consumer-scale limits. FLOW pays fees and storage, secures four validator roles and fuels both Cadence and Flow EVM, but it does not by itself grant equity, redemption or an automatic binding vote.

CROSS is a game chain built around a promise that sounds simple: let players carry value out of a game. Its real biography is more complicated. A fixed-billion draft, a Foundation-owned consensus layer, game-company signing keys, fee payers and a BNB checkpoint divide ownership among several systems.

Enjin Coin began in 2017 as Ethereum collateral for game items, then followed Enjin through JumpNet, Efinity and a 2023 Layer 1 migration. Native ENJ now pays for and secures a two-chain NFT system whose supply policy differs from the original fixed billion.

Ravencoin launched without a token sale or founder reserve, then made named assets part of its own consensus rules. That choice simplified issuance but tied every RVN payment and issued asset to the same software. A 2020 inflation flaw and a separate 2026 chain split show how miners, node operators and maintainers repaired two different kinds of failure.

The XPHERE Foundation presents v2 as the EVM-compatible successor to its troubled proprietary chain. Its design opens xpHash mining to supported hardware while reserving Main Chain finality for an approved Union.

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.

Kava began with USDX debt positions on its Cosmos chain, then added an EVM without deleting those native markets. Inflation is currently zero, while live 2026 state shows CDP and Lend still operating under the caps that proposal 215 passed and proposal 221 failed to replace.

Li Jun launched Ontology as a trust network in 2017. A NEO-hosted distribution led to an independent 2018 chain, ONTO and ONT ID; staking, EVM compatibility and a verified-human-data strategy later changed how ONT connects to the product.

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.

Concordium requires an approved off-chain identity before a regular account is created, then divides exceptional disclosure among courts, two of three Privacy Guardians and the identity provider. CCD is currently minted at 4% a year; holders elect seven of nine Governance Committee members, while the Foundation Board remains the final approver in the published framework.

Ontology Gas is the spendable half of Ontology's dual-token design: ONT stakes and elects nodes, while ONG pays native and EVM execution. The one-billion reserve was pre-assigned to the ONT contract, redirected from passive holders to stakers in 2020, and cut to an 800-million hard cap by a 2025 Triones vote and mainnet burn. Node-set reward ratios, bridge handling and software upgrades matter more than a generic 'gas token' label.

ZetaChain began in 2021 with a wager that one validator set could observe and transact across Bitcoin and smart-contract chains. Mainnet put external assets behind shared TSS custody and role-controlled Gateways; in 2026 Anuma went public and the project announced that its cross-chain connectors would be wound down as it shifted to AI memory.

Creditcoin began as Gluwa’s single-purpose ledger for loan performance, then rebuilt on Substrate and again as an EVM chain. The market asset tracked here is still the separate Ethereum vesting token G-CRE, listed as CTC; its one-way Foundation swap pays CTC (EVM) on Creditcoin rather than staking-ready CTC (Native).

Oasis grew from Dawn Song’s privacy-computing research into a proof-of-stake network with separate ParaTimes. Sapphire moved from testnet to mainnet in 2022, OPL connected its confidentiality to other chains in 2023, and ROFL took attested code off-chain in 2025—without making hardware, keys or external data automatically trustworthy.

DUSK moved from Ethereum and BSC onto its own mainnet in January 2025. It pays gas and supports staking, but privacy depends on network operations: the Rusk 1.7 Boreas restart paused new Phoenix transactions while Moonlight stayed available. Published sources establish neither binding holder votes over upgrades nor claims on assets issued by network users.

CELO began as the reserve, staking and governance asset of a mobile-first payments chain. Celo preserved that history and every account balance when it became an Ethereum L2 in March 2025; today CELO is native gas and an ERC-20-compatible balance, while stablecoins and rollup operations follow separate control paths.

Yaoqi Jia’s AltLayer began with disposable rollups for short bursts of demand, then proposed VITAL, MACH and SQUAD to add restaked security to application chains. MACH reached mainnet deployments and ALT gained staking uses, but operators, MACH administrators and the token-owner Safe still hold distinct powers. By 2026 the company had also moved into on-chain AI agents.

REAL’s ASSET was minted on Ethereum on 24 April 2026, before the network meant to use it. A finite 75,000 USDC campaign is live, while testnet, mainnet and investor portals remain milestones. The reported 35,714,286-warrant pilot has no linked instrument-level documents.

Astar began as Sota Watanabe’s Plasm Network, then outgrew a Layer-2 label and became a Polkadot application chain. Its unusual builder-staking economy survived a short-lived zkEVM expansion; Astar later closed that chain, carried ASTR into Sony and Startale’s Soneium, and kept native-chain governance distinct from the new bridge contract’s admin keys.

Nervos CKB turned blockchain state into a scarce capacity measured in CKBytes. Its Cell model, NC-MAX proof of work and Nervos DAO connect storage, miner pay and dilution—but a DAO deposit is compensation for secondary issuance, not staking or a protocol ballot.