The BEST Layer 1 Blockchains in 2022 – Top Layer 1 Coins & Tokens to buy in the bear market

There are hundreds of Layer 1 blockchains in the crypto space, but do you know what are the BEST Layer 1 projects to invest in during the bear market? In this article, we will rank the TOP 20 largest Layer 1 blockchains in the world from S tier (the best) to D tier (the worst).

Ethereum (ETH)

Pros:

ETH is the leading and most beautiful Layer 1 blockchain out there. It’s what got many of us into crypto in the first place. It’s the most well-known and the most adopted with the most devs who choose to build on it without being bribed by token incentives. It also just works! It doesn’t have huge outages like Solana and it just chugs along.

Cons:

It’s true that it has expensive gas fees, but people are willing to pay for that, so that should tell you something about their product-market fit. Furthermore, they have a long-term plan for scalability now that the merge is complete and future updates like roll-ups will become more mature. Read more about our take on the Ethereum ecosystem in 2022.

Just ask yourself out of all these Layer 1 blockchains, which ones will still be around 10 years later? Our bet is on Ethereum. As a result, it goes in the S tier.

NEAR Protocol (NEAR)

Pros:

NEAR has a stellar team and their sharding technology is quite impressive. They also have a new algorithmic stablecoin called USN. It is super interesting, and not quite as risky as Luna’s UST. Besides that, they have an amazing developer experience where devs can earn royalties from their smart contracts while we, the end-users, can enjoy a gas-free experience.

Cons:

Near is kind of early in terms of adoption.

We’re putting NEAR protocol as A tier. They are borderline A-tier though, definitely not close to s-tier.

Avalanche (AVAX)

Pros:

They have a great team and interesting technology. They are fast to finality. Their novel consensus mechanism makes them more resilient to certain types of attacks. They made a great decision of having an EVM-compatible chain out of the gate because that’s helped them get some solid adoption.

Cons:

There’s been some debate on Twitter as to whether or not Avalanche’s design is truly the best approach but a lot of that is just theoretical, so we’ll have to wait and see.

For now, we’re giving them an A.

Polkadot (DOT)

Pros:

In late 2021, they started rolling out their Parachains. Their whole Relaychain-Parachain model lets chains share security but also stay flexible, like different apps can customize their chains to meet their needs. Dr. Gavin Wood, the founder of Polkadot is also widely respected across the crypto world.

Cons:

Polkadot’s approach has always been slow. Their growth and adoption have not been impressive.

We put Polkadot on A tier but it is a borderline A-tier like NEAR protocol.

Cosmos (ATOM)

Pros:

Cosmos is one of the biggest projects in the interoperability space. There are so many notable projects built using the Cosmos DSK. Binance Smart Chain, Terra and crypto.com chain were all built using their DSK. Those projects don’t necessarily have to use the ATOM token but if they enable the IBC (Inter-Blockchain) bridge to connect to other projects, then they will have to bite ATOM. Moreover, Terra can completely shut off their own blockchain without affecting the other projects across the Cosmos universe. Last but not least, they have a ton of devs in their ecosystem.

Cons:

ATOM token isn’t the best at capturing value. However, it is looking better and better as more projects enable their bridges.

We’re placing Cosmos in the A tier.

Solana (SOL)

Pros:

There’s a lot to like about Solana. They have a popping developer scene and they’re backed by the formidable Samuel Bankman-Fried and FTX empire. When their network is running smoothly, it truly is a joy to use.

Cons:

There have been way too many network issues with Solana, from DDOS attacks to full-on outages. These are serious. Some of them last for days and have hurt their DeFi users. For example, if you can’t send through transactions to top off your loans, you’d get liquidated for no fault of your own.

We’re putting Solana at the B tier. If they ever do fix their network issues, then we will move them up the ladder.

Phantom (FTM)

Pros:

Phantom has experienced a massive DeFi boom during the bull market. They had a strong incentives program that got builders to come and it seemed like developers genuinely enjoyed building on their blockchain.

Cons:

Phantom’s move to DeFi always seemed a bit opportunistic. For the longest time, they were focused on the Internet of Things and smart cities, but when Andre Cronje came, he pushed Phantom toward DeFi instead. That turned out to be a smart move that helped their adoption rocket. However, they also had an over-reliance on Andre who’s a true rock star in the DeFi space but he’s known for being fickle and hopping from project to project. It was no surprise when he announced his departure from DeFi a few months ago and subsequently causing FTM’s price to crash.

We’re putting phantom at B tier.

Elrond (EGLD)

Pros:

They have full sharding implemented and they’ve built their own virtual machine which they say is much better than the Ethereum virtual machine. Staking is quite easy to do in Elrond. They also have a maximum cap instead of perpetual inflation, so that’s good.

Cons:

Their team is just okay. Unfortunately, there are barely any external devs building in their ecosystem. That’s why the team has to resort to building out their own DeFi primitives and that’s not a good approach because it’s going to take them forever.

We have to put them in the B tier.

Harmony (ONE)

Pros:

They have sharding. They’re fast and cheap. They have good partnerships too. Some good projects are running on them.

Cons:

Their network still has some issues because they’re not able to handle a big wave of activities hitting their network at once.

For that reason, we put them in the B tier.

Cardano (ADA)

Pros:

Cardano has made some progress recently. They do have smart contracts out now and some early tractions with their DApps.

Cons:

Cardano’s valuation is divorced from its fundamentals. Charles Hoskinson, its founder, is usually criticized for overpromising but underdelivering.

We’re giving them a C.

Binance Smart Chain (BSC)

Pros:

Binance Smart Chain is backed by CZ, one of the most influencers in the Crypto space and Binance, the biggest centralized Crypto exchange. it has all the advantages that any project would dream of.

Cons:

BSC may be one of the most opportunistic projects out there. CZ and Binance decided to launch their own network when they saw Ethereum struggle with demand. They literally just cloned Ethereum but tweaked some parameters to make it faster and cheaper. They never really thought about how the state of the network would get too bloated and how validators would struggle with operating it. As time passed, a lot of issues popped up. People called out the Binance devs for not even fixing the most basic issues. It looks like BSC is an afterthought for Binance and they don’t really care to dedicate the time and resources to improve it. Worse still, it’s just a super centralized project and their ecosystem is full of rug pools and meme coins.

This is an easy C for us.

Stacks (STX)

Pros:

Their team is solid and their mission of building on Bitcoin is applaudable. Their proof of transfer is a fascinating system that ties their consensus protocol to Bitcoin. Their CityCoins project that launched in Miami and New York was a cool idea.

Cons:

when it comes to adoption, it’s just been disappointing. Maybe because builders don’t care about being tied to Bitcoin at the end of the day. Stacks also made a big mistake by becoming the first ever registered ICO with the SEC because they kind of admitted that they were a Security. As a result, U.S exchanges were unwilling to list their token for the longest time for these reasons.

We’re putting Stacks at the C tier for now.

Kadena (KDA)

Pros:

Kadena is a lesser-known project that had quite a vocal community during the bull market. They have this interesting technology called “Chainweb” which lets them use Proof-of-Work like Bitcoin but with much faster speeds. They also created their own smart contract language and they claimed to have solved the blockchain trilemma – like every project does.

Cons:

Their super high TPS numbers are misleading because it depends on them using a private chain in their calculations and there are also concerns about their network design leading to broken composability and longer time to finality. Their team is just okay and their tokenomics isn’t the best.

For those reasons, we’re putting Kadena in the C tier.

Waves (WAVES)

Pros:

This project has been around since 2016 but they were never really able to find their footing. Initially, they were focused on letting people launch their own custom tokens but now they’re more focused on your typical DeFi and NFT stuff. Recently they got some buzz because of their algorithmic stablecoin called “Neutrino”.

Cons:

Neutrino was unsustainable like LUNA’s UST. It lost its peg for quite some time and is still not all the way back at one dollar yet.

We rank Waves at s C tier.

Radix (XRD)

Pros:

This is definitely a lesser-known project but their technology is quite fresh. They are building the best blockchain for DeFi and to achieve that, they want to maintain atomic composability at all times. They also have their own smart contract language called “Scrypto” that’s supposedly better than Solidity.

Cons:

There is not much traction and adoption around the project.

We put them in the C tier for now.

Algorand (ALGO)

Pros:

Their founder is a famous professor from MIT and they’ve built some impressive technology.

Cons:

They are more focused on enterprise and government use cases though, like supporting central bank digital currencies. It’s no surprise that they’re quite centralized. Because of their enterprise focus, they don’t have a lot of stuff for the retail audience and that’s why you don’t see a lot of people cheering for Algorand on social media.

We’re putting Algorand on the C tier.

Terra (LUNA)

Pros:

Their enjoyed rocket ship growth until the epic collapse. Some of their apps Chai app or Mirror protocol are pretty good, but their entire ecosystem went down with their stablecoin LUNA.

Cons:

Their business model is a Ponzi scheme. They had an arrogant founder Do Kwon. While it sucks that so many people got hurt by Terra’s fall, on the bright side, it crashed before it got so big that it would have taken down the entire crypto space.

Absolutely a D. It’s history now.

TRON (TRX)

Pros:

There is nothing positive about TRON.

Cons:

This project was honestly just a massive plan for Justin Sun to get rich. Did you know that he sold a ton of his TRON for ETH and now he owns more ETH than Vitalik Buterin himself? I think that says everything about his intentions if he prefers to hold ETH over TRX. Furthermore, Justin just copies everything that’s successful. TRON’s whitepaper was a copy of Ethereum’s whitepaper. His new stablecoin USDD is a copy of LUNA’s UST. He pretty much added zero value to the space and yet he’s a billionaire. When TRON acquired BitTorrent, one of their executives said that TRON was a “marketing machine layered on a thin veneer of technology” – that sums it up perfectly.

D tier, the garbage tier. It’s a no-brainer.

EOS (EOS)

Pros:

We have trouble finding anything good to say about this project.

Cons:

EOS is famous for its year-long ICO, raising a record four billion dollars. Despite raising so much money, they didn’t even do anything valuable with it besides making their founders rich. They had a constitution that was laughable. Their governance process was also a complete mess. Now their devs have all left and it’s honestly a ghost town. The market has really spoken because EOS wasn’t even able to reach its previous all-time high even in a new bull market.

We’re putting it in the D tier.

Internet Computer (ICP)

Pros:

It’s almost impossible to say something nice here. Crypto would be better off without such a project.

Cons:

They might have had the worst token launch of all time. ICP hit the market at super high prices and then proceeded to dump 95% even during the bull market. People accused the team of misconduct and the whole thing left a bad taste in our mouths. Their marketing approach is full of super buzzwords and they decided to rename everything. They call their smart contracts “Canisters” instead. People have wondered if they are even truly crypto because they require KYC for their identity solution and their code is closed source.

It’s off to the D tier for ICP.

Final words

Here you have it, the best Layer 1 blockchain projects – all ranked and ordered from the best to the worst. Let us know if there’s anything you disagree with or if there’s another Layer 1 that we did not rate that you want us to include.