[lostmsu]

Bitcoin, for being the original.

Ethereum, for providing smart contracts, that enabled many ICOs.

Monero/ZCash for being private.

All other currencies are mostly just clones of the 3 (meaning they can suffer from 50%+1 attacks), or remove the main feature: trustless transactions.

In general, unless a currency provides a novel consensus algorithm, that brings something new to the table, it would actually be better off as a token on one of the above. If it is not, likely it is a scam/money grab.

All other projects do not really need blockchain, with a rare exception.

Disclosure: I own ETH and BTC.

[jki275]

There are many cryptocurrencies that are not clones of those three. Monero and ZCash aren't even related to each other. Cardano is not a clone. Tezos is not a clone. Stellar is not a clone. Qtum is not a clone. NEO is not a clone. I could go on all day with cryptocurrencies that are not clones of any of the three you mentioned.

ETH enabled a vast amount of scammers and BS artists. Monero isn't actually private, it's been broken. Bitcoin is the original, but even it has changed many times over the years.

[lostmsu]

I am still very skeptical of PoS. To my knowledge, no PoS system provided an adequate proof of correctness as of today.

Stellar is not trustless.

> ETH enabled a vast amount of scammers and BS artists.

I believe this is not relevant to a technical discussion.

You are probably right about Monero's limits in comparison to ZCash. But, TBH, I am not following their development, because I prefer lack of anonymity.

[jki275]

I didn't say anything about POS, but if you want to discuss it IOHK has done a significant amount of academic work in the field, which has been deployed with Cardano. Tezos is in operation now and has been for over a year doing delegated POS, and they're at the same level of academic rigor as the IOHK team.

My comment about ETH is an explanation of why it causes people to be anti-cryptocurrency. Its only actual working purpose is to enable scams. That's certainly relevant in a technical discussion. BTW, ETH didn't do smart contracts first. They were in bitcoin back at the very beginning, then were removed as a security problem. ETH proved Satoshi right, they've showed the world exactly how not to implement smart contracts.

[lostmsu]

The academic part would be interesting. The time of operation matters less, as if there is a fundamental flaw, it would go in flames over night. Anecdotally that point was demonstrated by a 50%+1 attack on one of PoW clones, which worked fine until someone actually bothered to make it happen.

I still don't think your comment on ETH and scams is either objective, or relevant to a technical discussion.

As for smart contracts - Turing completeness is a substantial difference from the development point of view. The idea of gas seems to be novel. The fact, that people made mistakes in the contracts themselves only shows their incompetence in developing serious contracts. It has nothing to do with the platform.

[jki275]

ETH has objectively enabled the entire scam ICO market. right, wrong, indifferent, purposeful or not -- that's its entire usefulness, its entire value, and the entire usefulness of "smart contracts" at the moment.

Smart contracts in general have not been well thought through or implemented correctly. It has a lot to do with the platform if the platform enables it. Gas is nothing new, it's just a transaction fee.

Turing completeness in smart contracts is a bug, not a feature -- which is why it was taken out of bitcoin in 2010.