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Blockchain Comparison

18 March 2017

Update: For a more detailed and frequently updated comparison of Nxt and Ardor with other blockchain platforms, also see this Comparison of Blockchain Platforms.

Category

Nxt

Ardor

NEM

Ethereum

Bitcoin

Launched

2013

2018

2015

2015

2009

Programming Language

Java

Java

Java

C++ / Go

C++

Open APIs

Block time

1 Min

1 Min

1 Min

15 Sec

10 Min

Tokens

1 Billion

1 Billion

9 Billion

94 Million

21 Million

Consensus

POS

POS

POI*

POW**

POW

Basic Building Blocks

Nxt

Ardor

NEM

Ethereum

Bitcoin

Generate Token

Text Messages

3rd party

Encrypted Messages

3rd party

Share Encrypted Messages

Prunable Data

Data Storage

40K

40K

Fee Based

80 bytes

Name Aliases

3rd party

Account Properties

3rd party

Multi Signature Transactions

3rd party

Phasing

✓ + logic

3rd party****

SPV Wallet

?

Light Client

?

Smart Contracts

Nxt

Ardor

NEM

Ethereum

Bitcoin

Programmable

Assets

ERC20 tokens

***

Decentralized Trading

***

Restricted Tokens

3rd party

Voting

3rd party****

Marketplace

3rd party

Anonymity

Coin Shuffling

Coin Shuffling

Coin Mixers

Advanced Features

Nxt

Ardor

NEM

Ethereum

Bitcoin

Parent/Child architecture

*****

Separation of security token from operational token

Transaction Pruning

* Since NEM is not fully open source the exact inner working of POI is unknown

** Ethereum plans to switch to POS sometime in the future but there is no concrete time line for this

*** Assets and trading on top of Bitcoin are implemented using other protocols like OMNI and Counter Party

**** In theory, Ethereum smart contracts can mimic this unique NXT and Ardor functionality but developing such smart contract using the limited tools provided by Ethereum would be very difficult

***** plasma.io paper was released recently, perhaps in response to Ardor, but actual implementation is years away

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