Before you start reading my article please be infomed that I am not a financial advisor and please do not take this information as investment advice.
Ethereum
The first cryptocurrency on my list is gonna be Ethereum, by now you should have a good idea of what ethereum is but just in case you forgot here's a little recap, ethereum is currently the number two cryptocurrency that allows smart contracts and decentralized applications to operate on its network and this cryptocurrency proves to be much more than your ordinary store of value that of bitcoin claims to be and it allows users to create build and revolutionize the world. Through the use of its smart contracts what's special about ethereum is the seemingly unlimited use case it has that ranges from creating a social media network to filing storage. Sending payments and even building networks of digital art that we know as NFTs, the future of ethereum is bright as they continue to make network upgrades to support the increasing demand in usage. I believe as the adoption of crypto continues, ethereum will always be an essential network needed to supply the power and resources for many of these decentralized applications.
Polygon
The second crypto on my list has been what I consider strong and almost bulletproof to the market volatility is polygon. Polygon formerly known as matic network is a multi-chain scaling solution for ethereum and the goal is to provide faster and cheaper transactions on ethereum using layer 2 side chains. Ethereum scaling has always been a hot topic in the crypto niche in order to solve congestion and reduce gas fees due to the popularity of d5 products and application using ethereum's network in order to make upgrades to a cryptocurrency like ethereum. You have to scale the base layer also known as a layer 1 upgrade or you build on top of the layer 1 block chain using its existing elements which we call layer 2 solutions, layer 2 scaling can dramatically increase the transaction speed compared to any layer 1 or ethereum 2.0 upgrades. How does polygon come into play? so polygon is pretty fascinating because on top of layer 1 and layer 2 upgrades they offer a solution that creates an ecosystem of many different scaling solutions such as side chains plasma zk roll ups and optimistic roll-ups. So unlike other cryptocurrencies where they rely on just one type of upgrade or scaling solution .Polygon's well diverse approach allows them to create a long-term solution in the case that any one of the scaling solutions fail polygons team looks to solve any scaling issues in the future with their own original solutions where others have failed.
Recently we had influential celebrities like Mark Cuban announce his investment into polygon and how he found himself using it more and more as a user he also emphasized that network effect is crucial and stated having more transactions per speed and lower gas fees is not enough there must be a current network effect and significant user growth this is a challenge for most layer ones and layers twos because with few exceptions marketing in the crypto universe is beyond awful it is fast it works well and most importantly their user base is growing exponentially so polygon has a list of great apps on their network.
Chainlink
For the third crypto on my list ranked number 12 on the market, we got Chainlink, so Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network that utilizes smart contracts to implement real-world solutions. As much as I love the digital and decentralized aspect of cryptocurrency, I believe having the tie into real-world applications will prove to be a great investment over time since the utility of this can be used by many different markets in real life.
Cardano
For crypto number four we got the one and only founded by Charles Hoskinson who previously worked on ethereum and this is going to be Cardano, so Cardano is a decentralized public blockchain and cryptocurrency project and is fully open source. Cardano's currently developing a smart contract platform as well, which seeks to deliver more advanced features than any protocol previously developed. This is the first blockchain platform to evolve out of a scientific philosophy and a research first driven approach the development team consists of a large global collective of expert engineers and researchers. Now three major problems that other projects faced in the space that cardano aims to solve is scalability like we talked about with matic interoperability and sustainability in order to help scale the system they implemented a layer 2 solution known as the hydra protocol where the proof of state consensus is used. The reason they named it the hydra protocol is because you can think of a hydra growing heads in order to process more simulations. Imagine a betting office where people can bet on the outcome of matches smart contracts will be able to lock the deposits of all participants and then fairly distribute winnings based on the results of the match in the smart contract we can have these rules set in place, one the collection of deposits and tips of participants before a match, number two stop accepting deposits after the match begins, number three waiting for the match results that's important and then number four, processing the match results and calculate the winnings and number five, lastly distribute the winnings among the winners. With cardano's scaling solution hydra, this smart contract can now be used for more matches in a row and the history of the last match can be forgotten in order to continue help scaling the system so instead of having a smart contract deal that is in place just for one baltimore ravens game think of it for a whole season for that year and then think of it as you can apply that to multiple teams and then different sports and then different industries and you continue to scale without putting additional pressure on the network.
With cardano is that they focus on improving different aspects of what ethereum struggles to accomplish. Now both platforms are still used for similar applications. Smart contracts building decentralized systems but cardano seems to always be a little step above in terms of innovative solutions such as their proof of stake consensus protocol known as oroboros.
So that was my top cryptocurrencies to invest in right now let me know your thoughts down below and don't forget to hit that like button if you still have not yet.
Thank You!