Cryptocurrencies in the ranking grouped by what the chain is built to do — 329 chains across 13 purpose categories, $2.34T combined.
Chains whose base layer executes arbitrary programs — from Ethereum's EVM to Solana's Sealevel to CosmWasm.
Chains without a single dominant use case — the ledger hosts payments, contracts, tokens and applications in comparable measure.
Chains built to move money.
Chains where transaction amounts and participants are hidden by default — via zero-knowledge proofs, ring signatures, or Mimblewimble-style aggregation.
Chains whose native design is a financial ledger — settlement, lending, structured issuance — rather than a general-purpose computer.
Chains built as clearing rails for large-value transfers rather than end-user payments.
Chains launched by a specific exchange as its native chain.
Chains whose primary product is moving assets and messages between other chains — cross-chain bridges, light-client hubs, and interoperability layers.
Chains whose consensus rewards providers who reserve and prove storage rather than compute or stake.
Chains selling distributed computation — GPU cycles, model inference, generic workload — as their native product.
Decentralised Physical Infrastructure — chains whose token pays participants for supplying hardware in the physical world (wireless coverage, GPU capacity, sensors, storage).
Chains built around gaming — either as the venue for in-game economies or as game infrastructure (asset issuance, matchmaking, verifiable randomness).
Chains whose native workload is AI: training data markets, model registries, agent coordination.
Categories are curated in-house — see methodology for the definitions. A chain without a stated purpose on its own page is not filed under one here either.