Best Smart Contract Platforms for Integral

Ethereum is the community-run technology powering the cryptocurrency, ether (ETH) and thousands of decentralized applications. Ethereum is a technology that's home to digital money, global payments, and applications. The community has built a booming digital economy, bold new ways for creators to earn online, and so much more. It's open to everyone, wherever you are in the world – all you need is the internet. Today, billions of people can’t open bank accounts, others have their payments blocked. Ethereum's decentralized finance (DeFi) system never sleeps or discriminates. With just an internet connection, you can send, receive, borrow, earn interest, and even stream funds anywhere in the world. Today, we gain access to 'free' internet services by giving up control of our personal data. Ethereum services are open by default – you just need a wallet. Stake your ETH to become an Ethereum validator.

BNB Smart Chain (BSC) is a blockchain platform developed by Binance, designed to enable decentralized applications (dApps) and smart contracts. It operates as a parallel chain to Binance Chain, combining high-speed transactions with the programmability of Ethereum-compatible smart contracts. BSC uses a Proof-of-Staked-Authority (PoSA) consensus mechanism, which enhances scalability and efficiency while reducing transaction costs. It is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), allowing developers to easily port dApps and projects from Ethereum. BSC has become a popular choice for decentralized finance (DeFi), gaming, and NFT ecosystems, offering users a fast, low-cost, and secure platform for blockchain-based innovations.

Build on Avalanche. Build without limits. Avalanche is an open, programmable platform for decentralized finance applications. Launch Ethereum dapps that confirm transactions instantly and process thousands of transactions per second, far beyond any decentralized blockchain platform today. Deploy blockchains that fit your own application needs. Build your own virtual machine and dictate exactly how the blockchain should operate. Stake, or lock up, your AVAX to help process transactions and further secure the platform–providing security guarantees well-above the 51% standard. You probably have the hardware required to join the platform. Avalanche is Solidity-compatible. All of your favorite tools like Remix, Truffle, and Tenderly work out of the box. Deploying smart contracts on Avalanche cost just a tenth of what they cost on Ethereum. High gas fees, front-running, and other adverse effects of slow smart contract blockchains are now a thing of the past.

Starknet is a permissionless decentralized ZK-Rollup operating as an L2 network over Ethereum, where any dApp can achieve unlimited scale for its computation, without compromising Ethereum's composability and security. Starknet achieves scale, while preserving the security of L1 Ethereum by producing STARK proofs off-chain, and verifying those proofs on-chain. On Starknet, developers can easily deploy any business logic using Starknet Contracts. Starknet will provide Ethereum-level composability, facilitating easy development and compounding innovation. The STARK Prover powers the StarkEx scalability engine, and has already demonstrated the ability to process 600K transactions in a single proof on Mainnet.

Solana is a fast, secure, and censorship resistant blockchain providing the open infrastructure required for global adoption. The best projects in DeFi, Web3, and blockchain gaming choose to build on Solana for the long-term. Solana can process 50k transactions per second. Don't believe us? Stress test the network to experience Solana's speed for yourself. Say goodbye to high fees and slow confirmations. Solana is built for speed, without trade-offs. Solana leverages Proof of History and several other breakthrough innovations to allow the network to scale at the rate of Moore's Law. Never worry about rising fees as your user base grows. Solana is designed to keep fees low for applications with billions of users. Solana's single global state ensures composability between projects. Never deal with multiple shards or layer 2 systems.

Polygon is a leading blockchain infrastructure designed to bring the speed, scalability, and efficiency of the internet to global finance. With over 5 billion transactions, 117 million active addresses, and a 99.99% uptime record, Polygon has become the trusted foundation for real-time payments, stablecoin transfers, and decentralized finance. The network enables instant settlement at near-zero cost, powering billions in digital asset movement worldwide. Its enterprise-ready infrastructure includes built-in wallets, onramps, and compliance tools that simplify blockchain adoption for businesses. Powered by POL, Polygon’s native token fuels transactions, staking, and security across its multi-chain ecosystem. Built for scalability, Polygon delivers the reliability and performance that modern financial systems demand.

The new scalability stack for Ethereum. Instant transactions and scalable smart contracts. Optimism is a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC): a for-profit corporation intended to produce a public benefit and operate in a responsible and sustainable manner. This means that we are obligated to balance the pecuniary interests of our stockholders with the best interests of those materially affected by our conduct, as well as a specific "public benefit charter" we incorporated with. The specific public benefit purpose of the Company is to enhance and enshrine fair access to public goods on the internet through the development of open source software. This charter represents our pledge to the Ethereum community to uphold its values by producing infrastructure which promotes the growth and sustainability of an ecosystem of public goods.

zkSync is Ethereum’s most user-centric ZK rollup. Unlike any other scaling approach, ZK rollup has no upper bound on the value it can securely handle in L2. Unlike optimistic rollups, all assets can be moved capital-efficiently and fast between ZK rollup and L1. zkSync has the lowest real tx costs across all existing and planned rollups. zkSync also supports meta-transactions, instant confirmations with economic finality, low-cost privacy, and more. Ease and fun of development are at the core of zkSync design. Integrate payments and atomic swaps in a few lines of code. Develop type-safe, functional style smart contracts on Zinc: a Rust-based framework. Deploy your existing EVM codebase with minimum modifications.

Cardano is a blockchain platform for changemakers, innovators, and visionaries, with the tools and technologies required to create possibility for the many, as well as the few, and bring about positive global change. Cardano is a proof-of-stake blockchain platform: the first to be founded on peer-reviewed research and developed through evidence-based methods. It combines pioneering technologies to provide unparalleled security and sustainability to decentralized applications, systems, and societies. With a leading team of engineers, Cardano exists to redistribute power from unaccountable structures to the margins – to individuals – and be an enabling force for positive change and progress. Cardano restores trust to global systems – creating, through science, a more secure, transparent, and sustainable foundation for individuals to transact and exchange, systems to govern, and enterprises to grow.

Next generation layer 2 for Ethereum dApps. Use your favorite tools and scale your dApp at the lowest cost. An aggregator plays the same role that a node plays in Ethereum. Client software can do remote procedure calls (RPCs) to an aggregator, using the standard API, to interact with an Arbitrum chain. The aggregator will then make calls to the EthBridge and produce transaction results to the client, just as an Ethereum node would. Most clients will use an aggregator to submit their transactions to an Arbitrum chain, although this is not required. There is no limit on how many aggregators can exist, nor on who can be an aggregator. To improve efficiency, aggregators will usually package together multiple client transactions into a single message to be submitted to the Arbitrum chain. Arbitrum also supports a privileged Sequencer that can order transactions and give low latency transaction receipts.