Weiss Crypto Ratings released on Tuesday its detailed annual outlook for cryptocurrency, revealing cryptos it considers ‘most likely to succeed’ in 2019.

The report, named Dark Shadows with a Bright Future, issues grades based on a combination of adoption and technology — the two factors Weiss suggests indicate a high likelihood of long-term success — on over 120 cryptocurrencies.

Topping the long-term list — without considering risk/reward ratios — are XRP, EOS, and Bitcoin with an ‘A’ grade for adoption and technology. Ethereum trails with an ‘A-‘; and Cardano, Steem, NEO, Zcash, Litecoin, and Stellar take spots 5-10 with a ‘B+’.

Of note is that EOS is ranked higher than its competitor, Ethereum. Indeed, while Ethereum is the most widely used smart contract platform, Weiss cites scaling difficulties and EOS’ rapidly increasing user numbers as reasons for the decision.

Founder Martin D. Weiss explained the ratings process in a press release:

“Despite lower prices since early 2018, our ratings model gives us hard evidence that a critical segment of the cryptocurrency industry has enjoyed remarkable growth in user transaction volume, network capacity, and network security. Equally important is our finding that these improvements are often powered by an evolution in the underlying technology.”

Overall Rankings

Taking risk into account, however, results in a dropping of overall ratings — no coins take an ‘A’ grade, for example — and significant change to the rankings.

Here, EOS takes the top spot with a ‘B-‘ grade. Ripple’s XRP — while ranked #1 in tech/adoption due to its potential to compete with SWIFT as a global payment network — loses its position here, presumably due to its much higher volatility.

Of note is that Binance Coin and Litecoin (unseen in the tech/adoption rankings), take #4 and #5 respectively, thus pushing Ethereum further down. The smart contract platform, once given a strong ‘B+’ rating in Weiss’ first crypto report, has lost ground — receiving only a ‘C+’ once risk is taken into account.

So Why EOS?

Weiss identified a number of trends in the cryptocurrency market which greatly influenced their rankings.

A growth of user transactions, attributed for the most part to improving technology, was the most influential trend. As mentioned above, EOS has seen a significant rise in user numbers in the last year; seeing over 80,000 daily active users on its dapps (decentralized apps) as opposed to Ethereum’s 19,000, if the statistics provided by State of the Dapps are to be believed.

In addition, Weiss noted that Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) coins — like EOS, TRON, and Cardano — are on the rise, taking market share from Proof-of-Work (PoW) coins. Weiss made no mention of Ethereum’s intention to transfer to Proof-of-Stake, however, so it is possible this protocol change will influence decisions in the future.