2017 was definitely the year of Blockchain and crypto-currencies. Bitcoin went from more than $ 950 at the beginning of the year to $ 20,000

<img alt=" Bitcoin Chart "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/745ed9e27b22056f6543372c27cb2b1f . png "title =" Bitcoin Chart "/> The total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies reached the mark of $ 600 billion in December.

<img alt=" Total market capitalization" src = "http: / /cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/9ab9e77b11b1ba23776fa9ffd5b2b7d9.png "title =" Total Market Capitalization "/> We have also seen a huge growth in the number of initial coins – from one or two per week in 2016 to dozens of ICO in seven days in 2017.

Cointelegraph launches the series of articles "New Year Special" to highlight the results of this year and prepare for 2018.

In this article, let's look at companies that performed better than others during this remarkable year for the indust

Ethereum

Capitalization price: $ 73 billion

Ethereum is a decentralized platform that works with smart contracts. Smart contracts allow for agreements that are executed automatically without human interaction

Vitalik Buterin, winner of the 2014 World Technology Award, and Jeffrey Wilcke, the former vice president of Amazon, have launched the project on July 30, 2015.

In 2017, all three out of four projects were carried out on the Ethereum platform, making it the most popular platform for ICO during the year. ;year.

<img alt=" Market Share "src =" http: //cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/5e32a6cc650237c1903feb669f8236ee.png "title =" Market Share "

Near 13 million people use its services, whose token, ETH, is currently the third currency after Bitcoin and Ripple in the market capitalization.

<img alt=" Vitalik Buterin "src =" http: //cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/9d6858e278d0a3c1bdd90f5701f6cc02.jpeg "title =" Vitalik Buterin "/> Vitalik Buterin

<img alt=" J Hears Wilcke "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/d9c065d03b1df9ad4967c65b899b1ff3.jpg "title =" Jeffrey Wilcke "/> Jeffrey Wilcke

Vitalik Buterin was also among the 50 most influential people of Bloomberg this year

IOTA

Market capitalization: approx. $ 15 billion

IOTA is an open-source distributed registry specializing in the Internet of Things. This system has no transaction fees, little confirmation time and is stable regardless of the number of transactions since its technology is based on an innovative consensus model "Tangle". This model does not have blocks, chains and miners. If you want to make a transaction, you must approve two previous transactions that are pointed to by the system. These actions prove that all nodes have the same current state.

The project was launched in July 2016 by David Sønstebø, a serial entrepreneur and Dominik Schiener

In November 2017, IOTA is associated with PwC Microsoft, Deutsche Telekom and D & D Others for data monetization program

The company has also received important investments from the Bosch Group this year.

<img alt=" David Sønstebø "src =" http: //cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/ba03f62c019fdcfa8aab89628ea19378.jpg "title =" David Sønstebø "/>

David Sønstebø

<img alt=" Dominik Schiener "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/a02afe58bae2e9ec566df7a05ab13518.png "title =" Dominik Schiener " />

Dominik Schiener

Up to November 2017, the IOTA platform had more than 65,000 users.

Coi nbase

Market Capitalization: $ 2 billion (GDAX)

Coinbase is one of the best digital wallet and platform. exchange. A simple announcement that Coinbase will launch support for Bitcoin Cash has significantly affected the price of the BCH. The platform is one of three Blockchain projects that have obtained BitLicense, the commercial license issued by the Financial Services Department of the State of New York. In 2016, it was transformed into GDAX, the Global Digital Asset Exchange

The exchange is the first licensed Bitcoin exchange in the United States that proves that its actions are reliable through the close supervision of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Brian Armstrong, who worked with Airbnb, Deloitte and IBM and Fred Ehrsam, the former Goldman Sachs trader, launched the company in July 2011.

<img alt=" Brian Armstrong "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/3d7e69fb986e77d70a26051a884995c2.jpg "title =" Brian Armstrong "/> Brian Armstrong

] <img alt=" Fred Ehrsam "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/ec884d7e70fd1272830cfd08f2a2c760.jpg "title =" Fred Ehrsam "/> Fred Ehrsam

The Global Digital Asset Exchange has more than 13,300,000 users.

Ripple

Market Capitalization: $ 30 bln

Ripple is a real-time gross settlement and currency exchange. Its main purpose is to make a whole system dedicated to the transfer of money. Launched in 2012, the company works to ensure real-time transactions between banks.

Currently, the company works with more than 75 banks around the world. These banks implement and test the technology in their internal payment systems. In December 2017, Ripple announced that Japanese and South Korean banks had begun testing Blockchain to make international payments between banks cheaper.

The company was organized in October 2012 by Brad Garlinghouse, former vice president of Yahoo. !, and Stefan Thomas, founder and co-founder of six other companies.

<img alt=" Brad Garlinghouse "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/87e89ef404b140aeb95115af70cb9d9c.jpg "title =" Brad Garlinghouse "/> Brad Garlinghouse

<img alt=" Stefan Thomas "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/32efa8a4358a8e0998ea3b2a73e7e0b7.jpg "title =" Stefan Thomas "/>

Stefan Thomas

Brave

Market Capitalization: $ 340 mln

Brave is a web browser that blocks commercials and trackers. As a result, websites work faster and traffic drops dramatically. So you save your time and money. In addition, you can not catch malicious software by accidentally clicking on it.

Brendan Eich, creator of the JavaScript programming language and co-founder of Mozilla, and Brian R. Bondy, winner of the Microsoft MVP award for Visual C ++ in 2010-2011, launched Brave in May 2017.

<img alt=" Brendan Eich "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/4c2da4dd721e4eeedc7689e4c72be04a.jpg "title =" Brendan Eich "/>

Brendan Eich

<img alt=" Brian R. Bondy "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/store/ uploads / view / 5c8956d2a56618133f69388480f8015a.jpg "title =" Brian R. Bondy "

Brian R. Bondy

At Brave has about two to three million users. Brave is also one of the fastest ICOs. The team raised $ 35 million in 27 seconds

Qtum

Market Capitalization: $ 5 billion

Qtum is the first intelligent UTXO contract system with a proof of setting model consensus. The platform uses Account Attraction Layer to combine Bitcoin Core and Ethereum Virtual Machine. The proof of implementation model reduces the difficulty of calculating the network and increases the possibilities for scaling up. On December 28, 2017, Qtum and Baofeng, the largest video hosting center in China, announced their partnership to transform the work of the music and film industry

Patrick Dai, Neil Mahi, former head of Blockchain Architect of BitSE, and Jordan Earls launched Qtum in March 2017.

<img alt=" Patrick Dai "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/ view / 09e61bb51aa39e6367fd6f17ac356933.jpg "title =" Patrick Dai "/>

Patrick Dai

<img alt=" Jordan Earls" src = "All Rights reserved .png "title =" Jordan Earls "/>

Jordan Earls

In 2017, Forbes China included Patrick Dai in the "30 Under 30 China" list of his achievements.

OmiseGO

Market Capitalization: $ 1,700,000,000

Launched in June 2017 by Jun Hasewaga and D onnie Harinsut, OmiseGO is the decentralized financial technology for business services. 39, exchange and payment. The founders developed a mechanism to maintain high liquidity. The Ethereum platform is a link between payment systems, gateways and financial organizations. Although the team may not be familiar with the Blockchain community, their advisors are well known. Vitalik Buterin, Gavin Wood, Joseph Poon, Roger Ver – it's just a part of Star Advisors. The team is supported by the Thai Minister of Finance.

<img alt=" Jun Hasewaga "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/5b758b942ab414e7dd6caa010bdec470.jpg "title =" Jun Hasewaga "/>

Jun Hasewaga

<img alt=" Donnie Harinsut "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/ 82af9ea09410d194cc8fc3f870a9a832.jpeg "title =" Donnie Harinsut " />

Donnie Harinsut

In August 2017, OmiseGO became the first Ethereum-based token with a capitalization of over $ 1 billion

Steem

Market Capitalization: 850 mln

Steem is the decentralized social publishing network. Your reward depends on the number of "likes" that your message receives. The way the community reacts shows how you can improve your skills. You can also create new chips in the network to raise funds from the community.

<img alt=" Ned Scott "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/6872634a810b21767103e38857524da9.jpg "title =" Ned Scott "/>

Ned Scott

<img alt=" Dan Larimer "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/store/ uploads / view / a08d2964b54e6fdc9693bc9eb0b74bee.png "title =" Dan Larimer " />

Dan Larimer

Ned Scott and Dan Larimer, CEO and CTO in a number of companies, launched Steemit in July 2016 and now about 500,000 people use the platform.

Augur

Market Capitalization: $ 1 billion

Augur is the prediction market platform for real events. If you are sure something has to happen, you can buy shares for this result. Since the system is based on Ethereum, smart contracts guarantee payment processing. And since all predictions work on Blockchain public, no one can change their prediction afterwards.

<img alt=" Jack Peterson "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/eeefb3ad5e875f450dd9f1b1e3c84a6e.jpg "title =" Jack Peterson "/>

Jack Peterson

<img alt=" Joey Krug "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/9a853185556527754b7fed2f8c92cf62.jpg "title =" Joey Krug " />

Joey Krug

Augure began in August 2015, by Jack Peterson and Joey Krug, investor and co-chief investment officer at Pantera Capital.

Golem

Market Capitalization: 500 Million Dollars

The Golem is the first decentralized supercomputer source. The network is powered by users' computers. A number of industries need a lot of calculations such as biology, DNA analysis, cryptography, discrete logarithm, machine learning, big data, etc. … Service gives them power.

<img alt=" Julian Zawistowski "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/5c02fa381bdb47b3a956fbbafe50748f.jpg "title =" Julian Zawistowski "/>

Julian Zawistowski

<img alt=" Piotr Janiuk "src =" http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/3fe76eb07b1de86887a3e21e61919bdd.jpg "title =" Piotr Janiuk " />

Piotr Janiuk

Launched in November 2016, by Julian Zawistowski, Vice President and President of the Research Institute structural and Piotr Janiuk. Golem has reached four million users this year.