Coin Show
A blockchain is a network of computers agreeing on one shared history. A stablecoin is money that lives on those networks and promises to stay worth a dollar. They answer different questions, so they're animated differently.
See every ledger and stablecoin ranked by popularity
Stablecoinsthe money: tokens an issuer mints and burns
Consensus ledgersthe rails: networks that order and finalise every transfer
What's different?
| Question | Consensus ledgers | Stablecoins |
|---|---|---|
| The question it answers | In what order did things happen, and when is it final? | What is one token worth, and what backs it? |
| What it is | A network of computers keeping one shared history | A token contract or issued asset living on many of those networks |
| Who's in charge | No single party: validators, miners or a council, following the protocol | An issuer mints and redeems; the ledgers only settle the transfers |
| Where finality comes from | Its own consensus | Borrowed from whichever ledger carries the transfer |
| What the animation shows | Validators, votes and blocks becoming final | Dollars becoming tokens, moving across chains, and turning back into dollars |
| What's live | Blocks and transactions straight from the network | Supply, mints and burns on-chain; reserves only from the issuer's monthly report |
How a network agrees on what happened
Thousands of computers, none of them in charge, deciding on one shared history. Each network answers it differently. Pick one to watch it work, step by step or on the live network.
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XRP Ledger
Validators you choose to trust propose transaction sets and raise the agreement bar from 50 % to 80 % until they match.
A ledger every 3 to 5 seconds -
Hedera
Council nodes gossip about gossip, building a hashgraph that lets every node compute the vote without sending one.
A block every 2 seconds, ordered by consensus timestamp -
Solana
One leader at a time orders transactions on a hash clock, streams the block out in shreds, and validators vote with their stake.
A block every 250 ms, confirmed in about a second, finalized in ~8 s -
Quant
Quant has no chain of its own: Overledger fans one request out to Ethereum, the XRP Ledger, Bitcoin and Hedera, and waits for the slowest to settle.
No blocks of its own · bridges networks from 2 s to 10 min -
Bitcoin
Miners race to hash a block header below the target; every node checks the result and follows the chain with the most work.
A block every ~10 minutes, settled after 6 confirmations (about an hour) -
Ethereum
Nearly a million validators take turns proposing a block; committees attest, fork choice picks the head, and two thirds of stake makes a checkpoint final.
A block every 12 seconds, final after two to three epochs (13–19 min) -
IOTA
Validators chosen by stake each publish a block every round, weave them into a DAG, and read votes and commits out of the graph itself.
A checkpoint every ~200 ms, committed in under a second -
XDC
108 masternodes with 10 million XDC each take turns proposing; two thirds sign, and three certified blocks in a row make the first one final.
A block every 2 seconds, final after three -
Avalanche
Validators repeatedly poll small random samples of each other, weighted by stake, until the whole network snaps to one block with no leader and no forks.
A block about every second, final in about one -
Polkadot
A secret lottery picks each relay block's author, parachain blocks ride inside it and are checked by random validators, and GRANDPA votes finalise the chain a few blocks behind the head.
A block every 6 seconds, final after ~12–30 s -
Electroneum
Nine permissioned validators take turns proposing, and six signatures in the block header make it final the moment it lands: Istanbul BFT on an EVM chain.
A block every 5 seconds, final at once -
VeChain
Up to 101 staked validators take turns in a seeded, stake-weighted order, and one bit in each block header votes 180-block epochs final.
A block every 10 seconds, final after 180-block epochs (about an hour) -
Algorand
Every online account runs a secret, stake-weighted lottery each round; a few win the right to propose, and two freshly drawn committees vote the block final.
A block every ~2.8 seconds, final at once -
BNB Chain
21 staked validators take turns, eight blocks each, sealing BNB Smart Chain blocks, and BLS votes from two thirds of them make each block final about a block later.
A block every 0.45 seconds, final about a block later -
TRON
TRX holders stake and vote; the 27 top-voted Super Representatives take turns producing blocks, and a block can't be undone once 19 of them have built on top of it.
A block every 3 seconds, solidified in under a minute -
Zcash
Miners race to solve Equihash as Bitcoin's miners race to hash; nodes check zero-knowledge proofs and nullifiers for shielded payments whose amounts and addresses they never see.
A block every 75 seconds, settled after 10 confirmations (about 12 minutes) -
Hyperliquid
The exchange is the chain: every order and cancel is a transaction. A stake-weighted leader proposes each block, and HyperBFT votes from two thirds of the stake make it final at once.
A block about every 70 milliseconds, final in one block -
Dogecoin
Pools hash a Litecoin block that carries a Dogecoin block's hash; one scrypt result can mint a block on both chains, and DigiShield retunes difficulty after every block.
A block every ~1 minute, commonly settled after 20 to 60 confirmations -
Monero
CPU miners race with RandomX while every node checks ring signatures, key images and hidden amounts it can't read; the chain with the most work wins.
A block every ~2 minutes, spendable after a 10-block lock (about 20 minutes) -
NEAR
One chain split into ten shards: each block carries a chunk from every shard, re-checked by sampled validators that hold none of its state, and Doomslug approvals make a block final two blocks later.
A block every 0.6 seconds, final about 1.2 seconds later
How a dollar becomes a token and back
A stablecoin doesn't agree on anything itself. An issuer holds reserves, mints tokens when dollars arrive and burns them on redemption; in between, every transfer is settled by the consensus of the ledger it moves on. Each page follows that cycle, step by step or live from the chains.
Backed by dollars in reserve
An issuer holds cash, Treasury bills or repo and redeems 1:1. The risk is the issuer and its reserve.
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USDT
The largest stablecoin, issued from Tether's treasury wallets onto 13 chains, half of it on TRON, and backed mostly by Treasury bills, with gold, bitcoin and secured loans making up about a quarter.
≈ 184 B in circulation on 13 chains, backed by T-bills, repo, gold, secured loans and bitcoin (quarterly attestation) -
USDC
USDC has no consensus of its own: watch dollars become tokens on 26 chains, move by each chain's rules, and turn back into dollars, with the reserve that backs them.
≈ 75 B in circulation on 38 chains, backed 1:1 by Treasury repo, T-bills and cash -
USD1
World Liberty Financial's dollar stablecoin, issued and held by BitGo's national trust bank on six chains, backed by a government money market fund and bank deposits.
≈ 4.4 B in circulation on 6 chains, backed 1:1 by a government money market fund and bank cash (monthly KPMG examination) -
RLUSD
Ripple's New York–regulated dollar token, issued natively on the XRP Ledger and Ethereum and carried to layer 2s by Wormhole.
- Settled by
- XRP Ledger
- Ethereum
- and 5 layer 2s
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U
United Stables' dollar token from the British Virgin Islands, minted against deposits of USDC, USDT and USD1, with two thirds of its reserve held at Binance.
≈ 1.5 B in circulation on 4 chains, backed by USDC, Binance RWUSD, tokenised T-bills, USD1 and cash (monthly limited assurance)
Backed by crypto collateral
Users lock more crypto than they borrow; if the collateral falls, vaults are liquidated. The risk is the collateral's price and the liquidation machinery.
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DAI / USDS
Sky's two stablecoins, USDS and its predecessor DAI, borrowed into existence against vaults of collateral or swapped one for one for USDC, with failing vaults sold at auction.
≈ 10.5 B USDS and DAI, mostly on Ethereum, backed by $12 B of Agent allocations, USDC in the PSM, ETH and staked SKY -
USDD
TRON's relaunched stablecoin, borrowed against TRX vaults and swapped one for one for USDT, with much of its backing lent out to other DeFi protocols.
≈ 1.53 B (incl. sUSDD) on TRON, Ethereum and BNB Chain, backed by $2.26 B of TRX, lent stablecoins and USDT, by its own figures -
GHO
Aave's own stablecoin, minted by facilitators up to a cap each: borrowed from Aave's pools against collateral, bought one for one with USDT through stability modules, and saved in sGHO.
≈ 235 M in circulation (699 M minted), mostly in sGHO on Ethereum, backed by $193 M of Aave loans and $63 M of USDT in the GSMs
Synthetic, hedged with derivatives
Crypto collateral paired with an equal short futures position, so price moves cancel. The risk is funding, exchanges and custodians.
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BFUSD
Binance's reward-bearing margin asset: USDT swapped in one for one, hedged trades and ETH staking behind it, a daily USDT reward, and no blockchain at all.
- Settled by
- Binance's own ledger
- no chain
Algorithmic, and how it failed
No reserve at all: the peg rested on a second token. Kept here as the counter-example.
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TerraUSD (USTC)
TerraUSD, the algorithmic stablecoin with no reserve, and how redemptions into LUNA turned a run in May 2022 into a death spiral.
- Lives on
- Terra Classic