Layer-1 Blockchains evaluated across documented downtime, finality — measured, and actually deterministic, validator count and nakamoto coefficient, and independent client implementations.
Ethereum
#1 of 8 · published ranking
Ethereum
79ChainChoice Score
4199
Why it leads
Best in the pool on liveness record and client diversity
Cost
Not priced· No comparable price is published
No provider can pay for a position in this table. The code that computes this order cannot read which links earn us a commission, and every build proves it. Every score below rebuilds from the published criteria.Ranking 2026.08 · 4 criteria · 8 products · same inputs, same order
Personal comparison
Layer-1 Blockchains ranked comparison
No comparable price is published; ranking still uses verified product evidence.
Ranked on 4 published criteria weighted 30/25/25/20, which set goal alignment — 30 of the 86 points. The rest: regional access 20, evidence depth 18, ease of use 10, institutional trust 8. Profile match is shown in breakdowns but carries no weight.
Audit
Infrastructure
Methodology
2026.09.15
published 2026-09-16
Providers tracked
980+
across 119 categories
Last verified
2026-09-15
newest dated pricing or sentiment read
Named on the roster
2 people
managing directors · 6 automated processes
Decision guide
What matters most before choosing in this category
Weighted on documented downtime (30), measured deterministic finality (25), validator count and nakamoto coefficient (25), and independent client implementations (20). The heaviest is documented downtime: Every full mainnet halt on the public record, with date, duration and root cause.
What matters most before choosing in this category
Weighted on documented downtime (30), measured deterministic finality (25), validator count and nakamoto coefficient (25), and independent client implementations (20). The heaviest is documented downtime: Every full mainnet halt on the public record, with date, duration and root cause.
Can your use case tolerate a chain halt, or does it have to keep settling?
How many independent node clients does the chain run, and does that matter to you?
Does your use case need deterministic finality, or is probabilistic settlement acceptable?
Current editor lead
Expert review and scoring weights
Ethereum
EthereumData checked Sep 2026
Proof-of-stake settlement layer, largest validator set, slowest finality
Proof-of-stake settlement layer, largest validator set, slowest finality. Strongest on documented downtime (9/10): Appears in none of the outage compilations reviewed (Helius Solana history, Avalanche, Sui, TON, Aptos incident coverage) as having suffered a full mainnet halt. Continuous block production since launch on 30 July 2015 per Chainspect, across 3.63 billion lifetime transactions. Scored 9 not 10 because this is an… Weakest on validator count and nakamoto coefficient (2/10): Chainspect reads a Nakamoto coefficient of 1 across 1,351,000 validators and $108.6B of stake (15 Sep 2026), and Nakaflow lists no Ethereum row, so one tracker carries the figure. The criterion scores the coefficient rather than the validator count, and a coefficient of 1 is the lowest in the pool, below BNB Chain's 7. Published price: Average Transaction Fee: $0.2015 · On-Chain Revenue (1 day): $384.7K · Block Time (1H): 11.96s · Finality Time: 12m 48s
Best forDocumented Downtime — 9/10
Main tradeoffThe 12m48s finality and the 43-day, 2,483,581 ETH validator entry queue (validatorqueue.com) are structural, not transient. And Ethereum's client-diversity advantage is partly unmeasurable: its own two canonical telemetry sources disagree on which client is dominant, so nobody can state the actual supermajority risk with confidence.
Reviewed on documented downtime, finality — measured, and actually deterministic, validator count and nakamoto coefficient, and independent client implementations.
The order on this page is the published ranking for this category. Every criterion, weight and source behind it is on the methodology page.
Frequently asked
Questions people ask before choosing l1 chains
What is the safest Ethereum Layer-1?
Safety here comes from whether the chain keeps producing blocks and whether finality is a guarantee or a statistic. Halts are the only chain property that is unambiguously observable and dated — every other metric is contestable, and halts cluster by root cause, because the thing that produced one is usually still there.
Why is TPS not in the ranking?
Because theoretical throughput is a marketing number. One chain here advertises 104,715 TPS against a measured maximum of 1,542 — a 68-fold gap between claim and demonstration. Measured throughput is used where it is independently published, and where it is not, that absence is stated rather than filled.
Is a high validator count the same as decentralisation?
No, and this category's most uncomfortable result comes from that gap. Nakamoto coefficient asks how many parties must agree to censor or halt you, and measured independently, the chain with the largest validator set in this pool scores 1 — worse than a chain with 45 validators. Validator headcount is shown as a fact; the coefficient is what is scored.
Not financial advice · For informational purposes only · Always do your own research
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