Ethereum vs EOS vs Tron vs others. Which smart contract blockchain is the most popular?

Ethereum vs EOS vs Tron vs others. Which smart contract blockchain is the most popular?

How do you measure activity?

There are several ways to measure activity of the blockchains:
number of tokens published (quality and quantity considered)
number of dapps (quantity, quality, volume, transactions, users)
activity on the network (operations and transactions)
development activity
social media activity

There are many blockchains with smart contracts that are already running main network. The biggest problem was the amount of data available for each category. If there was no data, project couldn't be compared.

Tokens on the platform

Number of tokens shows how many projects are building on the platform. Those projects do create their own tokens but usually the fees for using the platform are paid in the platform token. For example Gemini Dollar build on Ethereum -> the transactions fees are still in Ethereum.

Results (which platform has the most top 300 projects based on mcap):

1. Ethereum: 274 (top project: Maker)
2. NEO: 8 (top project: Gas)
3. Stellar (top project: REPO), Waves (top project: Incent): 4
4. Bitshares (top project: bitCNY), Omni (Tether): 2
5. Tron, EOS, RSK (smart BTC), NEM , Ardor, Conterparty, Qtum: 1

It is not surprising that Ethereum dominates due to ICOs and the fact that most serious projects are all built on Ethereum

Dapps on the platform

Number of dapps currently running on the platform shows how many actual programms are running on the blockchain. Keep in mind that this data is not easily accessed and also it is hard to measure what is a successful dapp (volume? users? transactions? purpose?).

Results (looking at the most popular dapps)
EOS: gambling dapps dominating in total users, volume and transactions (around $80M weekly volume: EOSJacks, BigGame, 2100.bet, Poker EOS, EOSBet, also some exchanges)
TRON: gambling apps dominated by TRONbet ($43.6M weekly volume and 3.8k daily users - biggest dapp by far), also exchanges and some games
Ethereum: mostly exchanges (Bancor, IDEX, Kyber), some gambling, plenty of games and markeplaces however loses with EOS/TRON in volume and users
Other that are less popular but still have users: Steemit (forum, gambling, collectibles), IOST (gambling and games), Tomochain (gambling)

Network activity

The activity on the network can be measured via number of operations. This basically means the activity produced by people and bots on the blockchain - transactions sent back and forth. Keep in mind 1 operation on one blockchain doesn't equal 1 operation on other blockchain since many transactions can be grouped into one operation.

Results (average transactions in a week):

1. EOS: 14.8M 6. Bitcoin: 930k
2. Kin: 2.9M 7. Ethereum: 827k
3. TRON: 1.2M 8. WAX: 460k
4. Bitshares: 1.1M 9. Telos: 333k
5. Steem: 1M 10. MetaHash: 264k

While the numbers are dependable on the way blockchains work (so it's not 100% corect) it is not surprising that projects with ongoing users dominate (EOS, Kin, TRON, BTS, Steem etc).

Development progress

While the development progress doesn't directly mean that the blockchain is being used it does indicate that the development is moving forward. The progress can be measured by commits and code changes in the last month
Projects that stand out:
Lisk: commits: 807, code changes: +307k, contributors: 51
Steem: commits: 119, code changes: +458k, contributors: 62

Other:
Ethereum: commits: 77, code changes: +11k, contributors: 372
EOS: commits: 0, code changes: +0k, contributors: 185
Tron: commits: 213, code changes: +6k, contributors: 82

Results

Tokens: Ethereum dominant (274), followed by NEO (8), Stellar and Waves (4)

Dapps: Ethereum dominating on dapps in terms of variety, EOS seeing the most usage due to gambling apps, TRON is a combination of both with also biggest gambling app running on it.

Activity: EOS winning by far followed by Kin and Tron. Ethereum also doing well.

Development: Lisk winning followed by Steem and Aelf. Ethereum and Tron also seeing activity. EOS had no development in the last month.

Social Media: Ethereum: followed by Tron, NEO and NEM. EOS after that.

Conclusion

Ethereum still ahead of the competition however no longer as dominant as it was in 2017. Still the safest investment due to dapps, popularity and liquidity. The best smart contract platform

Eos is the most active due to gaming apps dominating the blockchain currently and EOS being the preferred solution for that. The lack of development and variety of dapps is worrying however especially due to high valuation.

Tron is doing well. It has more development activity, more varied dapps and way lower valuation than EOS. Still behind Ethereum.

Other projects are way behind. Some of the blockchains that are doing good considering market cap are IOST, Steemit, Lisk (development), TomoChain and Kin.