The chain question is a
distribution question.
Founders debate throughput and finality. Then they launch on a chain where their actual buyer does not have a wallet, does not hold the gas token, and has never bridged. Below is what we think about each network, written for the decision you are really making.
Four questions that settle it faster than a throughput chart.
Who has to be in the room on day one?
Retail traders, developers, allocators and market makers live on different networks and use different wallets. Pick the chain where your first thousand real users already exist, not the one with the best benchmark. Everything else in a launch is recoverable. Launching to an empty room is not.
What has to be true for compliance?
If your asset has an issuer, a transfer agent, a redemption mechanism or a jurisdictional restriction, the chain has to support permissioning, identity and controlled transfer without a bespoke workaround. That question eliminates most of the list before you reach the interesting part.
Where is the liquidity you need?
A token with no deep venue is a token nobody can size into. If your product depends on perps, lending markets or stablecoin depth existing on day one, that requirement outranks almost every other consideration on this page.
What can your team actually ship?
A Solidity team on a Move chain will spend the first six weeks relearning rather than building. Ecosystem grants and support are real and worth weighing, but they never fully compensate for a language and tooling mismatch under a launch deadline.
The networks most of our work lands on.
Not a ranking. These are simply the chains that come up most often in scoping calls, and the honest one line case for each.
Where each kind of project usually belongs.
Defaults, not rules. Every one of these has been correctly ignored by somebody with a good reason.
Consumer launches and memetics
Cheap transactions, wallets people already have, and a culture that rewards speed. Attention is the scarce resource and the chain has to not get in the way of it.
RWA and regulated issuance
Permissioning, identity, controlled transfer, a settlement story a risk committee accepts, and counterparties the buyer recognizes. Credibility outranks fees by an enormous margin.
DeFi, perps and trading products
Go where the order flow and the liquidity already are. A beautifully engineered venue with nobody trading on it is a very expensive demo.
NFT, art and collectibles
Prestige and royalty culture on one end, cheap high volume minting on the other, permanence and scarcity narrative at the Bitcoin end. Three very different buyers.
Gaming and onchain worlds
Object models, cheap state changes, session keys and account abstraction so a player never sees a signature prompt mid combat.
Payments and stablecoin rails
Follow the float. The chain with the best payments architecture is rarely the chain where the stablecoins actually sit.
Identity, proof of human and airdrops
If you are distributing value, sybil resistance is not an afterthought, it is the design. Chains with identity at the base layer change what is possible.
Enterprise and institutional pilots
Procurement, governance and a name a board can put in a filing. The technical argument is usually already won before the meeting starts.
All thirty six networks, each with its own page.
Click any card for the full brief on that network: live market data, tokenomics, who is actually there, and what to watch out for. Where a chain is early or unproven we say so rather than dressing it up.
Chain names, tickers and logos are the trademarks of their respective owners. They appear here to indicate the networks we work on and imply no endorsement, partnership or affiliation. Nothing on this page is financial, investment, tax or legal advice, and no chain listed here is a recommendation to buy or hold any asset.
Questions about how we choose.
How do you actually recommend a chain?
We work backwards from who has to be in the room on day one. If that is retail traders, the chain needs cheap transactions, a live launch culture and wallets people already have. If it is an allocator writing a real check, the chain needs a settlement story their risk committee will accept and counterparties they recognize. If it is a market maker, the chain needs the order flow already present. Then we filter for compliance constraints, the team's existing language and tooling, the state of the bridging and stablecoin situation, and how much ecosystem support is realistically available. The recommendation comes with the tradeoffs written down, including the case against.
Is a multi chain launch a good idea?
Usually not at the start. Multi chain splits your liquidity, doubles your support surface, triples the number of ways a user can end up holding the wrong asset on the wrong network, and forces every piece of communication to carry a caveat. Launch where your first thousand real users already are, prove the product, then expand deliberately with a bridging and canonical asset story you can explain in one sentence. The exception is infrastructure whose entire value proposition is being everywhere.
Do you get paid by any foundation to recommend a chain?
No. We have no foundation retainers, no ecosystem referral fees and no chain partnerships that pay us to steer clients. If that ever changes we will say so in writing on this page before it affects a single recommendation. It matters because a chain recommendation is the most consequential and least reversible decision in a launch, and you should be able to judge it on the reasoning alone.
What if we have already chosen a chain and you disagree?
We will tell you once, clearly, with our reasoning, and then we will build the best possible thing on the chain you chose. It is your project. What we will not do is take the brief, stay quiet, and then use the chain as the explanation when the launch underperforms.
You list thirty six chains. Do you really work on all of them?
We do brand, narrative, site, campaign and front end work, and that work is chain aware rather than chain dependent. What changes per chain is the audience, the wallet landscape, the launch culture, the explorer and asset listing conventions, the stablecoin situation and the ecosystem support available. We maintain that context for the thirty six networks listed here.
For a chain that is not on the list, we will tell you honestly whether we have the context or would be learning on your time. Being told which one it is beforehand is worth more than a confident yes.
Not sure which of these is yours?
That is the first thing a scoping call resolves. Bring the audience you are trying to reach and the constraints you are working under, and we will bring the shortlist and the reasoning.