This post is part of a series on how everyday investors can understand blockchain networks like Solana, Ethereum and Bitcoin.
When we think about financial infrastructure in the traditional world, we think about institutions like our banks and brokerages. They custody assets, keep ledgers, process transfers, and provide access to markets. Blockchains aim to provide some of those same functions (keeping track of assets and moving them), except the ledger is run by a network, not a single company.
Just like there are many banks, there are many blockchains. Each is built for a different purpose. One blockchain might value immutability above all else. Another might prioritize being a general-purpose computer. Another might prioritize speed and low transaction costs. Newer blockchains might be built around one core financial use case, like trading or stablecoin payments. None of these is universally "best." They're different versions of financial infrastructure, like highways, subways, and airports: each is built for a purpose, and each has tradeoffs.
Below is a basic way to think about five popular networks.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin is the first blockchain, the first transaction occurring in 2009. Bitcoin the cryptocurrency has come to be seen as digital gold. This makes Bitcoin the blockchain network the canonical record for digital gold. This identity means that Bitcoin the network prioritizes immutability and reliability.
This focus on reliability informs the way Bitcoin the network is designed. It shows up in the way Bitcoin produces new blocks and confirms transactions. Bitcoin's network is designed so that blocks are mined on average every ten minutes, and it adjusts mining difficulty over time to keep that average steady. This slower rhythm is part of how it prioritizes resilience and global coordination over speed.
The tradeoff is that the base layer is not built for high-throughput, consumer-style activity. If you want to do lots of small, frequent transactions quickly, Bitcoin often isn't the smoothest experience because it's optimized to be dependable and conservative rather than fast. That doesn't mean it's "bad." It means it's trying to be a particular kind of infrastructure.
Ethereum
Ethereum is best thought of as a programmable ledger: a blockchain built not only to track assets, but to run applications (smart contracts) directly on the network. If Bitcoin is the bedrock ledger, Ethereum is closer to a financial operating system. It's a place where many different financial building blocks (tokens, exchanges, lending markets, stablecoins) can be created and combined.
Technically, Ethereum's rhythm is more regular than Bitcoin's. Under proof of stake, time is divided into 12-second "slots," and validators propose blocks according to that schedule. This predictable cadence is part of what makes Ethereum a reliable base layer for complex activity, especially when many applications need consistent behavior and shared rules.
Ethereum's biggest strength is not just the blockchain itself, but the ecosystem and standards that grew around it. A lot of "financial lego" innovation happened here first, and many builders still default to Ethereum when they want strong neutrality and a deep pool of tools and integrations.
The main tradeoff everyday users notice is cost and scaling complexity. When demand spikes, Ethereum's main blockchain can become expensive, and much of Ethereum's scaling story relies on additional networks (often called Layer 2s) that settle back to Ethereum. That can be powerful, but it can also feel fragmented. Assets and activity can spread across multiple places.
Solana
Solana is built to feel like high-speed financial infrastructure: fast confirmations, low fees, and enough throughput that onchain activity can start to resemble normal consumer apps. If Bitcoin is the conservative settlement rail and Ethereum is the programmable operating system, Solana is trying to be the high-performance network that makes frequent transactions feel natural.
A key concept in Solana's design is Proof of History, which the Solana Foundation describes as a way of bringing a verifiable notion of time and ordering to the system, often explained as a kind of cryptographic clock. In practical terms, it's part of how Solana aims to keep the network fast while still coordinating many participants.
The big upside for everyday users is straightforward: transactions can settle quickly, and costs are often low enough that you can do "small actions" without thinking too hard about fees. Solana has also emphasized reliability improvements, and the Solana Foundation reported a long uptime streak in a network health report (for example, "100% uptime for nearly 16 months" as of June 2025).
The tradeoff is that high performance can demand heavier infrastructure. Solana's own validator documentation recommends relatively high-end hardware (for example, large amounts of RAM), which is a reminder that speed can come with operational requirements. In plain terms: if a network aims to be extremely fast, the machines running it may need to be more capable, and critics sometimes view that as a decentralization tension.
Hyperliquid
Hyperliquid is best understood as a blockchain designed around a specific financial primitive: trading. Where Ethereum and Solana try to be general-purpose world computers, Hyperliquid's identity is tightly connected to building an onchain trading venue that feels like an offchain exchange.
A useful way to see this is through its architecture and documentation. Hyperliquid describes an onchain order book system (HyperCore), where order book state exists as part of the blockchain's state, and it also describes an EVM environment (HyperEVM) that allows developers to build applications that can plug into that trading core. The order book itself is described in familiar exchange terms, including matching based on price-time priority.
The upside of this specialization is focus. When the blockchain and the flagship use case are engineered together, it can produce a cleaner trading experience than more general-purpose blockchains. For those who primarily care about onchain trading infrastructure, the tight integration is compelling.
Hyperliquid is an impressive onchain trading venue, but it may be difficult for the network to generalize beyond that core use case. It's also been live for a much shorter time than Bitcoin or Ethereum, meaning it's less battle-tested. That doesn't disqualify it; it simply changes the risk profile.
Arc
Arc is a newer network positioned around a stablecoin-forward thesis: if stablecoins are becoming foundational internet money, then it can make sense to build infrastructure purpose-built for stablecoin finance. Arc is associated with Circle and has been described as an open Layer 1 designed to support stablecoins, tokenized assets, and real-world economic activity. This is an example of a highly institutional blockchain.
Circle announced the Arc public testnet in late October 2025 and described a timeline that included a mainnet beta targeted for 2026. As of this writing, Arc is still pre-mainnet, so much of its design exists in documentation and testnet form rather than live production use.
The strength of this approach is focus, similar to Hyperliquid. Rather than trying to be a general-purpose platform, Arc is oriented around enterprise-grade stablecoin infrastructure and predictable money movement. For a certain class of use cases, that specialization could be an advantage.
The tradeoffs are what you'd expect from a newer, institution-oriented network. It's early, and early networks carry adoption and execution risk. There has also been public discussion about features that feel closer to traditional finance norms, such as exploring ways to handle reversibility or refunds at a layer above the base ledger. This highlights a philosophical question that applies to any stablecoin-focused infrastructure: how much should onchain systems accommodate mainstream payment expectations versus preserving crypto-native properties like immutability?
Conclusion
Each of these networks represents a different bet on what blockchain infrastructure should prioritize. Bitcoin optimizes for immutability and long-term reliability. Ethereum optimizes for programmability and ecosystem depth. Solana optimizes for speed and low costs. Hyperliquid optimizes for onchain trading. Arc optimizes for stablecoin-native finance.
None of these is universally "best." Understanding what each network is trying to be, and what it trades off to get there, is more useful than ranking them. The right question isn't which blockchain is the best, but which design philosophy fits a given use case.