What Is the Longest Running Blockchain?

Blockchain technology is a relatively new innovation that has been around for less than two decades. While we’re now seeing financial institutions and even governments trying to incorporate blockchain tech, the first blockchain as we know it today was developed by a mysterious figure using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. 

Satoshi Nakamoto first described Bitcoin in a whitepaper released on October 31, 2008. A few months later, in January 2009, Satoshi published version 0.1 of the Bitcoin software and launched the Bitcoin blockchain. 

The longest running blockchain in the world is Bitcoin. The Bitcoin blockchain started on January 3, 2009 at 18:15 UTC. The Bitcoin blockchain has been running continuously ever since its launch, and has a block height of 799,656 at the time of writing this article.

Bitcoin was designed to stand the test of time, and this is also evident in the BTC supply dynamics. Assuming that the Bitcoin network stays operational until then, it will take until 2140 for the last Bitcoin to be mined. 

Who invented the blockchain?

The blockchain as we know it today was invented by Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin. 

However, Satoshi Nakamoto was influenced by previous work in the field of cryptography, which he outlined in the Bitcoin whitepaper. In the whitepaper, Satoshi references Wei Dai’s b-money, Adam Back’s Hashcash Proof-of-Work algorithm and various papers by Stuart Haber, W. Scott Stornetta and Dave Bayer. 

In fact, Haber and Stornetta created a service called Surety in the 1990s, which was a precursor to the blockchains of today. The service, which launched in 1995, timestamps digital documents using an approach similar to the blockchains that we know today. Surety’s document certificate hashes are published in The New York Times. 

The longest running blockchains other than Bitcoin

Now that we know more about the history of Bitcoin and blockchain, let’s also take a quick look at some of the other cryptocurrencies that were launched in the early days of crypto.

Please note that this is not an exhaustive list of the earliest cryptocurrencies that came after Bitcoin, as we only focused on cryptocurrencies that are either still relevant to this day or at least brought some interesting innovations to the table back when they were released. 

• Namecoin – Censorship-resistant blockchain for data
• Litecoin – A faster version of Bitcoin
• XRP – A highly efficient cryptocurrency with a unique design
• Peercoin – The pioneer of Proof-of-Stake
• Dogecoin – The first meme coin

1. Namecoin (April 2011) – Censorship-resistant blockchain for data

Namecoin is one of the earliest examples of an “altcoin”, which is a term that refers to any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin. Discussions about what would later become Namecoin started already in September 2010 on BitcoinTalk, an online forum that was frequented by Satoshi Nakamoto and served as the primary public platform for discussing Bitcoin. 

Namecoin is a fork of Bitcoin designed to provide a censorship-resistant way to store data. It uses the .bit top level domain, and offers a decentralized DNS (domain name system). In order to register a domain, users have to pay a fee of 0.01 NMC. Domains need to be renewed in approximately 250 days – if they aren’t, another user can re-register the domain.

While Namecoin plays an important role in the history of crypto, it’s mostly irrelevant today. At the time of writing, NMC has a market capitalization of $23.7 million, which places it in 513th place among all cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.  

2. Litecoin (October 2011) – A faster version of Bitcoin

Litecoin is one of the older altcoins in the cryptocurrency world, having in October 2011. It’s closely related to Bitcoin because it began as a modified version of Bitcoin’s code.

Litecoin has more coins available (84 million) compared to Bitcoin. It also processes transactions faster, about four times quicker. Like Bitcoin, it uses Proof-of-Work to agree on transaction validity but relies on a different hashing method called scrypt.

Litecoin has been a testing ground for new technologies later used in Bitcoin, like SegWit. It also has its own unique features, such as supporting MimbleWimble for privacy.

Fans often call Litecoin the “silver to Bitcoin’s gold” since it offers cheaper and faster transactions, making it better suited for everyday purchases.

Litecoin continues to be very relevant to this very day, as its market capitalization of $6.5 billion ranks it 11th among all cryptocurrencies.

3. XRP (June 2012) – A highly efficient cryptocurrency with a unique design

XRP is another cryptocurrency that launched very early on in the history of crypto and still retains a very strong position in the market. Unlike most other early cryptocurrencies, which were heavily based on Bitcoin, XRP introduced a unique design that does not rely on Proof-of-Work to reach consensus. 

Although XRP’s effective level of decentralization has been subject to countless debates, it’s undeniable that it offers much cheaper and faster transactions than Bitcoin. In fact, XRP is still one of the cheapest cryptos to transfer even though it’s more than a decade old. 

The creators of the XRP cryptocurrency, David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb and Arthur Britto joined a fintech company called OpenCoin (later known as Ripple) and gifted a large portion of the coin’s supply to it. Ripple continues to be the biggest player in the XRP ecosystem and has created cross-border payments solutions using the cryptocurrency.

XRP is by far the largest cryptocurrency featured on this list, boasting a very impressive market capitalization of $36.6 billion. 

4. Peercoin (August 2012) – The pioneer of Proof-of-Stake

Peercoin is a cryptocurrency that pioneered Proof-of-Stake, a way of achieving consensus in cryptocurrency networks that’s becoming extremely popular among newly-launched cryptocurrencies. 

The reason why Peercoin implemented Proof-of-Stake was to increase the number of users that could participate in the consensus process. It also provided a governance system in which PPC coin holders effectively own a portion of the blockchain and can use their coins to vote on how the protocol should be changed (or not). 

In order to incentivize use and discourage passive holding, the PPC supply is designed to inflate by 1% per year over the long term.

Although Peercoin has had a considerable influence on the cryptocurrency and blockchain space, the coin is mostly irrelevant today. PPC has a market capitalization of $10.7 million, which ranks it all the way down in 699th place among all cryptocurrencies.

5. Dogecoin (December 2013) – The first meme coin

Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency known as DOGE, launched in December 2013 by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. Originally created as a joke to mock the speculative nature of cryptocurrency markets, Dogecoin has now grown to be worth billions of dollars. Its name and branding are based on the “doge” meme, featuring the popular Shiba Inu dog image.

Technically, Dogecoin is a fork of the Luckycoin cryptocurrency, which itself is a fork of Litecoin, a derivative of Bitcoin. To ensure security, Dogecoin employs a Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism and is merge mined with Litecoin.

In contrast to Bitcoin and Litecoin, which have limited coin supplies, Dogecoin’s maximum supply is theoretically unlimited. Every year, around 5 billion new DOGE coins are introduced into circulation.

Dogecoin went on a huge rally in 2021 after billionaire entrepreneur publicly stated his support for DOGE on several occasions. While Dogecoin has retraced significantly from the all-time highs reached during this rally, it still has a massive market cap of $10.3 billion, which places it at number 7 in the crypto rankings.

The bottom line – Bitcoin paved the way for thousands of other cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin’s launch in 2009 set the stage for a huge ecosystem of cryptocurrencies and blockchain networks that’s now worth well over a trillion dollars. So far, no other cryptocurrency has been able to surpass Bitcoin in terms of market capitalization, although Ethereum has come fairly close to this feat. 

Hopefully, our article introduced you to some of the longest running blockchains, and refreshed your knowledge about the history of blockchains and cryptocurrency. If you have a long-term outlook on the space, consider taking a look at our list of the best cryptocurrencies for long-term investors.