Ellaism - A stable network with no premine and no dev fees

Technically, nearly all of the Ethereum networks have similar capabilities in
terms of functionality because they share many common parts. Some networks might
have additional ones, but they can be easily ported to other networks in terms
of weeks. So for this comparison, we focus on pre-mine, coin distribution,
philosophy, and community.

Comparison Table

Name Dev Fees ICO Premine Dev Premine Genesis Block PCS[1] DCS[2]
Ethereum 0 60 million 12 million 72 million >50% 13%
Ethereum Classic 0 60 million 12 million 72 million >50% 13%
Expanse 0 0 11.11 million 11.11 million >50% >50%
Ubiq 0 0 0 36 million >50% 0
WhaleCoin 33% 0 0 0 0 33%
Ellaism 0 0 0 0 0 0


The chain by Ethereum Foundation is the oldest and currently the most
valuable. Launching this coin, the Foundation issued an ICO of 60 million ETH
and also included an additional 12 million ETH pre-mined for developers, meaning
72 million ETH was pre-mined. Since then, only about 10 million new ETH can be
mined by miners per year. Today, three years after its launch, all the coins in
the genesis block (block 0) still represent more than half of all the coins
available. This makes the coin distribution of Ethereum questionable. For
example, at the time of the DAO hack, many users didn't trust the result of
CarbonVote (one-ETH-one-vote style of voting).

In the recent Byzantium hard fork, Ethereum further changed the coin issuance
per block from 5 ETH to 3 ETH. This further reduced the total coins that can be
mined and made the pre-mine and the overall coin distribution even more

In terms of community, Ethereum has the largest group of developers and
businesses supporting it. However, its hard forks and many changes that require
acknowledgment from the whole community are often criticised as being "rushed"
and "one person (Vitalik Buterin) decides everything". Many people argue that
this is a good thing because it allows the coin to change much faster. Many
others don't like this fact that a "decentralized cryptocurrency" is, in fact,
centralized, and have switched to other coins like Ethereum Classic.

Ethereum Classic

Ethereum Classic is a community split that happened during the DAO hard fork.
Compared with Ethereum, it has a strong principle of "code is law" and
"transaction finalization". Many people consider this to be more censorship
resistant. It also has a clear monetary policy (which Ellaism borrowed from)
that has a 210 million total coin supply.

However, Ethereum Classic still has the same problem as Ethereum in terms of
pre-mine. A 72 million pre-mine, even after the 210 million coins are all mined,
still equates to more than 30% of the network. Many people consider this to be a
problem, while others do not.


The Expanse network is one of the early forks of Ethereum. Compared with
Ethereum and Ethereum Classic, its community is smaller. The Expanse network
consists of 11.11 million coins pre-mined in the genesis block in which the
founder controls the private key.

The Expanse network also has the Tokenlab project.


Ubiq is a re-launch of Jumbucks (JBS) and is advertised to be no pre-mine. While
this is true, some people criticise that Jumbucks is a Proof of Stake coin (in
which is much harder to get a fair coin distribution) consisting of only 21 days
of Proof of Work period. The fact that Ubiq is a re-launch means that about 36
million coins are in the genesis block. In the future, Ubiq's monetary policy
makes it so that block rewards start out at 8, and decrease by 1, until it
reaches 1 per block.

The Ubiq development team is run by donations. This fact, combined with that it
is advertised as being no pre-mine, attracts some developers. Ubiq also has the
unique Flux Difficulty Algorithm.


Ellaism is designed to be a "pure" coin. A coin that is as fair as Bitcoin.
Compared with Ubiq, the only other Ethereum-like coin here that has no pre-mine
or dev fees, Ellaism can be argued to have a much more fair launch due to the
fact that Ubiq is a "re-launch".

Ellaism's current development team (Ellaism Core) is run by
. While this fact makes the coin have a good long-term
foundation, people argue that this would result in a slower initial coin growth
in the beginning. Ellaism's community size is also small right now.

Specialized Ethereum Networks

There are also other specialized Ethereum networks that serves some specific
functionalities based on the Ethereum protocol. Notable ones include:

  • WhaleCoin: A social network based on Ethereum.
  • Musicoin: Direct payments for musicians.

  1. Percentage of genesis block coins in current supply ↩︎

  2. Percentage of mandatory developer fees or premine in current supply ↩︎