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The sector indicates which category a cryptocurrency belongs to, such as currency, stablecoins, smart contracts, or memecoins. This makes it easier to compare cryptocurrencies with a similar use case.

The key feature describes the core use case or main advantage of a cryptocurrency and highlights what sets it apart from others.

The blockchain is the underlying network a cryptocurrency runs on. This column indicates which blockchain a project uses, for example the Ethereum blockchain.

The consensus algorithm is the set of rules that determines how all participants in a blockchain network agree on a shared state. It ensures that everyone in the network recognizes the same transaction history, for example who owns which coins or which transactions have taken place.

Staking means locking up cryptocurrency in a network for a set period to help validate transactions. In return, participants earn staking rewards, typically expressed as an annual percentage yield (APY). Staking is a feature of blockchains that use a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.

Most cryptocurrencies are open source. This means that the codebase of the network is publicly accessible, typically on GitHub. Anyone can contribute to the project, propose changes, or flag bugs and security vulnerabilities.

Energy consumption indicates how much energy a cryptocurrency requires per transaction and serves as an indicator of how sustainable its underlying consensus algorithm is. Since exact figures are difficult to determine, we classify energy consumption broadly as low, medium, or high.

Transactions per second (TPS) describes the number of transactions a blockchain network can process within one second. The metric is commonly used to assess the scalability of a cryptocurrency. However, published figures are often based on test environments and may differ significantly in real-world conditions.