**1. Wings [WINGS]**
One of the first cryptocurrencies to appear this year was Wings. From January to June its popularity jumped up and down and has recently stabilized at a market capitalization of $56 mln.
Based in Switzerland, Wings provides the necessary tools for the creation and promotion of decentralized projects. They use smart contracts and forecast markets to evaluate projects.
**2. Gnosis [GNO]**
Next up is the well-known Gnosis. They started in February and soon reached high levels of demand, but have backtracked a bit since May. The coin has now settled at a market cap of around $295 mln.
Its “crowdsourced wisdom” platform enables anyone to speculate on any future events and get rewards for accurate predictions. Gnosis also provides its own platform for the creation of DApps.
**3. Zcash [ZEC]**
In the middle of the chart, we have Zcash with a $378 mln market cap. The cryptocurrency first showed up in October 2016, but its popularity has never been quite high until March 2017.
Zcash is the first open and permissionless financial system operating under zero-knowledge cryptography. It uses a special zk-SNARK proof which allows the network to support a secure ledger of balances without revealing any parties.
Zcash encrypts the payment information and uses a novel cryptographic method to verify their validity. According to the developers, that approach allows all involved parties to send completely anonymous transactions.
**4. Golem [GNT]**
The second spot goes to another March-born cryptocurrency Golem, which has reached a $400 mln market cap. On March 20 it became the 13th most valuable digital currency and its popularity has leveled in April.
Golem’s crowdfunding event became the second fastest in crypto history - $8,600,000 in 29 minutes. Golem plans to become a huge global network, extremely powerful and 100 percent open sourced. It can also help with computationally intensive cryptography work.
**5. Stratis [STRAT]**
And finally, our gold medal goes to Stratis. This cryptocurrency became one of April’s top contenders immediately after hitting the markets. In the last week of May, its market cap jumped up to $1070 bln.
Stratis is currently one of the top 10 cryptocurrencies on CoinMarketCap. This powerful Blockchain development platform has a unique feature - it offers the ability to code native decentralized apps in C#. It opens up a number of possibilities for developers.
Moreover, Stratis allows organizations to create private Blockchains. They are realized in the form of sidechains, which are fully integrated with Stratis’ main Blockchain.