While NFTs have been around since the mid-2010s, their popularity skyrocketed after Beeple's Everydays NFT collage sold for a record-breaking $69.3 million dollars in February 2021.

Since then, NFTs have entered mainstream consciousness and are sold on multiple marketplaces and supported by a variety of blockchains.

Ethereum is the most popular NFT blockchain. However, it's not the only NFT blockchain. Here are some of the most popular blockchains that support NFTs.

1. Zilliqa

zilliqa nft page february 2023

Launched in 2017, Zilliqa is the world's first public sharding-based blockchain. Zilliqa is designed to have improved scalability, which means transaction speed is not affected by network growth. Early blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum are notorious for their slow transaction speeds, and Zilliqa is frequently touted as a blockchain that could accommodate a much large number of transactions. However, Zilliqa's price has remained low for years at this point, so it's hard to see how Zilliqa could surpass Ethereum.

Members of the Zilliqa community who hold gZIL governance tokens also have the opportunity to shape the direction the blockchain takes by submitting and voting on proposals.

Besides supporting NFTs, Zilliqa has multiple projects throughout the NFT space, including its partnership with NFT music platform Token||Traxx, and the first NFT project to launch on Zilliqa, Zil Ducks.

zilducks how to mint a duck instructions

Most excitingly, Zilliqa actively invests in the creator economy with its $10 million Creator Fund, which supports innovation in the NFT and Metaverse space. Furthermore, Zilliqa launched its Metapolis metaverse in early 2022, which will become a platform that integrates Zilliqa NFTs, DeFi, and much more into a Web3 space.

2. Flow

flowverse metaverse nft blockchain homepage

Flow is a proof-of-stake blockchain specifically designed to support NFTs and other consumer applications. Dapper Labs, the developers behind one of the first NFT-based games, CryptoKitties, and the monumentally popular NBA Top Shot series, created Flow when CryptoKitties transactions congested the Ethereum network in 2017.

Flow's unique multi-node architecture tackles scalability issues and ensures low-cost, speedy transactions. The FLOW token is used for transactions, staking, and governance voting. Furthermore, the Flow blockchain node architecture helps to keep transactions and data processing streamlined, increasing stability:

  1. Collection nodes are responsible for managing and gathering "well-formed transactions" before processing and hashing them before sending them to the Consensus nodes. In this context, "well-formed" means the transaction includes credentials from the transaction guarantor, basically signing it to say that this transaction is good. Collection nodes must stake at least 250,000 FLOW to maintain their Flow network status.
  2. Consensus nodes are responsible for maintaining the blockchain and ensuring consensus is reached between all nodes, similar to how other blockchain consensus models work. Consensus nodes must stake at least 500,000 FLOW to maintain their Flow network status.
  3. Execution nodes compute and execute transactions and are the most resource-intensive type of node on the Flow network. An execution node computes the output for the blocks sent by the Consensus nodes before passing the results to Verification nodes. The Execution nodes "are primarily responsible for Flow's improvements in scale and efficiency" and also allow the Flow network to be highly scalable without using blockchain sharding. Execution nodes must stake at least 1,250,000 FLOW to maintain their Flow network status.
  4. Verification nodes confirm the processing and computation work done by the Execution nodes and are responsible for verifying the overall correctness of transactions and the Flow network. Verification nodes must stake at least 135,000 FLOW to maintain their Flow network status.

Flow's built-for-purpose design targeting consumer applications has attracted high-profile companies to partner with the Flow network to sell their digital assets. Some of these companies include UFC and NBA, with even CNN hopping on board to sell memorable moments from its network.

3. Tezos

tezos blockchain website screenshot

Tezos is an open-source proof-of-stake blockchain that launched in 2018. Tezos encourages participation and collaboration with its users with the goal of continuous innovation and long-term upgradeability.

Tezos emphasizes its improvements on Ethereum, most notably its eco-friendliness, as it uses two million times less electricity than Ethereum and less than 1 XTZ to mint an NFT.

Prior to the Ethereum 2.0 Merge, one of Tezos' biggest claims to fame and major improvements over Ethereum was its power consumption. However, since the Ethereum 2.0 Merge, Ethereum's power consumption has drastically dropped. According to the UCL's Centre for Blockchain Technology, a single Ethereum transaction uses just 0.009956 kWh per transaction, which is now similar to Tezos' 0.009203 kWh per transaction.

table blockchain power consumption per transaction february 2023

While Tezos is one of the lesser-known NFT blockchains, it is still making its mark in the NFT world with partnerships such as music NFT platform OneOf, NFT platform Rarible, and world-leading games studio Ubisoft launching its first NFT project on Tezos.

4. Solana

solanart home page february 2023

Solana is a proof-of-stake blockchain that claims to be the fastest blockchain in the world. One of the most attractive features of Solana is its ability to scale, which guarantees that it will always be fast while ensuring that no transaction on the network will ever exceed $ 0.01, making it one of the top cryptocurrencies with almost zero transaction fees.

Solana's aim to become the blockchain of choice for crypto apps has made it popular in the NFT space. New NFT projects frequently launch on Solana, as well as partnerships with prominent companies, such as Opera Browser. Furthermore, Solana has a bustling NFT economy, with sites like Solanart, SolSea, and Magic Eden providing platforms to buy Solana-based NFTs.

The only issue that holds Solana back is its all-to-frequent network outages, which sometimes last days, locking Solana users out of the network, their accounts, and their NFTs. So while Solana may deliver exceptionally fast and cheap transactions, that's useless if the network cannot be accessed.

5. Cardano

cardano home page february 2023

Cardano is an open-source proof-of-stake blockchain. Cardano has an impressive team behind it, founded by the co-founder of Ethereum, and focuses on the importance of regulatory compliance and scalability.

At the end of 2022, leading NFT and DApp analysis company DappRadar reported that Cardano had become the third largest NFT platform, though those numbers do rise and fall depending on what NFT projects are popular. However, it's not just the number of users. A separate DappRadar report found that Cardano had the second-highest number of average daily developers (second only to Ethereum), and while this isn't all NFT work, it shows the immense popularity of Cardano.

dappradar chart nft blockchain with most developers february 2023
Image Credit: DappRadar

Cardano's NFT support and its ability to scale and low transaction fees make it an attractive choice for NFT users, and there are a number of prominent NFT marketplaces built on the Cardano blockchain, including Verlux and CNFT.

cardano cnft marketplace home page

What's the Best NFT Blockchain?

With so many different blockchains that support NFTs available, choosing one can be hard. Luckily, there are many different blockchains with a variety of attractive features to choose from.

Whether you want to interact with an environmentally friendly blockchain or low transaction fees are your priority, there are now many blockchains with these features that support NFTs.