TL;DR

The cryptocurrency community is divided in teams when it comes down to picking their favorite investment options. Aside from Bitcoin Maxis, which we will leave out of this article, other honorable mentions include the XRP Army, SHIB Army, LINKmarines, and others. Heres which alt leads in terms of popularity, according to the AIs.

Altcoin Popularity Battle

Its worth noting that this article does not aim to examine the three altcoins market performance, price movements, or overall size (or any other honorable mentions that might appear from the AIs answers). Thats more than evident and can be reviewed on every big data aggregator such as CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap.

It aims to explore the fan base behind these three. On why we chose ETH, XRP, and ADA in particular its simple we usually see the most interest in articles related to them (and a few others, but they will appear later on, so stay tuned).

All four AIs tried to compare the altcoins by several factors, including market cap, which, as we said, we will leave out. Instead, we asked them to look for Google searches, social media engagement, projects followers count, reposts, surveys, etc.

ChatGPT determined that the search interest and social media posts regarding Ethereum have risen to the highest levels since 2021, fueled by ETF milestones and surging institutional interest. However, XRP queries have surpassed Ethereums, reaching up to 10x more popular in global search data during the late 2024-2025 period.

In ChatGPTs words, ETH and XRP lead in their own niches, while ADA trails behind both:

Ethereum (ETH) remains the most influential altcoin by market demand and institutional visibility. Ripple (XRP) has captured strong retail attention, currently leading in day-to-day search trends—but is still trailing ETH in institutional demand. Cardano (ADA) holds a solid niche in ownership and devotion, but doesn’t match the scale of search or demand seen with ETH and XRP.

ETH Dominates the Rest

While OpenAIs chatbot was relatively political in its final answer, giving ETH and XRP essentially equal popularity votes, the other three AIs seemed conclusive and determined that the largest altcoin rules. However, that could be because they failed to exclude the market performance and dominance from the equation.

While all three are highly popular altcoins, Ethereum (ETH) is the most popular and dominant by a wide margin, based on its market capitalization, extensive developer community, and the foundational role it plays in the broader cryptocurrency ecosystem, said Gemini.

Perplexity was even more adamant about ETHs dominance:

Ethereum is currently the most popular altcoin—by user base, institutional adoption, volume, and overall influence—far exceeding both XRP and ADA, as well as other trending contenders in the market.

It also had a few honorable mentions outside of this trio, such as SOL, DOGE, and TON, all of which are trending or gaining major traction in specific communities and narratives.

Grok was the only one out of these three that acknowledged its inability to leave out the recent market performance (ETH is up by 22% monthly, while XRP is down by 13%). It added that ETH has attracted a substantial user and fan base, but XRPs community might be as loud or even louder on social media channels.