Ethereum Classic is the original protocol of Ethereum. As a result of the massive hack on the Ethereum-based DAO, in which around 14% of all ETH in circulation were stolen, a hard fork was proposed to return the stolen funds to their owners. This caused an ideological split revolving around the question of changing previous transactions in the blockchain. Some Ethereum holders rejected the hard fork, and decided to keep using the original protocol, based on the principle that the blockchain is immutable, and cannot be changed.

Diamond (DMD) is a Proof-of-Stake coin focused on scarcity. Their marketing materials emphasize the limited circulation of the coin, and the benefits of the network's incentivized cloud mining system, which rewards users for contributing their computing resources.

Lightning Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency protocol with a DPoS consensus mechanism. It is a hard fork of Bitcoin that was created with the goal of improving transaction speeds and scalabilty. Lightning Bitcoin's on-chain governance system enables LBTC holders to vote for the blockchain improvement proposals and the delegates who maintain the network as Lightning Nodes. Lightning Bitcoin is not related to the Lighting Network, which is an off-chain protocol built on the Bitcoin blockchain.