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.

Groestlcoin is a blockchain payment protocol with a number of technical innovations and an active developer community. Groestlcoin was the first coin that activated SegWit and supports the Lightning Network. Transaction fees are very low and it claims to have instant payments. It is also one of the only coins that can be sent over SMS.
Groestlcoin's active developer community has made the payment protocol very adaptable, and it a popular coin among many crypto investors. Groestlcoin has an ASIC resistant Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism.

DigiByte is a a blockchain platform that places an emphasis on security and block speed. DigiByte has one of the fastest block speeds of any public blockchain and uses an innovative consensus protocol with 5 mining algorithms. This prevents mining centralization and also minimizes the chances of security breaches. DigiByte transactions are limited in size and scope to increase speed, efficiency, and throughput.
DigiByte hopes that these innovations will provide the ideal blockchain infrastructure for a range of applications within the IoT and AI fields, that require a high degree of security and fast block speeds.