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.

Viacoin is an open source cryptocurrency based on the Bitcoin protocol. Viacoin has a 24 second block time and relatively fast transaction times. It can handle 175 transactions per second without scaling through Segwit or the Lightning Network. The fast transaction times make Viacoin a good option for sending micropayments. The platform also enables users to perform cross-chain atomic swaps between different cryptocurrencies, without a centralized exchange. Viacoin has an Auxiliary Proof-of-Work (AuxPoW) consensus mechanism that allows miners to mine multiple coins, that use the Scrypt algorithms, at the same time. Viacoin's smart contract platform, Rootstock, is compatible with Ethereum smart contracts.

Quantum Resistant Ledger is developing an enterprise blockchain platform that is designed to be secure against an attack from quantum computers. The Quantum Resistant Ledger (QRL) implements a more secure type of cryptographic signatures call XMSS. The network has a Proof of Stake consensus mechanism.