Litecoin is a crytptocurrency that was created to serve as the “silver” to bitcoin’s "gold." It is based on the core Bitcoin protocol, but was designed with several key features that provide it with advantages over Bitcoin.
Litecoin has significantly reduced transaction times by limiting the target block processing time to 2.5 minutes. It also has a total coin supply that is 4 times larger, and utilizes a different hashing algorithm called Scrypt, that requires a smaller workload and less computation power than Bitcoin's SHA-256 algorithm. This enables much faster transactions at a much lower cost to users. These features make Litecoin easier to use and to mine. Since its creation, Litecoin has gained a large market cap and widespread adoption among cryptocurrency users in need of a coin for everyday transactions.

ZCoin is a privacy focused cryptocurrency built on Ethereum. The ZCoin protocol enables anonymous transactions with cryptography that utilizes Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP). ZCoin increases privacy on their network by using a coin-mixer contract that wraps transactions in a serial number and destroying wrapped coins once they have been redeemed.
Zcoin was the first cryptocurrency to use a Merkle Tree Proof (MTP) as its proof of work algorithm. Merkle Tree Proofs are an innovative solution to achieving network consensus, and can increase transaction time while reducing the centralizing tendency of ASIC mining.