Ravencoin is a blockchain created by the owner of Overstock.com. It is a use case specific blockchain for the declaration of ownership of digital assets. Ravecoin is a fork of Bitcoin, and was originally funded by Medici Ventures, a blockchain investment fund owned by Overstock.com.
Ravencoin's name is inspired by the use of Ravens in sending messages, and its blockchain is designed to carry statements of truth about who owns what asset. The developers created a new consensus algorithm called x16r to solve the problems of centralized ASIC mining. The algorithm is unique in that it consists of 16 different hashing algorithms whose order are randomly changed.

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.