Ripple is a real-time settlement and remittance network that is designed for the banking industry. Its settlement infrastructure technology has been adopted by a growing list of financial institutions looking to leverage the benefits of distributed ledgers. Ripple's real-time settlement network connects banks and enables cross border settlements and transactions in real-time. The current settlement infrastructure requires many intermediaries, and performing transactions take time and cost money. Ripple provides the underlying infrastructure for banks, and enables these transactions to be executed directly at almost no cost.

NEM is a cryptocurrency and blockchain platform that allows multiple ledgers on the same blockchain. NEM Smart Assets are used to create mosaics for any asset. Transaction fees are paid with NEM's native currency, XEM. NEM originally began as a community-oriented cryptocurrency that was built from the ground up in the Java programming language.
NEM's goal is to achieve widespread distribution through improved scale and speed. It pioneered several blockchain features such as its proof-of-importance (POI) consensus algorithm, encrypted messaging, a unique reputation system, and multi-signature accounts.
NEM is also developing a commercial blocckahin called Mijin, that is currently being tested by several companies and financial institutions.
In early 2018, approximately $400 million worth of XEM were stolen from a Japanese exchange called Coincheck, that was the victim of huge hack. The exchange failed to implement proper security for this coin protocol, and the hackers only stole XEM coins as a result. Instead of creating a fork to deal with this issue, NEM set up an automated tagging system that flagged these funds. NEM then stopped tracking these stolen coins