BitShares is a blockchain platform designed to assist the unbanked. It offers both banking and exchange services. Bitshares was originally launched in 2014 by Dan Larimer, an influential blockchain developer that has also worked on EOS and Steemit. It is a community run open source project.
Bitshares' goal is facilitate greater access to financial services. The Bitshares exchange is a decentralized platform that was designed to be scalable and ensure low transaction fees.
Bitshares has a delegated Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm. Aside from a decentralized asset exchange, it also offers users the ability to issue their own assets, price-stable digital currencies, and flexible crypto payment options.
The Bitshares decentralized exchange and banking ecosystem is powered by the BTS token.

Synthetix, previously known as Havven, is developing a decentralized exchange that will allow users to trade a variety of collateralized stablecoins and commodities. The Synthetix network is built on Ethereum, and is powered by the SNX token, which works together with the Synth token to provide traders with opportunities to buy and sell assets on the Ethereum blockchain, through a distributed collateral pool.