Blockstream is a private, for profit, blockchain technology company, that has played a key role in helping to develop, and fund, many of the key features of the Bitcoin Core platform. Blockstream is focused on developing bitcoin applications and has raised significant funding from several large investment funds. The company also employs several developers that are very influential within the Bitcoin Core development project. This, as well as being of Bitcoin's largest donors, has led to some criticism about conflicts of interest.
Blockstream is developing a number of Bitcoin applications that are intended to encourage adoption and improve transaction times on the bitcoin network. Their primary focus is on Sidechains, which are are extensions to existing blockchains that improve their functionality. The company is also working closely with industry leaders to create the Bitcoin Lightning system that will support higher trading volume and faster transactions on the bitcoin network. Blockstream is also developing a data feed, satellite network, and other applications that they hope will make blockchain more accessible.

Emercoin is a blockchain-based development platform. It has developed a range of easy-to-use dSDKs (Decentralized Software Development Kits) that can be used to more easily build DApps. This set of software development tools allow the creation of blockchain-based software and services.
Emercoin's dSDKs have been implemented in several innovative DApps and provide developers with solutions for a variety of functionalities. Some of the dSDK's that Emercoin offers are specifically geared for decentralized DNS, SSH, SSL, and DPO solutions.
Emercoin has a hybrid consensus mechanism that combines elements of Proof-of-Stake (PoS) with a Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm that is merge-mined with Bitcoin. The network is powered by the EMC coin.

NEO, formerly known as AntShares, is one of the leading smart contract enabled blockchain platforms that allows for the development of digital assets. Similar to Ethereum, NEO uses two different tokens: NEO and GAS, each of which have a specific purpose on the network. NEO tokens give holders a share in the ownership of the NEO blockchain, and when they are held in a compatible wallet, they are rewarded with GAS tokens. NEO has a Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (dBFT) consensus algorithm that has uses some features of PoS, and is designed to be more scalable than other consensus mechanisms.