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.

Fantom is developing a smart contract platform based on a directed acyclic graph (DAG). They hope to address the scalability issues of current decentralized platforms. Instead of a blockchain, Fantom's Lachesis Protocol uses a directed acyclic graph to confirm transactions asynchronously. This transaction history is immutable and cannot be modified. The platform's Opera Chain will consist of three layers: an application Layer, Opera Ware Layer, and Opera Core Layer. Fanotm issued an Ethereum-based token in 2018.

Stakenet is a blockchain with a unique Trustless Proof of Stake (TPoS) consensus mechanism that allows users to participate in the staking process without having to freeze their coins in the wallet. It's powered by the native coin XSN and is managed by its own masternodes. Stakenet (XSN) was created to build an ecosystem that allows easy and secure offline staking and cross chain communication. It has characteristics of Bitcoin, Dash and Peercoin, that were modified for their own purposes. XSN uses the Bitcoin Core, an improved Dash masternode architecture, and Peercoin's validation mechanism for creating new blocks.