Nebulas is an innovative project that aims to be the first blockchain search engine. It has been called the “Google for Blockchains." They want to build a self-evolving blockchain system that is based on incentives and will also provide a development infrastructure. The company developed two concepts to achieve their goal: Rank and Force. Similar to Google's PageRank, Nebulas Rank will be a measure of overall value for blockchains. While Nebulas Force, will be a solution that will support smart contracts, and will be able to adapt to market demands. This will prevent forking from occurring because new technologies can be incorporated and bugs can be fixed without changing the underlying code. The development system will provide all of the essential tools needed to create distributed applications. One of the key components of the platform is the incentive structure that has a Developer Incentive Protocol (DIP) and a Proof of Devotion (PoD) protocol that will reward users with Nebulas tokens to create quality applications. Nebulas was created by Hitters Xu, who is also the founder of NEO, and is an important figure in the Chinese blockchain community.

ChainLink is developing the LINK Network, which will enable connected smart contracts. LINK will provide smart contracts with a variety of external data and access to APIs. ChainLink's goal is to solve the connectivity problem that plagues smart contract based systems, and discourages mass adoption. Many decentralized applications are unable to connect with important external data sources due to limitations involving their consensus protocols. The LINK network wants to connect their smart contracts with external systems and APIs by using secure middleware.

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.