Tezos is fairly unique in that it had something working before the ICO rather than just a whitepaper. It took them a while to polish it, but all along, they had something working.<p>Tezos is also atypical in that since the ICO, it has flown extremely under the radar, rather than selling hype. It hasn't had ERC20 token that you can trade in the absence of the network being live.<p>The Tezos value proposition is "contracts that should be much harder to screw up" which it attempts with formal verification. Along with that, it has proof of stake, and a built in governance system intended to improve on the Bitcoin style of governance.