Gapcoin is a new prime number based p2p cryptocurrency, which tries to eliminate the sticking points of other scientific currencies like Primecoin or Riecoin. It's a fork of Satoshi Nakamotos Bitcoin, a decentralized payment system which is independent of banks, governments and other centralized regulators. With Gapcoin, you will be able to anonymously send money around the globe in no time. The big improvement in comparison to Bitcoin is that instead of burning electricity for its own sake, Gapcoins Proof of Work function actually does useful work by searching for large prime gaps
Novacoin is a hybrid Proof of work (POW) / Proof of stake (POS) decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency.The Proof of Work part of Novacoin is based on the Scrypt hashing algorithm. Proof of Stake contributes to the coins energy efficiency, as there is no need for nodes to contribute mining power to part of the money creation process. As of now, Novacoin is set to be capped at 2 billion coins. However Novacoin stated that the cap limit may be lifted if the situation requires it. It looks very much like a variation of Sunny King Peercoin.