I've been trying to do some research on some of the lower cap projects out there, and a few of them caught my interest. ARK, seems to be a pretty well funded project with a total of 3000 BTC in dev funds, constant developments, but lack of marketing and overall use case has hurt them a lot I believe.
BTW, if you buy $1,000 worth of ARK, make sure to choose your delegate and vote. It will generate at least one ARK a day for you.
Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) is the best form of "mining". 
NEO is a quasi-DPOS that it generate GAS while sitting in approved wallet.