NEO was introduced in 2014 by On-chain, a China-based company. Da Hongei and Erik Zhang founded the company and later conducted two crowdfunding rounds to gather funds for the NEO project. The team was able to collect to collect around $5 million USD, and with this, launched the NEO project. The project was rebranded from Antshares to NEO in June 2017.
The basic difference between NEO and Ethereum is that the latter allows smart contracts to be built using special programming languages such as Solidity. Whereas, the former provides programmers with the ease of building smart contracts using already established languages such as C# and Java.
By supporting these well-established languages, NEO opens itself to a wide array of experienced developers, who can test out the platform and innovate new creations.
NEO wants to develop itself as the main smart economy platform in the world by replacing Ethereum and Bitcoin. And just like Ethereum and Bitcoin, NEO will support dApps and other utilities on top of it, and users will be able to develop decentralized organizations on top of it too.
Another major difference between NEO and the two famous contemporary blockchains is that NEO implements a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) model instead of Proof-of-Work (PoW). The latter is used by Ethereum and Bitcoin’s blockchain, and the problem with it is the high cost of energy associated with the protocol.
In PoW, computers on the network compete to solve mathematical problems in order to obtain rewards in the form of coins. This secures the network but has a high cost in terms of energy consumption. In PoS, the token holders validate the transactions and consequently, secure the network by staking their coins temporarily in exchange for a reward.
By following the PoS protocol, all token holders are able to vote on the consensus nodes that validate the network, and these consensus nodes then validate each block in the blockchain.
Critics argue that NEO’s weak point is that the whole system is very centralized. This criticism does not come without its proof as the majority of the tokens on the NEO network are currently owned by NEO foundation. Moreover, since the project is mainly focused in China and within Chinese companies, some would also argue that the system is just too geographically centralized.
However, this will change as the system goes through widespread adoption and people start accepting NEO blockchain. The NEO foundation is selling the tokens to the users, and the system will soon become more decentralized.
NEO has a similar usage to Ethereum and will support all the functionalities that are provided by its competitor. The only difference is that NEO will support well-established programming languages, which will make it easier for developers to get into the blockchain industry. NEO wants to make their smart contracts more approachable, scalable and regulatory compliant.
The following are some of the industries that will benefit from NEO:
Contemporary financial contracts require a number of middlemen and other formalities, which build up excessive fees, even for simple matters. By using smart contracts, parties can automate payments and commercial transactions, while reducing middlemen and cutting down fees.
The real estate industry is known for its exorbitant fees, and a large number of middlemen, each having their cut. This process can be streamlined using smart contracts, and all the unnecessary middlemen can be eliminated.
Blockchain and smart contracts can have a wide range of applications for the government. An example of where blockchain can be used is in the voting system because the platform is known for its ability to resist corruption.
Using blockchain companies can streamline their supply chain by automatically keeping track of their shipments, and other transactions. Blockchains are significantly more automatic and require less manual labor.
These are just some of the applications of blockchain and smart contracts. Companies and governments can use the new technology for various purposes, and the benefit of using NEO over its competitors is that NEO is more accessible and regulatory friendly.
For NEO to become successful in replacing Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchain it needs to get widespread acceptance from blockchain projects. The progress has been smooth and steady, with many projects boarding the NEO blockchain, and using it instead of the other two options.
NEO is also supporting some of the famous main dApps that are on the Ethereum blockchain. NEO supports the following dApps right now, and many more are to be introduced:
This was the first ICO on the NEO network and can be considered as the decentralized Bloomberg, focused on the blockchain industry.
It is the first decentralized exchange that is working on the NEO platform and has already become the fourth largest exchange in terms of volume. The exchange will provide easy access to NEO-based tokens in the future.
The NEX exchange is gaining a lot of traction for their impending ICO and is another decentralized exchange that is based on the NEX blockchain.
It is a blockchain based marketplace for freelancers, just like the conventional Freelancers and Upwork.
A very interesting project that aims to make it easier to verify government provided identifications over the internet.
Some famous platforms that are being supported by Ethereum, and that are also now supported on NEO are the following:
The platform allows people to voluntarily share their computer storage for the use of developers to build dApps, and other useful products.
The platform uses a technique called sharding to greatly improve the speed of their blockchain network.
These are just some of the projects that are currently being supported by NEO, and the blockchain is paving the way for other projects and platforms too.
The NEO blockchain will be backed by two tokens, NEO and NeoGas. NEO with a total of 100 million tokens, is used to for managing the network. These tasks include: voting for bookkeeping, network parameter changes and so on.
On the other hand, NeoGas, famously known as GAS, is the fuel token for the NEO network. GAS is used for payment of operations, storage of tokens and smart contracts and various other tasks. The minimum unit of GAS is 0.00000001.
Maximum Supply: 100,000,000 NEO, 100,000,000 GAS
Circulating Supply: 65,000,000 NEO
Protocol: Proof of Stake (Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance)
To read more about NEO access the following links: