Known as the Ethereum of China, NEO is a platform for building decentralized applications and it aspires to create the future of a smart economy. NEO plans to do this by formalizing digital identities and digitizing assets to unlock the potential of smart contracts. NEO also makes itself as inclusive as possible by enabling the NEO blockchain to interact with other blockchains, and by making itself compatible and codable in most of the mainstream programming languages.
[coin-chart symbol=”NEO” theme=”dark”]
Smart Economy
“Digital Assets + Digital Identity + Smart Contracts = Smart Economy”
NEO envisions a world of frictionless transactions with the help of digital assets and digital identities recorded on the blockchain. Digital identities and digital assets will most likely have to be verified for it to be valid for use. Users will have no problem making transactions of any kind because they can trust in the network. These validated digital identities and digital assets will be protected by law according to NEO’s Whitepaper.
Digital Identity
A person’s digital identity would simply be the digital form of his or her identity information. It could include things like one’s signature, fingerprints, ID photo, and maybe even blood data! Organizations and other entities could also have digital identities of their own. All this information will be private and handled exclusively by the owner, and he or she will have full control over what information to share and with whom.
Digital Assets
Digitizing physical assets (e.g. property titles, deeds, royalties, rights, etc.) will work hand-in-hand with users’ digital identities. Users will be able to trade all kinds of assets with complete trust in the network. In the envisioned future of a smart economy, the documentation to assets will be safe from physical damage like fire or water damage, and even from getting lost, because the digital form will forever reside on the blockchain.
NEO Programming Languages
Smart contracts for NEO can be written in the more commonly known programming languages like C# and Java. It is unlike Ethereum, which requires contracts to be written in Solidity, Ethereum’s own programming language. This enables developers to easily adopt NEO as a platform because they can write code comfortably in their preferred programming language. There is no barrier to entry of having to take the time to learn a new language before being able to create smart contracts and decentralized applications.
Currently, NEO supports C#, VB.Net, F#, Kotlin, Java, and Python. It plans to expand this list to include the likes of C, C++, JavaScript, and Golang.
NEO and NeoGas
NEO has two tokens – NEO and NeoGas. NEO will issue 100 million tokens and is intended to act as a stake or ownership in the NEO network. It is supposedly not to be used as a means of exchange, which is why it is indivisible; NEO’s smallest unit is 1. It can, of course, be traded like any cryptocurrency, but there are incentives in holding NEO, like being able to vote for bookkeepers and collecting NeoGAS (GAS) with the click of a button.
The purpose of a second native token, NeoGas, is to pay for operations across the network. When users do business, the transaction fees are paid in GAS and is distributed accordingly to NEO holders. Users will receive GAS in accordance with the ratio of NEO they own out of the total NEO tokens.
Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance
Blockchains have been moving away from the protocol of Proof of Work (PoW) and have been opting for the more efficient protocol that is Proof of Stake (PoS). Proof of Work is costly; it requires a lot of computing power, energy, and time. With Proof of Stake, token holders simply stake their tokens (in a smart contract) to validate the network. After the staking period, their coins are returned along with a reward that is proportionate to the ratio of tokens they hold out of the total supply of tokens (if they own 10% of total tokens, they will receive 10% of rewards).
NEO takes PoS a step further with the Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (dBFT). Instead of everyone participating in staking their coins, which could slow down the validation process, NEO holders can vote for representatives called bookkeepers to take charge of maintaining the network. This then allows the NEO network to run faster and more efficiently.
NeoX
The NeoX protocol allows the NEO blockchain to interact with other blockchains – cross-chain interoperability. This enables the creation of smart contracts that can be executed on different chains, which can succeed or fail as programmed. With this, NEO positions itself at the center of the smart economy, able to connect one blockchain to another.