NEO is an open-source, decentralized blockchain-based application platform created in 2014 by Da Hongfei and Eric Zhang. The vision of the project is to realize a smart economy using blockchain technology, as well as smart contracts for the issuance and management of digital assets. As well as  Ethereum, NEO is powered by a decentralized Byzantine Fault Tolerant Consensus Mechanism (dBFT) and can handle up to 10,000 transactions per second.

The NEO’s core is based on tools that enable developers to effectively launch and manage smart contract applications on the NEO blockchain, taking advantage of the inherent strengths of blockchain technology to achieve an optimized digital future world.

History of NEO

Previously called Antshares, NEO was founded by Da Hong Fei and Eric Zhang in 2014. And an official document about it was published in 2015. This crypto-currency was officially switched from Antshares to NEO in June 2017 with the idea of merging the past and the future. The word “Neo”, however, comes from the ancient Greek word “Veo”, which means “new”, “modern” or “young”.

How does NEO work?

The smart economy consists of digital assets, digital identity, and smart deals (you can also read our other articles on these subjects for a better understanding). When these three elements work together, they form the so-called smart economy. NEO is launched to promote the transfer of traditional assets to digital assets.

These assets will be decentralized and the transfer of these assets will be done with the help of smart contracts. However, it is important to note that a smart contract is activated when certain criteria are met. They are very useful in asset allocation as they eliminate the need for a third party. Thus, using smart contracts, you can create a truly decentralized transaction that does not require any element of trust. There are two tokens, operating on the NEO platform. 

The first is a token that we can actually buy, but it is indivisible. This means that its smallest unit is and always will be 1. The second token is known as the GAS token and is used to pay for transactions on the network, as well as to execute digital apps. Unlike the first token, GAS is split and generated by a proof-of-burn algorithm.

Benefits of NEO

NEO is an important part of the smart economy. The digitization of traditional assets is already making it great. With NEO, you can write code in many languages. Creating a smart contract does not involve learning a new programming language because it is already set up for most programming languages. In addition, you enjoy fast transactions. NEO has the capacity to process over 10,000 transactions in one second. However, despite the attractive nature of NEO, it still cannot match Bitcoin in terms of supply or market capitalization. 

But, most investors agree that it is a very promising cryptocurrency that could grow significantly in value. The NEO platform uses smart contract technology, in that experts see the future of the entire blockchain.