Neo is a blockchain platform and cryptocurrency designed to build a scalable network of decentralized applications. The Neo project rebranded from AntShares in 2017 and has since grown to become one of the largest blockchain projects in the world.
How Neo works
Neo’s goal is to create an open-source and smart economy by combining digital assets, digital identities, and smart contracts. Digital assets are programmable assets that exist in the form of electronic data. Digital identity refers to the identity information of individuals, organizations, and other entities that exist in electronic form. Smart contracts are self-executing contracts with the terms of the agreement between buyer and seller being directly written into lines of code.
Neo uses two different tokens: Neo (NEO) which generates GAS tokens as a reward for holding NEO in your wallet and GAS tokens which are used to pay for transaction fees generated by applications on the platform.
The Neo platform supports many common programming languages, and is capable of supporting C
Neo is a blockchain platform and cryptocurrency which enables the development of digital assets and smart contracts. Like Ethereum, it provides a value token (called GAS) that can be used to pay for services on the network.
In this guide, we’ll explain what Neo is designed for, how it works and the technology behind it.
Neo vs Ethereum
Neo is often compared to Ethereum (ETH), due to the fact that both are smart contract platforms. Let’s take a look at some of the key differences between the two:
Neo uses dBFT (Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance), while Ethereum uses PoW (Proof-of-Work) or PoS (Proof-of-Stake). This means that Neo is more energy efficient, since there’s no mining involved.
Neo has a faster block time than Ethereum. The average block time on Neo is 15 to 20 seconds, while Ethereum takes around 20 minutes. This means transactions will be processed much faster on Neo.
Gas is required to send transactions on Neo, whereas Ether is required on Ethereum. The purpose of gas is similar to ETH in that it prevents spam attacks by requiring users to pay transaction fees that go to miners as rewards for including their transactions in blocks.
The blockchain is a distributed ledger, meaning that it is held in its entirety by all users of the system. Users can access the blockchain to view transactions or contribute new blocks. New blocks are generated on average every 15-20 seconds and contain information about recent transactions. Blocks are confirmed by consensus, a process discussed below. All confirmed transactions are irreversible.
Neo is a smart contract platform that utilizes blockchain technology to digitize assets and automate the management of digital assets using smart contracts. Using Neo, developers can create powerful dApps that not only provide decentralized storage of data but also allow for trustless interoperation between blockchains with different protocols.
Neo also supports non-digital assets through its digital identity function, which allows for asset registration, issuance, and circulation on the blockchain. This allows physical assets to be used as collateral for loans or traded in an open marketplace.
Neo operates on a Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (dBFT) consensus mechanism to validate transactions on the network. Each NEO user has a chance to be elected as one of these delegates who then compete against each other to verify blocks and earn transaction fees from them. By requiring delegates to stake their own tokens against their performance in verifying transactions, bad actors are discouraged from supporting fraudulent blocks as
Neo is a new, fast-growing cryptocurrency that has gained popularity in late 2017. Sometimes referred to as the Chinese Ethereum, or the Ethereum of China, the currency has seen a surge in interest and value, but it is not well understood.
This guide will help you understand what Neo is and how it works.
What Is Neo?
Neo is a non-profit organization that supports the development of Neo, a global open source project that utilizes blockchain technology and digital identities to digitize and automate the management of assets using smart contracts. The core team consists of developers from China and the US.
Neo was founded in 2014 and raised funds via an ICO in September 2016, creating 100 million tokens. 50 million tokens were sold to contributors, which was around $550,000. The remaining 50 million were retained by the Neo Council. NEO, the token of Neo, gives holders voting rights to decide on protocol updates and network upgrades.
Neo has since been rebranded from Antshares after a successful rebranding vote in August 2017.
The core features of Neo are:
Smart contracts, which are more capable than those on Bitcoin or Ethereum
The use of digital certificates on a blockchain to ensure trust
A comprehensive system for managing digital assets
Neo’s idea is to be able to digitize any asset via smart contracts, similar to Ethereum’s aim. However, unlike Ethereum’s smart contract language Solidity, Neo uses many more common languages like Javascript and C
There are three types of digital tokens that can be created on the NEO platform:
NEO, which represents the right to manage the network. Management rights include voting for bookkeeping, NEO network parameter changes, and so on. Management rights are granted to NEO holders with a minimum holding period of 1 year.
GAS, which represents the right to use the NEO network. These rights enable you to use the blockchain network for transactions, smart contracts, deployment of other blockchains and execution of other operations. Rights are recorded in GAS and calculated according to holding time and storage method.
Application-specific digital assets, which we’ll discuss in detail below.
The application-specific digital assets are divided into global assets and contract assets. Contract assets are further divided into storage area assets and dynamic call area assets. The difference between these areas is related to how they’re stored and called in memory; this will be discussed further below.