Originally called Antshares, it recently rebranded itself to NEO in June, 2017. NEO as China's first original and open source public chain project, serves as a smart assets platform. It allows for a smarter way for assets registration, issuance, and circulation. NEO's underlying technology supports different forms of digital assets, and creates a decentralized, trustless, traceable and highly transparent eco-system.
Often referred to as China's Ethereum, NEO is laying out a clear roadmap and strong foundation for China's future blockchain technology. The mission of NEO is about building a financial system bridging the real-world assets.
NEO has superior technology than Ethereum
Although there are extensive similarities between Ethereum and Antshares including their ability to combine gas, smart contracts and possibly even DApps, there are several major technical advantages of NEO over Ethereum including the followings:
- NEO is compatible with pretty much any high-level coding languages, whereas Ethereum only works with Solidity. This feature will attract more developers to NEO's eco-system in the long run;
- NEO uses Byzantine Fault Tolerance Algorithm for blockchain instead of PoW/PoS.
https://neo.org/Files/A8A0E2.pdf. NEO is energy efficient and environmentally sustainable when compared to PoW, and you don't need a constantly internet connected wallet as with PoS; and - Unlike other digital currencies, there is no mining required for NEO, instead you earn Antcoins by simply holding your Antshares/NEO in your wallet.
Investment Thesis
- Ethereum has a market cap of $20,661,931,996 (i.e. over $20 billion), whereas NEO has a market cap of merely $403,911,000 (i.e. just over $400 million). NEO will need to grow 50x to merely get to Ethereum's market cap today, not to mention Ethereum is likely to get much bigger in the future;
- China has the world's second largest economy with over 1.4 billion people;
- Most of Chinese people are loyal to their own brand;
- NEO is working with Microsoft, Alibaba, and other industry leaders to bring its blockchain technology to the next level; and
- Investors don't need to invest heavily into buying mining equipments to mine coins. Instead, investors of NEO earn dividends called Antcoins by merely holding NEO.
In sum, there is explosive growth potential for NEO to become the next Ethereum considering its market cap, Chinese loyalty to their own brand, collaboration with Microsoft, Alibaba, and other industry leaders, and last but not least NEO's superior technology.