This upcoming rebrand from Antshares to NEO is part of a bigger move to put blockchain technology in China’s spotlight. Erik Zhang, Core developper of Neo, discussed the evolution of Smart Contracts 2.0, and explained the main differences between NEO and Ethereum. One big contrast of these competing platforms is their programming languages. Ethereum requires developers to learn to program with Solidity. Neo, on the other hand, will support almost all programming languages via a compiler, including those on Microsoft.net, Java, Kotlin, Go and Python, greatly lowering the difficulty for developers to write smart contracts. By making its programming languages more inclusive, NEO hopes to attract a larger community of developers. Zhang also explained the mechanics of the NEO Virtual Machine, its execution engine and interoperability.
The rebranding should have an effect on the coin's value, but the question is how big of an effect it is?!