There has been much debate about these two; Ethereum and NEO, making it seem like it is a battle for supremacy. But while there are similarities between them, they are very different.
Ethereum says their platform is decentralized and runs smart contracts, including the fact that their applications function without issues about censorship, downtime, third party interference and fraud. Neo on the other side says their platform uses blockchain technology to make assets digital while using smart contracts to manage assets. If you check both their websites, you will be able to notice these few similarities:
- Both cryptos are blockchain projects.
- They are both decentralized.
- Both were designed such that they could host Decentralized Applications (DApps), ICOs, and Smart Contracts.
- Both require the implementation of tokens/crypto assets (Ether in Ethereum, GAS in NEO).
- Both projects are Turing complete and open source.
With these similarities, you may be tempted to ask “What then makes them different?”
DIFFERENCE
The crypto market is almost saturated with so many altcoins, however, finding an Ethereum alternative or competitor is rare. One may be led to believe NEO may be a perfect alternative and competitor.
- Backers
- Ethereum does not have the backing of any country’s government; however, some of its support comes from Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA).
- NEO has the backing of the Chinese government, and this helped the project garner more popularity. It is the first open source blockchain project in the far-east country.
- Coding
- Ethereum looks like it is here to stay, anyone who intends to write DApps and smart contracts will have to learn a totally new programming language (Solidity)
- NEO’s DApps and smart contracts are written using Java and C#. Developers in the near future will also be able to create Smart Contracts using Python and Go.
- Consensus
- Ethereum was created to use the Proof-of-Work structure (PoW).
- NEO however uses Proof-of-Stake.
- Transaction Speed
- Ethereum is able to deal with 15 transactions per second.
- NEO can deal with 15 transactions per second.
- Audience
- Ethereum is recognized internationally, because it ensures their international and English-reading audiences are not left behind, but carried along.
- There is barely much information on the internet about NEO that will appeal to the English-reading audience, and this due its Chinese foundations.
- Direction
- Ethereum is making moves to become the world’s only blockchain-based supercomputer by taking care of some functions like computing, KYCs, digital identity, remittances, and decentralized exchanges among others.
- NEO is more concerned about creating a smart economy by making real-world assets digital through digital identity.
- Quantum Computer-proof
- Ethereum as well as other cryptocurrency, are not quantum computer-proof, and as such can be hacked by quantum computers.
- Neo is the only platform claiming to be quantum computer-proof, and according to their whitepaper, they have created an anti-quantum cryptography mechanism “NeoQS”
NEO has claimed to be directly competing against Ethereum, they may still have a long way to go, because it will take a while for a global acceptance and adoption of NEO to happen. It all depends on how Ethereum deals with the competition though.