Last week, certificate authorities in China quietly formed a partnership with NEO, which was formerly known as AntShares but has gone through a rebrand. The idea was to tie in real-world assets and smart-contracts in China in a major way, much like Ethereum did with their smart contracts but with a few differences.
NEO is currently getting marketed as the “Ethereum of China.” But they are taking it a step further by tying in real world assets. The big picture vision of NEO is to create an entire smart economy. This is where real world assets tie in and begin to become digitized. Essentially every asset could one day be digitally represented and tied into a smart economy. Their version of a smart economy also involves intelligently automating things like payments.
But when you start automating payments and using things in the realm of AI there are some important things to consider. The first roadblocks and hurdles in creating a true smart economy in places like China would be security issues and the decentralization “issue” with governments involved.
If this experiment is successful and if the power of China gets behind them, things could get interesting really fast. Having an entire country backing a cryptocurrency and blockchain platform could do wonderful things for the industry as a whole. If NEO is successful in a major way in bringing blockchain directly into mainstream use in China, and as long as the key concepts and purposes of blockchain stay intact it could make for very exciting times for the industry.
NEO is the talk of the cryptocurrency and blockchain space right now since their recent meeting at Microsoft’s headquarters in Beijing where this news first surfaced. NEO also recently partnered with Coindash, Bancor, Binance, Nest Fund, and Agrello.
If this means that an entire country’s government is about to back and support a blockchain platform and cryptocurrency it will at least make for some exciting times ahead.