NEO (formerly known as Antshares) is a unique open-source, decentralized blockchain platform and cryptocurrency, which aims to bring the digital economy to every door. It integrates blockchain technology, decentralized commerce, digitization of assets, and identification, leading the way for a business to act in a peer-to-peer manner.
Neo was founded in 2014 by Da HongFei and Erik Zhang as Antshares and went through a rebranding as NEO in June of 2017. Unlike Ethereum, the NEO platform supports common programming languages like C++, Javascript, Go, Python, and Kotlin, making it more user-friendly and hence accessible to a broader community of developers that can contribute. NEO has one more clear distinction from other different blockchain platforms out there - digital identity. This key feature assigns verifiable key information to individuals, organizations, and other entities. It is supposed to be available through an authentication system that provides access through fingerprints, SMS, voice, and facial recognition.
The option of asset transfer among identities is only available for the people, businesses, and projects that have a digital identity, which makes the NEO project regulatory compliant. Even the nodes on the network need to have it before they can verify a transaction or engage in other activities. Once you are “identified,” you can sell, buy, or exchange various kinds of assets. The assets registered on the NEO platform should have a validated identity, too, and are protected by law.
While smart contracts play the same role as on any other blockchain platform, they execute agreements and transactions without the need for governance or central authority, providing transparency and traceability.
NEO doesn’t use widespread Proof-of-Work technology. Instead, it relies on a consensus mechanism called Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (dBFT) between many centrally approved nodes that supports up to 10K transactions per second. It reduces electricity costs but also removes the possibility of a chain fork.
NEO supports two types of crypto coins - NEO and GAS. NEO token is the non-divisible asset of the NEO blockchain, which generates GAS tokens (used to pay transaction fees). Half of the 100 million NEO tokens created at the beginning were sold to early investors. Each year, 15 million of the remaining NEOs are used to fund further development. As for GAS tokens, it has a decaying half-life algorithm that controls the inflation rate and will release 100 million GAS over approximately 22 years.
How to buy NEO coin
Buying or selling NEO coins with fiat money isn’t widely supported, so you have to get other cryptocurrencies like BTC, ETH, or LTC first. One of the easiest ways to buy yourself some NEO coins is to do it through CoinSwitch, a platform that aggregates multiple exchanges and provides the best rates. It supports more about 300 coins and more than 45K trading pairs. But NEO is also listed on more than 40 exchanges, including Bitfinex, Bittrex, Cryptopia, and others.
There are plenty of NEO coin wallets for Windows, Linux, and Mac, for Android, and, of course, for the web. NEON is one of the standard desktop wallets for NEO, which also supports GAS tokens. Some other desktop wallets that you can use are O3 Wallet, Atomic Wallet, and Exodus Wallet. Among mostly used web solutions are Binance, NEO Wallet, and NEO Tracker.
NEO coin price
As of writing, the NEO market cap stands at $994M. The cost of 1 NEO is equal to $14.10. And there are 70M NEO in circulation.
