Beginner's Guide to Cryptocurrencies

Neo (NEO)

People sometimes refer to Neo as "the Chinese Ethereum." That is a weak characterization; Neo is a global project. Neo is a platform coin which other projects can be (and are) built upon. Some of the notable Neo projects at the present time include Red Pulse, Deep Brain Chain, and many more. These projects are all based upon the NEP5 token standard created within the Neo platform. Neo seems to have a large focus upon trying to work with a system whereby "digital identities" are incorporated into blockchain, thinking ahead to a future which acknowledges the importance of both intellectual property, and of real-world verifiable use cases for the various technologies associated with the platform.

Mining/Staking

Neo's consensus mechanism is based upon delegated byzantine fault tolerance. A system of nodes are used to validate blocks. The number of nodes is increasing slowly, with the ultimate goal to have approximately seventy-some nodes distributed in secure facilities and at major network centers in countries around the world. A second coin, called Gas, is used as gas for transactions on the Neo network. Any holders of Neo tokens in certain types of wallets are rewarded slowly with a distribution of Gas tokens over time. Eventually, the number of Gas tokens to be distributed will exactly equal the number of Neo tokens available, although it will taken approximately 22 years for all of the Gas tokens to be awarded to Neo holders. The distribution rate is higher at the beginning, and lessens over time, so the Gas release schedule is a front-loaded distribution that decelerates over time.

Development Team

The most well known figurehead associated with this project is Da Hongfei. In addition to founding Neo (which was originally known as AntShares), he is also the founder and CEO of OnCoin, which is one of China's most innovative blockchain technology firms.

Criticisms, Caveats, and Competitors

Neo's competitors include other crypto platform projects, such as Ethereum, and other projects upon which smart contracts can be written. It seems that coders have more flexibility with Neo as it allows for more coding languages to be used, although it is not currently as popular as Ethereum. One item of note for investors in Neo: Although exchanges allow one to trade fractions of a coin, which is accounted for internally within each exchange, it is only possible to move whole multiples of coins off any exchange into a Neo wallet. Some exchanges also have withdrawal fees. So for example, if the withdrawal fee is 0.025 Neo, and you want to buy 10 Neo to hold in a wallet, you need to buy 10.025 Neo in total, so that after the fee, you can move exactly 10 Neo off the exchange. If you were to buy 10.055 Neo in this example, you could still only move 10 Neo off the exchange, and you'd have a balance of 0.030 Neo left on the exchange after your withdrawal. Unlike Neo tokens, Gas tokens ARE divisible, and fractions of Gas tokens can be moved off exchanges.

Additional Resources

The project's main website: https://neo.org

Link to Wikipedia Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEO_(cryptocurrency)

Link to Reddit Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/NEO

Link to Twitter account: https://twitter.com/NEO_Blockchain

Link to Team information: https://neo.org/home/team

Link to data on Live Coin Watch: https://www.livecoinwatch.com/coins/NEO

Whitepaper: http://docs.neo.org

Neo (NEO)

Mining/Staking

Development Team

Criticisms, Caveats, and Competitors

Additional Resources

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