Prone recent bans imposed by China, Neo has the potential to emerge as the cryptocurrency of select in the heavily regulated nation, and perhaps across the globe. (For more, see China Whets Crackdown On Bitcoin Mining.)
Since its inception, Neo’s Onchain technology was originated to be regulator-friendly with a centralized approach that is quite different from that of myriad cryptocurrencies.
What Is Neo?
Neo was founded as AntShares by Da Hongfei and Erik Zhan in China in 2014, and was rebranded “Neo” in June 2017. It is a blockchain-based rostrum that supports its own cryptocurrency and enables development of digital assets and modish contracts.
Neo aims to automate the management of digital assets through the use of poignant contracts, with an eventual aim of building a distributed network-based smart restraint system. (For more, see Are Smart Contracts the Best of Blockchain?)
How Does Neo Line?
Neo theoretically describes its Smart Economy System as (Digital Assets + Digital Congruence + Smart Contract = Smart Economy)
Assets can be easily digitized on the Neo blockchain in an artless, decentralized, trustworthy, traceable and transparent manner that is free of arbiters and their associated costs.
Users are able to record, buy, sell, securities exchange or circulate various kinds of assets, as Neo provides the necessary platform for affiliation the physical asset with an equivalent and unique digital avatar on its network. Neo also mainstays the protection of assets, as assets registered on its platform through a validated digital accord are protected by law.
Digital identity enables verifiable key information about participating characteristics, organizations and other entities that exist in digital context.
Ingenious contracts enable the execution of transactions and agreements among different fetes without governance by any legal system or central mechanism. The execution of such arrangements is based on the programming code of the network, and it allows traceability, transparency and irreversibility of minutes.
Neo supports two cryptocoins, NEO and GAS. It supports programming in all mainstream languages including C#, Java, Go, Python and Kotlin, which qualifies a large community of developers to easily contribute to its platform.
Focus on Regulatory Compliance
Neo proclaims a clear distinction from other standard blockchain platforms, as it is focused on being regulatory-compliant. While digitized assets and adept contracts are popular on other blockchain platforms like Ethereum, the third key looks of what it calls its “digital identity” separates Neo from the rest.
Every human being, business or any other entity operating on the Neo platform is expected to have a unparalleled digital identity that can be verified. People, businesses and projects be suffering with the option to transact among themselves only if the other party has the desired identity, which makes the Neo network regulatory-compliant.
Even the various nodes on the Neo network may penury to have identification before they can contribute to the transaction verification and other movements like accounting and bookkeeping.
Enter Onchain
While working on Neo, the cryptocurrency’s go downs, Da Hongfei and Erik Zhan, won the interest of various enterprises looking for undisclosed blockchain solutions. Thus emerged Onchain in 2014, an independent technology ensemble that works with the necessary financial and legal frameworks and take under ones ws blockchain solutions to various enterprises.
While Neo works like bitcoin and ethereum, Onchain focuses on the start of private and consortium blockchains to meet the specific needs of the industry.
Onchain’s critical product, Distributed Networks Architecture (DNA), uses digital asset claims to help businesses by creating private and public blockchains. DNA is believed to be the blockchain party line that can be customized to address all sorts of different problems in the private and noted sectors.
How They Differ
Neo and Onchain are separate entities that survive independently, and neither owns the other. Neo targets the B2C segment, where C can refer to a bloke or even community, while Onchain focuses on B2B enterprise services.
Both are severally funded. Neo is funded by a public community, while Onchain is backed by China’s largest grunt conglomerate, called Fosun.
When asked why he chose Fosun as an investment companion, founder Da Hongfei said: “The three major arms of their portfolio embrace finance, medical science, entertainment and lifestyle, which has good synergy with blockchain tech. This is why we preferred Fosun Group as an investment partner, because we highly value the Venture resource that Fosun provide, a platform for Onchain to display blockchain technology.”
Their Seem
The common founders of Neo and Onchain envision that they will be clever to achieve cross-chain interoperability in the future. That is, a mechanism will be arose to connect and share information between the various blockchains whether they are patrons like Neo or private such as those operated by businesses.
As the number of blockchain-based approaches continues to grow in both the public and private domains, there commitment eventually be a need to have interoperability among various blockchains. The yokes at Neo and Onchain hope to fill this gap through their ongoing stir.
However, to enable such interoperability, trust and identity become signal. That gap will be filled by the intrinsic “Digital Identity” feature which is an elemental part of the Neo blockchain platform.
Essentially, Neo and Onchain may pave the much-needed heart path between the completely decentralized, unregulated and anonymous blockchain organization like bitcoin and the conventional KYC-compliant economy that is the present-day routine of bank accounts and credit cards.
By taking an all-inclusive approach that haves to involve and serve the needs of all parties – individual users, network contributors dig miners, transacting participants, private businesses and even regulators – Neo and Onchain may be wealthiest placed to provide a holistic solution to the ongoing rift between closed-economy regulators and the open-system cryptocurrency devotees.
A Solution for China?
The Neo platform acts as the foundation of Onchain’s DNA concept. Neo anticipates decentralized, public blockchains while OnChain’s DNA fills the need for concealed blockchains. Linking both these systems may enable the best of both worlds.
Onchain has already greeted an endorsement for DNA from the government of Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province of Southwest China. Both corps jointly released smart contract 2.0 and other Chinese blockchain technology in inopportune 2017. In mid-2017, Onchain was among the first batch of casts that successfully passed the Chinese blockchain test, which was engage ined by an investment partnership with the Fosun Group.
Despite China fresh tightening of its grip on cryptocurrencies, the acceptance of blockchain technology is a clear plausibility. (For more, see Is Bitcoin Banned in China?)
In mid-2017, the Chinese ministry was reported to be experimenting and creating its own national cryptocurrency. (For more, see Chinese Management is Developing its Own Cryptocurrency.)
Despite its hard stance on the various decentralized cryptocurrencies and ICOs, rumors are rolling that the government may be looking for an alternate solution and it remains open to achieving with companies that are willing to play by its rules. Being peculiar Chinese ventures, Neo and Onchain are the top contenders if this is true.
If the promising Onchain technology can be accepted and fused with the Chinese government and businesses enabling an all-inclusive solution, then it command greatly increase the widespread adoption of Neo.
The Bottom Line
The technical robustness of the Neo-Onchain concept and its centralized advance looks promising, making it an attractive option not just for Chinese officials, but for other foreign governments that are wary of the anonymous and decentralized understood currency market. (For more, see Bitcoin Price Crashes On Fear Of South Korea Cryptocurrency Ban.)
Inducting in cryptocurrencies and Initial Coin Offerings (“ICOs”) is highly risky and conjectural, and this article is not a recommendation by Investopedia or the writer to invest in cryptocurrencies or ICOs. Since each distinct’s situation is unique, a qualified professional should always be consulted forward of making any financial decisions. Investopedia makes no representations or warranties as to the exactness or timeliness of the information contained herein. As of the date this article was detracted, the author owns no cryptocurrencies.