What is NEO and why you should know about the NEO blockchain

NEO blockchain was launched in 2014 (was called Antshares back then, changed to NEO in 2017). NEO uses decentralized Byzantine fault tolerant (dBFT) consensus mechanism (modified proof-of-stake protocol¹). NEO blockchain has a two token system (unlike Ethereum blockchain which has only one native token): NEO and GAS. GAS is the token that is used to pay for network fees, smart contract deployments, and in dApp purchases². You can only hold and transfer whole number (i.e., 0, 1, 2, 3....) of NEO tokens (you can have fractional NEOs but that is a story for another post) however, you can have fractional quantities of GAS.

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Why you should learn about NEO?

Short answer: NEO is a beast.

Long answer: NEO has recently launched the NEO3.0 network which has the following properties:

i. 30,000 TPS (transactions per second). For comparison, Ethereum and Solana networks currently have 13 TPS and 50,000 TPS, respectively. ETH2.0 is expected to have 100,000 TPS (around 1.5 years from now)³.

ii. NEO pays you rewards for hodling NEO in your wallet. You don't have to stake it anywhere. You get GAS rewards directly in your wallet. ATM rewards are 14.37 % ⁴.

iii. NEOFS (NEO file system) : Data can be stored on the NEO blockchain in a decentralized and secure manner. This is a building block for web3.0 applications, where you do not need to store your data on centralized servers. Each NEO held gives you a file storage space. You can also lend out your space and earn GAS rewards.

iv. Make a smart contract in any programming language you like. Unlike the Ethereum blockchain where you have to write in solidity, you can write smart contracts for the NEO blockchain in C#, Go, Python, Java, or TypeScript.

v. NEO NAME SERVICE (NNS): Similar to Ethereum name service. You can have a domain (myname.neo) instead of the long hash address.

vi. INTEROPERABILITY : Cross-chain interactions ( Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Elrond, Zilliqa, Huobi Eco Chain, Ontology, Switcheo and other Cosmos-based blockchains ) can be executed using NEO blockchain. I have not explored this, thus can't write much about it.

References

1. https://commodity.com/cryptocurrency/neo/
2. neo.org/
3. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/02/ethereum-had-a-rough-september-heres-why-and-how-it-gets-fixed.html
4. https://neoburger.io/home

Not so important stuff:

Why a dual token model?

If you have a single token, for example ETH, you spend your ETH when you interact with smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. But in case of NEO blockchain, you can think of NEO as your stake in the NEO network. If you want to interact with the network, your stake (or share in the company) should not diminish. You pay for the transaction fee in GAS. That's why having a dual token model helps.