Review on Neo by Robiul Islam
If anything, NEO is a very distinguishable project. From the very beginning…
If anything, NEO is a very distinguishable project. From the very beginning, it has complied with the Chinese laws and regulations regarding the governing model, the philosophy, and the overall development. These efforts to abide by the legal framework are seen as an inevitable stage in the maturing of the blockchain industry; NEO simply made them early on in hopes to better prepare for awaiting challenges. And while NEO seems to be in the Chinese government’s good graces, it’s important to draw a line in the sand — NEO is a community-driven, community-funded project that doesn’t have direct cooperation with the Chinese government. Onchain, a private company founded by Da Hongfei, Erik Zhang, and three other co-founders, does however have close ties to NEO (as explained earlier in this text) and has firmly established communication channels with the Chinese government, with whom they even have a joint company in Guiyang. One way or another, the team behind NEO is successful in their efforts not to ruffle any government feathers, and seems to be one step ahead in drawing the bridge between the state and the free cryptocurrency markets.
NEO is augmented by quite a few technologies and algorithms, starting from Erik Zhang’s dBFT, all the way to NeoX, NeoFS and NeoQS. The project tackles multiple troubling aspects of existing cryptocurrency technology at once, and seems to do so successfully. But, there are two sides to every cryptocoin: many members of the cryptocommunity have stirred up the conversation by bringing alleged problems to the surface, some of which aren’t new. The recent FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) around NEO described here seems to have taken its toll on the cryptocurrency, as the price started dropping from the $140 mark around that time. Currently priced at less that $50, NEO puts its most faithful investors to the test.
Will the project withstand this crisis, or keep plummeting? On one hand, there are many serious allegations that make the team look careless and irresponsible. On the other hand, every major cryptocurrency faces issues and the important thing is to address them properly. It’s times like these when the developers need to step up and reassure their users, because as promising as this cryptocurrency is, it’s nothing without the support of its community. As of now, most of the community members seem to view this FUD as another bump in the road… only time will tell if they’re right.
Pros
- According to the official website, Neo is “a non-profit community-based blockchain project that utilizes blockchain technology and digital identity to digitize assets, to automate the management of digital assets using smart contracts, and to realize a ‘smart economy’ with a distributed network. ” The project was initially introduced as AntShares (ANS) in February 2014 and was funded by two crowd sales. Its initial coin offering (ICO) raised over $4.5 million; the first crowd sale took place in October 2015 during which 17.5 million tokens were distributed, and the remaining 22.5 million tokens allocated for sale to early investors were distributed during the second crowd sale. During the process of creating and improving the blockchain network, the AntShares team faced an increasingly high demand from business-to-business enterprises for solutions that incorporated the blockchain technology within a specific industry climate. The team tackled these requests as they came but, over time, they realized that providing those services should be an independent endeavor. Following the successful ICO, the AntShares team looked for a way to appeal to traders on the global market – and they decided to rebrand the blockchain network into Neo. The rebranding happened in June 2017, after which some of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world integrated support for trading NEO. Within months of the rebranding, Neo found itself among the top 10 cryptocurrencies in the world.
Cons
- NEO is the equity token that you can buy on an exchange, and the token that gives you network management rights like voting on major issues regarding the blockchain. Since Neo utilizes a business-oriented cryptocurrency model, NEO tokens can be compared to shares in a corporation; they’re indivisible, meaning you can’t own a portion of a single token, and holding them pays dividends in the form of GAS. 50 million NEO were distributed during the initial crowdfunding, and the remaining 50 million were distributed on October 16, 2017 following the end of the 1-year lockout period after the mainnet launch. This second batch of 50 million tokens was distributed in the following way: 10% of the shares went to the Neo developers and council members, 10% were meant for developers in the Neo ecosystem, 15% were used for investing in other Neo-based blockchain projects, and 15% were reserved as a contingency.
