A brief history
Neo, formerly known as Antshares (ANS) was founded by Da Hongfei and Erik Zhan in China in 2014 and rebranded as Neo in June 2017. Neo’s goal is to automate the management of digital assets through the use of smart contracts, with the eventual aim of building a distributed network-based smart economy system. Neo distinguishes itself from other blockchain platforms by increasing focus on regulatory compliance, it emphasizes this compliance through the creation of a key feature called “digital identity.” Every individual, business, or other entity operating on the Noe platform is required to have a unique digital identity that can be verified. Users have the option to transact among themselves only if the other party has the required identity, which makes the Neo network regulatory-compliant. This compliance applies even to the various nodes on the network which need to have identification before they can contribute to the transaction verification and other activities like accounting and bookkeeping. The use of digital identities helps to protect Neo’s users from scams and will make it easier for Neo to comply with international law.
NEO in practice
The Neo network has two native tokens: NEO and GAS. NEO is the platform’s primary token which powers the Neo blockchain and can be used for holding, sending, spending, and staking. Those who stake NEO also then have the right to vote on upgrades to the network’s parameters. Staking NEO grants users a portion of the block rewards, paid in the platform’s second token, GAS.GAS tokens are used to pay for transactions on the network as well as for running Dapps. Since Neo uses a Proof of Stake system to validate transactions, it is only possible for users to earn NEO by staking their tokens to help validate transactions rather than the mining that takes place in Proof of Work systems. The supply of NEO is thus limited to 100 million units. Unlike NEO which is indivisible (meaning the smallest unit of NEO will always be 1) GAS tokens are divisible and generated by a decay algorithm.
