INTRODUCTION TO NEO

Neo is a public and global open-source blockchain project that aims to facilitate the creation of a Smart Economy.

The Smart Economy is a vision for the future where business is revolutionized by the adoption of digital assets and identities, allowing for the automated and trustless management of those assets through the use of smart contracts.

Neo, originally AntShares, was founded by Da Hongfei and Erik Zhang. As co-founders of the non-profit Neo Foundation, the two oversee the ongoing development of the Neo blockchain. There are currently two Neo offices; a head office located in Shanghai, and a second office based in Seattle, US.

What is a smart contract?

A smart contract is a set of commitments that are defined in digital form, including the agreement on how contract participants shall fulfill these commitments. Blockchain technology gives us a decentralized, non-tampering, highly reliable system in which smart contracts are extremely useful. Smart contracts is one of the most important characteristics of blockchain technologies and the reason why blockchains can be called disruptive technology. It is increasing the efficiency of our social structure by each passing day.

What are the characteristics of Neo smart contracts?

The Neo Smart Contract 2.0 includes the following features: certainty, high performance, and expandability. The contract types include: validation contracts, function contracts, and application contracts.

From the performance point of view, Neo uses the lightweight NeoVM (Neo Virtual Machine) as its intelligent contract execution environment. It starts very fast and takes up a small amount of resources and is suitable for smart contracts such as short procedures. Static compilation and caching of hotspot contracts can be significantly enhanced by JIT (real-time compiler) technology. The instructional setup of the Neo virtual machine provides a series of cryptographic instructions to optimize the execution efficiency of cryptographic algorithms in smart contracts. In addition, data manipulation instructions provide support for arrays and complex data structures directly. All of the above will enhance performance in Neo Smart Contract 2.0.

Neo Smart Contract 2.0 achieves a scalable approach through a combination of high concurrency and dynamic partitioning, combined with its low-coupling design. The low coupling contract procedure is executed in a virtual machine (Neo virtual machine) and communicates with the outside through the interactive service layer. Therefore, the vast majority of upgrades to the smart contract function can be achieved through API of the interactive service layer.

NEO's Digital Identity System

NEO's digital identity system is based on a decentralized network of nodes that are responsible for verifying user identities and maintaining a registry of trusted digital identities. Each user is assigned a unique digital identity that is tied to their real-world identity, such as their name, address, or other personal information.

The digital identity system is designed to be highly secure, using advanced encryption and authentication protocols to ensure that only authorized users can access or use their digital identities. This helps to prevent fraud, identity theft, or other types of malicious activity that could compromise the integrity of the blockchain.

NEO's Consensus Algorithm

Neo blockchain is a decentralized distributed ledger system. It could be used for registration and issuance of digitalized assets, property right certificates, credit points and so on. It enables transfer, payment, and transactions in a peer-to-peer way. The blockchain technology was originally proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto in a cryptography mailing list, i.e. the Bitcoin. Since then, numerous applications based on the blockchain emerged, such as e-cash systems, stock equity exchanges and Smart Contract systems.

Neo blockchain system is advantageous over a traditional centralized ledger system for its full-openness,immutability and anti-multiple-spend characters, and it does not rely on any kind of trusted third-party.

Byzantine Fault Tolerance mechanism is a universal solution for distributed systems. NEO proposes dBFT (delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance) consensus algorithm based on PBFT (Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance) algorithm. Algorithm dBFT determines validator set according to real-time blockchain voting, which effectively enhances the effectiveness of the algorithm, bringing block time and transaction confirmation time savings. dBFT2.0 as an upgraded version was released in Mar. 2019, which improves robustness and safety by introducing 3-stage consensus as well as a recovery mechanism.

Investing in Neo

To separate governance from utility, Neo uses a dual-token model. The primary native token, NEO, holds two main functions. Holders of the NEO token are eligible to participate in governance and vote on proposals to make changes to the Neo ecosystem. This is done so through the Neo Committee, a community of nodes and members with governing rights over blockchain performance parameters. 

There were originally 100 million NEO tokens generated at genesis. The Neo Foundation reserved around 50% of these for continuous development incentives throughout the Neo ecosystem. Moreover, NEO tokens are one of the rarest native smart contract-enabled blockchain tokens, due to the absence of partial divisibility. This means that NEO tokens cannot be broken down into less than whole units. The minimum amount NEO token holders can withdraw from a wallet is one. 

Also, NEO token holders can earn a passive income from the distribution of the Neo utility token, GAS. Furthermore, this can be achieved without staking, simply by being a NEO token holder. 

NEO Gas

The Neo Gas (GAS) utility token is required for paying network fees on the Neo blockchain, along with deploying smart contracts and making purchases within decentralized applications (dApps) built on the Neo blockchain. Plus, the more users vote in the Neo Committee, the more GAS token rewards they receive! 

There are five new GAS tokens generated for every block mined on the Neo blockchain. Of these tokens, 10% are distributed to the Neo Council, 10% are distributed to NEO token holders, and the remaining 80% is split between successful voters within the Neo Committee. Unlike NEO tokens, GAS tokens are divisible, the smallest unit being 0.00000001. 

NEO's Eco-Friendly Blockchain

Neo has initiated a number of support tracks to grow the Neo ecosystem, offering various types of assistance depending on your project needs, interests, and maturity. Options are available for grassroots developers, start up projects, established businesses, institutions, and everything in between.

If you would benefit from a little help during your journey on the Neo blockchain, simply identify the track below that best describes your current situation. Full details on how to apply can be found by following the relevant links.

Roadmap of NEO

NEO has witnessed tremendous growth in its tech infrastructure and ecosystem over the past few years. In 2019, NEO will take a steady step forward in the continuation of our vision of supporting large-scale commercial applications with blockchain technology.

The cornerstone of our efforts is NEO 3.0, which will be a robust blockchain implementation with high throughput, enhanced stability and security, an optimized smart contract system, and a feature-packed infrastructure set for diverse business application scenarios.

They keenly recognize governance’s pivotal role in the long-term evolution of a blockchain as the common good collectively owned by stakeholders and more broadly the entire surrounding communities. In 2019, they became actively collaborating with experts from the academia, industry and community to explore various governance mechanisms including liquid democracy, futarchy and some others emerged in recent times. In many cases economic model is tightly interlaced with governance mechanism, therefore they will be treated as an integrated system. NEPs regarding on-chain governance changes will be published if satisfying.

Pink Paper

What is pink paper?

When technology is centralized, it usually indicates that it is managed and controlled by a single organization, body of authority, or person. 

On the other hand, decentralized technology is managed by a network of participants that no single Central authority controls.

Pink Paper is the golden standard for decentralized content publishing, offering features that are unmatched by any other platform. This platform offers a decentralized publishing system that ensures that your content lasts forever, without fear of information tampering.

Pink Paper founder and CEO Rupin Mathur joined the Neo Live AMA series to discuss the decentralized content publishing platform. Participants in the AMA shared rewards from a prize pool comprising ten Pink Panda NFTs.

Pink paper allows individuals and communities to publish blog-based content while retaining complete ownership. The decentralized content publishing platform lets users tip creators, earn a reputation, and participate in crowdfunding opportunities. Currently, Pink Paper supports Ethereum, IPFS, Polygon, and Neo N3, and has acquired more than 1,500 users. Looking forward, Pink Paper intends to integrate NeoFS into its storage layer.

Advantage

They are constantly taking your feedback and innovating on the platform, so that it can become the best content publishing platform (both in WEB 3 & WEB 2) ever.

If you create a blog the data you will upload will get distributed in pieces, and only you will be able to make an update or remove it from the internet. Now it's turn to Switch the New Mode of Web 3.0. It’s Complete Decentralized Platform. 

Features?

The current state of the internet is being used by all of us right now. Decentralized domains operate on a blockchain system, and only you have the ability to add or remove them.

Only the owner of a Blog can remove and add the content.

The majority of the internet is still working on web 2.0 and discussing blogging. For the majority of bloggers, the transition from web 2.0 to web 3.0 is challenging. But Pink Papers Overcome this Challenge and build the first Web3 Decentralized Blogging Platform. Bloggers have the full rights or control of own Blogs 

In Pink Paper you have the right of freedom of speech. I think this is the best feature ever.