Interestingly, NEO is a blockchain “platform” that leases its underlying technology stack, enabling the development of digital assets and smart contracts on top of its own infrastructure. Generally speaking, NEO's value proposition is similar to that of Ethereum. While the latter presents itself as a more abstract tool for creating arbitrarily complex decentralized applications ("apps"), the former focuses more on maintaining records of digital assets with electronic contracts, including contracts currently “fiat” or “real world”. assets.Why NEO: However, according to its white paper, NEO offers a “decentralized and distributed ledger protocol that digitizes real-world assets into digital assets, enabling registration, deposit, transfer, trading, clearing and payment via peer-to-peer. network." Compared to Ethereum, the NEO platform is in its early stages of development, but there appears to be significant support from its community. Additionally, the platform has gained notable popularity in some regions of Asia and has been called the “Ethereum of China”. cryptoHowever, in its current state, the NEO blockchain adds a new block every 15-20 seconds, with a demonstrated transaction throughput of ~1,000 transactions per second ("tips") and a theoretical transaction throughput of 7,500-10 000 tsp (according to their Reddit AMA and other sources). large-scale commercial operations, comparing it to historical centralized solutions. These throughput levels significantly eclipse Ethereum's current ~15 tps (~30 tps theoretical), although Ethereum's pipeline of near-term scaling solutions (which we plan to cover in an upcoming article from blog) should fill a significant portion of this current gap. The relative effectiveness of NEO's blockchain is detailed in more detail in several points below (e.g. consensus mechanism, virtual machine construction). Consensus Mechanism Additionally, NEO uses a Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (“dBFT”) consensus mechanism, which is an important factor in its high level. network throughput. dBFT is closer to a Proof of Stake (“PoS”) system than a Proof of Work (“PoW”) system and shares many of its advantages. While a detailed discussion between PoS and PoW is beyond the scope of this article, PoS has several advantages over PoW (e.g. electrical/hardware scalability, faster/larger transaction finality and higher network throughput, etc. .). However, PoS involves many validators perpetually connected to the internet staking coins, increasing the attack surface for potential hacks. Additionally, like PoW, PoS is always subject to forking if consensus were to break down. While in reality most blockchains (PoW and PoS) fork quite frequently before converging onto a single chain shortly thereafter (i.e. the uncle and orphan blocks), this poses a conflict for the NEO's vision of widespread digitalization of real-world assets. A blockchain traditionally securing fiat securities cannot afford to diverge into two versions and wait for inconsistencies until one is declared the winner (i.e. delayed finality on a regular basis) . Finally, although an order of..