Antshares (NEO): an Ethereum competitor
Introduction
Antshares (NEO), a name coined from the theory of ant colonization as mentioned in the video. It is much like Ethereum, but with a difference. It claims to be “Chinese Ethereum”.
- It is a decentralized and distributed ledger protocol that digitalizes real-world assets into digital ones, enabling registration, deposit, transfer, trading, clearing and settlement via a peer-to-peer network.
- It shall have multiple use cases like could be used for recording rights and assets like equities, creditor’s claims, securities, financial contracts, credit points, bills and currencies, and could be applied for areas like equity crowdfunding, equity trading, employee stock ownership plans, P2P financing, credit points, funds and supply-chain finance, etc.
Features
- Mining- delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (dBFT) is the mining method used for Antshares. It is mainly for voting nodes.
- Identity authentication- employs digital certificate to perform user identity authentication.
- Blockchain validation- Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum where One man mode is used, here it uses Joint mode which has advantage of consistency and finality.
- Fiat currency- fiat currency can also be used as token over Antshares, which is having its own token called “ANC”
- Programming language support- supports .NET & Java/Kotlin. Will support Go, JS, Python in the future.
- Digital certification guarantees trust
- Quantum secure- Lattice-based cryptography
- Earn more NEO coins by holding NEO
A comparison with Ethereum
Recent Event @ Microsoft headquarter, Beijing
At a gathering at the Microsoft headquarters in Beijing on Thursday, with about 200 people in attendance, Antshares, the first open-source blockchain platform developed in China, announced a complete rebranding of its blockchain solution, as well as a number of other developments detailing their ambitious plans forward.
Renamed their platform as NEO
Developers highlighted the strengths of their smart contract fitted for decentralized commerce, digital identities and the digitization of many assets.
ANS asset will be renamed as NEO in the 3rd quarter of 2017.
Holders of ANS can create their currency in Antshares wallet- ANC which can be used as gas on the platform.
Da Hongfei, founder of NEO, elaborated on the future of blockchain technology, where every asset will be digitized and programmable with smart contracts. Calling for the transparency and openness of data, he introduced concepts of the “Smart Economy” and new smart contract system, and announced that he is building a new multi-chain protocol for interoperability.
NEO is collaborating with certificate authorities in China to map real-world assets using smart contracts.
NEO has received a new patent for cross-chain distributed interoperability.
NEO’s recent new startup partners include Bancor, Agrello, Coindash, Nest Fund, and Binance, with more partner announcements to come.
Erik Zhang, Core Developer of NEO, discussed the evolution of Smart Contracts 2.0, and explained the main differences between NEO and Ethereum. One big contrast of these competing platforms is their programming languages. He explains the Virtual machine for Antshares and how it has made compatible for supporting different languages.
Figure. Antshares Virtual MachineTony Tao, CEO of NEO and Founder of Nest Fund, which is based on the concept of Ethereum’s The DAO, a blockchain-based investment fund. This will be built on NEO’s blockchain.
By offering a global bounty reward for any hacker who finds bugs, Nest will be audited by a worldwide peer review, and will then release its token for decentralized investing.
Srikanth Raju, Microsoft’s G.M of Developer Experience and Evangelism for the Greater China Region mentioned that the blockchain technology will lead us into a new digital age, displacing traditional businesses and middlemen throughout many industries. He said that Onchain (the company that founded NEO) is “one of the top 50 startup companies in China”, and offered his support for their endeavors going forward.
Mr. Han Feng, Tsinghua University I-Center highlighted the university’s growing interest in supporting blockchain technology, Mr. Han Feng said that current systems of commerce are “outdated and insecure,” and that the internet is ready for an upgrade to a blockchain-based operating system. Calling for a fully-automated, blockchain-based, decentralized economy, he said we can expect a digital revolution in the years to come. This will include digital currency, decentralized storage, secure smart contract codes, IoT, AI, and many more innovations.
Chen Cheng Qiang, founder and CEO of Innospace, located in Shanghai, Innospace is a business incubation company, with office spaces, meeting spaces, cafes and living spaces. At today’s conference, he announced a ¥200 million CNY ($29.3 million USD) incubation fund, a collaboration between his company and the NEO blockchain team. Plans for the fund include the establishment of a new blockchain space in Shanghai, combining working spaces, startup incubation and acceleration services. According to Mr. Qiang, his company plans to provide the most successful entrepreneurship acceleration services in China.
Alex Norta, founder of Agrello, coming all the way from Estonia, announced that his startup Agrello will be partnering with NEO to develop smart contracts for automation, self-execution, accuracy and transparency. Powered by AI, Agrello will be a platform for non-programmers to create their own legally binding blockchain-based smart contracts. Use cases for Agrello’s tech include renting and sharing, freelance contracting, orchestrating production flows, and reducing administration costs for multinational corporations.
Adam Efrima, COO of Coindash, with offices in Israel and Shanghai, Coindash will be a social trading platform for crypto assets, offering portfolio management tools for digital asset investors. Features of the platform will include portfolio statistics and management tools, investment automation, an ICO dashboard, and insights into other traders’ successful investing strategies. In the upcoming development of Nest Fund, a blockchain-based smart fund by the developers of NEO, Coindash will offer advisory and prediction tools for Nest’s modern investors.
Mr. Zhao Chang Peng, CEO of Binance, the former CTO of OkCoin, Mr. Zhao Chang Peng is starting his own digital asset exchange, hoping to compete with platforms like Poloniex. Calling his new platform Binance, this new exchange will only deal in coin-to-coin transactions, avoiding fiat pairs and therefore avoiding Chinese regulations. In order to maintain a standard in mature digital assets, Binance will only list coins that meet its strict criteria. With a launch planned for later this year, the platform’s first traded assets will be bitcoin, ether and NEO.
From the looks, sounds, and energy of the event, NEO has built up some strong momentum going forward. They have the top blockchain development teams in all of China, with 50 million ANS ($325 million) to support their funding needs and a growing list of partners now aligning by their side. While it may take some time to steal the spotlight from Ethereum, we are sure to see more from this platform in the months to come.
seems interesting, but I noticed 50% of all created tokens will be owned by the Antshares team, plus 10% to early supporters, so only 40% go to ICO participants, which is a bit worrying, as the team then get the money + the majority of Antshares, and ICO investors only get 40% of Antshares after putting up the money to make it all happen.
Will have to see how it goes.
@chris77d ...Thanks for sharing the info...
Yess..it is a bit of concern.
Definitely !! got to see this.
How much high it can fly...
Good points in this article. Nice to see I'm not the only one who thinks like this. I'm not sure if coins are that high risk. The quality coins are here to stay and it's like buying in at the S&P 500 50 years ago. Cryptos will fall and rise at a more rapit phase any investment market has ever seen. Just hold (literaly) and enjoy the ride. I found this great website: https://www.coincheckup.com They seem to give this complete indepth analysis of all cryptocoins. Sorted by team, product, company, advisors, previous investors, etc. For example: https://www.coincheckup.com/coins/Neo#analysis To watch Neo Investment and research analysis.