Novice Crypto - NEO vs Onchain - October 2017 - Strange Bedfellows?

Disclaimer: Novice Crytpo posts will be the resting place of my thoughts on various blockchain based technologies at a certain point in time. My thoughts should not dictate your actions nor be perceived as investment advice, conduct your own research and perhaps return to this post which provides an opportunity for the community to comment and correct any misconceptions I may have.

So if you have spent some time looking into Chinese blockchains or NEO you may have come across Onchain, often noted in passing but poorly explained. As a holder of NEO it's worth taking the time to understand the relationship a little deeper.

First up, there is good reason for the frequent comparisons and references with two of the five co-founders of Onchain also being founders of NEO. So to say there are some shared values between NEO and Onchain would be an understatement, in fact Onchain's blockchain offering 'Distributed Networks Architecture' (DNA for short) and NEO share much of the same architecture. Strange right? we have two partnered yet competing companies?

So whats Onchains story anyway? Ron over at Hackernoon broke it down perfectly:
Onchain, a Shanghai-based blockchain R&D company, first started developing Antshares in February of 2014 which will eventually become the foundation of DNA. - note: Antshares re-branded to NEO

Companies that have invested in Onchain include the likes of Fosun Group, one of Chinas largest private conglomerates. Fosun have also noted plans to use Onchain across all of their business which starts to paint the picture of Onchains early traction with Government and Enterprise customers when it comes to their DNA offering.

On the Onchain website they endeavor to explain the boundaries / market segmentation attributed to their partnership:

Still a little fuzzy... The easy way wrap your head around it is to think of it in a similar way to that of Ethereum and Ethereum Enterpise. Large, risk averse entities tend to be very shy and hesitant to host their systems and business functions on public infrastructure. That's why companies like Microsoft and VMware still support the added complexities of on-premesis Azure etc.

In the NEO / Onchain relationship, we really have Onchain as the product and services company for DNA private cloud and NEO as the public cloud with the 'utility' element of GAS, the fuel / transaction fee for using the NEO public network. Cross chain communication is also part of their shared architecture vision which presumably would allow both Onchain and NEO to mix and match their private / public blockchain use with cross chain communication coming from NeoX.

So without a doubt, Onchain will gobble up some of that market that we might have hoped NEO could obtain. But in my experience it's a very different thing to work in heavily regulated businesses and large enterprises. Regulation and the complexities of sheer scale add huge overheads to supporting customer adoption of these kind of technologies so we shouldn't get too sad about NEO loosing some potential adoption in China because in that same breath it's maintaining the ability to be nimble - a trait of all Unicorns.

With Onchain's support, NEO are well placed to snap up the generation of Chinese innovators as the new WeChat and Alibabas reach the market with the help of NEO's public blockchain offering.

Now, having said all this. Let me know if you see an opportunity to buy equity in Onchain's DNA...

• You can find Onchain here
• You can find Neo here
• You can find a recent interview with Da Hongfei here

Please comment, like and contribute. I'm more than happy to have my logic tested, to learn and to grow. Let's help each other lift the skirts on the hype and pick the winners in a blockchain future!