Thanks for this thorough reply! It's finally a real answer that I can work with! Too bad I just posted an article asking for this information and getting a discussion going which may now be redundant.

I always knew NEO was 'like DPOS' but thought they had their own angle on it with the BFT stuff. I guess I saw this as experimental within the blockchain space. I always thought that EOS would simply use DPOS, like Bitshares and STEEM.

I know that NEO didn't come up with the BFT solution, nor the DPoS part of it, that's for sure. I just thought they were the first/only blockchain to implement these solutions. Now that EOS is doing it too I feel like EOS is 'like NEO' now.