[ad_1]
NEO seems to lose ground in the popularity contest, at least lately. In the glory days of 2017, the "Chinese Ethereum" was a top 10 cryptocurrency with unstoppable potential. NEO has been advertised as faster, better, and able to handle many more transactions than other major networks. The clamor surrounding the project was palpable.
Since its peak in January 2018, when its market capitalization was over $ 10 billion, NEO slipped to 18th place with a market cap about half that amount.
What happened to see him fall into disgrace?
The cryptic community may lose interest in NEOs, but its co-founder, Erik Zhang, is not losing sleep.
In fact, ask him what the NEO price is on a certain day and probably has not even checked.
"I'm not interested in NEO's price and market capitalization at all," he told me.
I met Zhang to find out what's going on with NEO, because being compared to Ethereum annoys him and how his cat writes most of his code. Check it out.
Everyone has heard of your charismatic co-founder Da Hongfei; it is the face of NEO. Do you prefer working behind the scenes? What is your main role in NEO?
"From Hongfei he did a great job in promoting the NEOs and made a big contribution to the development of the blockchain industry," he says.
"Da had more visibility to the public, while my contributions were more focused on GitHub."
Despite the reduced percentage of time in the spotlight, Zhang is not just the co-founder of NEO; he is also a main developer. And it is completely disinterested in the NEO price and the fluctuations of the encrypted market in general.
His work, he reminds me, is to focus on building the NEO and strengthening the community.
"What's the difference between the first 10 and 18?" Question, "We are developing a blockchain project instead of playing a capital game, I just want to make this project even better."
Is it true that the NEO is often called "Chinese Ethereum?" Do you mind that association or is it something that bothers you and the team?
Like a red rag to a bull, Zhang really starts coming alone here. Somehow, I had the feeling that the constant comparison with Ethereum could be a critical point.
Labeling is a hype. We have never introduced NEO in this way and personally I am against this labeling.
He goes on to explain that he has nothing against Ethereum, however; he even defines it as a "great project". But he reiterates that the two blockchains are very different.
It's easy to call WeChat "Chinese WhatsApp" and Baidu "Chinese Google", but it's probably where the similarities end. It is practically watered down by marketing for dummies in the West.
NEO may have been conceived in China, but Zhang explains that it is a global project to which developers from all over the world have contributed.
"Although it was initiated by two Chinese, I believe that the nationality of the founder is not the nationality of the project." And Zhang is not very interested in projects that have a figurehead.
In my eyes, the founder is nothing but a mascot.
Then it comes out with an extremely valid point on the NEO / Ethereum comparison:
Finally, I must say that what can defeat the Ethereum can never be another Ethereum.
So, what are the key differences between NEO and Ethereum at the technological level? And on a visionary level?
"NEO and Ethereum both have their own tokens – they can all do intelligent, complete turing contracts, but they also have a big difference – first, their consensual mechanisms are different – Ethereum uses a PoW algorithm, while NEO uses the algorithm dBFT ", he says.
"Secondly, their intelligent contract development languages are very different: Ethereum uses a domain-specific language called Solidity, while NEO uses generic languages with a large number of developers, such as C #, Python, Java, Golang, JavaScript , etc. "
Even the smart contract with the two networks provided is different, Zhang explains:
The interfaces provided by Ethereum for smart contracts are relatively simple and are usually provided via the EVM instruction set. NEO provides a large number of powerful APIs for smart contracts and is provided similarly to virtual devices.
Beyond the technical differences, the biggest chasm lies between the vision of the two projects. Says Zhang:
Ethereum wants to be a world computer that can not be stopped while NEO wants to serve the smart economy.
From Hongfei, he told the Lisbon Web Summit that NEO is ready for the "formal economy". What do you mean by this and how is this the case?
"Last year, we adhered to the principle of building NEO a blockchain ready for compliance.Though the blockchain is treated differently in different countries, there is no doubt that no country or region would move away from technology blockchain, "he said.
From the point of view of social revolution, the blockchain must be well monitored for mass applications and healthy development. We have seen liquidity being facilitated by unhealthy development; however, it has propagated an incorrect way of use.
"NEO's smart economy vision is made up of" intelligent contract "," digital identity "and" digital resources ", of which" digital identity "is a prerequisite for compliance and a feature of NEO", adds . "The digital identity is also the area that NEO wants to focus on to facilitate the development of the formal economy using blockchain technology."
You can be forgiven for not digesting all of this in one go. With so much attention to digital identity, what does it actually mean for the end user? What does all this translate to?
Regarding the importance of digital identity and privacy in blockchains for the mainstream, what applications are available to bring NEO to the mainstream?
"NeoID is an important component that facilitates the development of digital identity." Strengthens:
Blockchain must be ready for compliance and associated with the real economy to achieve growth.
NEO has never wanted to dissociate itself with the real economy, according to its vision in the white paper. NEO plans to improve the existing economy. Zhang confirms:
What is in NEO's plan is to use the blockchain to enhance the real economy, and we firmly believe that NEO will build the future of the smart economy.
Are you a supporter of the regulation despite the fact that ICO and cryptocurrency trade is banned in China? Do you still think this is the right move?
"Although ICOs and trade are banned in China, the government still encourages the development of blockchain technology.I think it works positively.When the monitoring system is immature, it is a good idea to build compliance with blockchain technology."
The situation is a bit murky in China at first sight. On the one hand, the government seems to be completely hostile to cryptography. It is not an ICO incubator like Switzerland or Malta.
However, he is not even late in the race to block his economy in any way. But prohibiting encryption and Ico does not damage Chinese cryptography?
Just to recheck, cryptocurrency is not illegal in China, however, is trading? Has this damaged the growth of NEO? How will NEO be able to prepare for a formal economy if the cryptocurrency trade is banned in China?
"Trading is not illegal," Zhang corrects, "trade is illegal, it will not harm NEO, or NEO damage is the same as any other project, you can not exchange NEOs or other tokens in Chinese trades, but you can trade legally NEO or other tokens in other countries. "
It is here that brings out retail traders, who only a developer can, reiterating that the price of NEO is interesting for him as the last tweet of a Kardashian.
Traders always think of ways, I do not need to worry about it at all, because I am not a trader myself.
What's new with NEO at the moment? What will happen next?
"NEO's goal is to be able to run large-scale commercial applications, to achieve this we are doing two things: the first is to improve the NEO infrastructure so that it has higher tps and an algorithm more reliable dBFT consensus.
"After a year and a half of development, NEO's improved NEO consensus algorithm is about to be completed, dBFT will become the best consent mechanism for blockchain.
"The second is the development of a distributed storage network, NeoFS, so that applications can store huge amounts of data.The development of NeoFS's first release candidate (RC1) should be completed in the third quarter of 2019.
"In February we will hold the second NEO DevCon in Seattle and we will share more details on the progress".
What is the importance of DevCon for NEO and for industry? Can you talk to us a little about the event?
"DevCon is strategically committed to keeping the community informed of our progress in development, and it also offers opportunities for people interested in the blockchain to learn about the latest technological advances, interesting applications and discuss the possibilities for future changes with experts and scholars. competent.
"NEO DevCon will take place between 16 and 17 February in Seattle and will revolve around Layer2, consensus mechanism and distributed file storage system, etc. With other topics to be decided.This time we have also invited some speakers from the giants of the Seattle technology to share their opinions with us.
"By holding DevCon, we hope to build more connections between blockchain and large traditional businesses to facilitate wider application of blockchain technology."
See the event of this year draw as many people as your last events were, as many companies like ConsenSys are firing?
"The NGD marketing team has been dedicated to preparing DevCon and we are confident of the result, our goal is not limited to the blockchain industry, but we expect to incorporate blockchain technology into larger scenarios and industries for large-scale business ", he continues, adding:
It is worth mentioning that over the past six months, we have had more than a dozen new talents who have joined the team and have witnessed a growth in technology communities. Our vision is clear and we always focus on the development of technology, so market volatility has no major impact on team development.
So, in that case, would I still encourage developers to get into blockchain despite the collapse?
"Obviously, this is one of the things I do officially." Just as the Internet brought people into the digital economy, I think the blockchain will bring people into the intelligent economy. Changes in the economic system will bring a better life to people.
"I think this is something that deserves to be done, we need more talented developers to participate in innovation, it has nothing to do with the market situation."
Let's go back to the NEO and your plans. Can you tell us something about the rigid fork? Can you give us some details or a timetable for this?
"NEO will have a major update next year, which is NEO 3.0. To upgrade to NEO 3.0, you need at least one fixed fork."
We could even propose to start a new blockchain network, then migrate all the old data into the new chain.
However, "These are still under discussion.Without the type of update that will be chosen, it depends on the final technical implementation.But in either case, it will not be implemented until next year."
So, there is not a hard outlet on the way to go for NEO until 2020, but there is still a lot to be expected with the NEO community that continues along its roadmap.
Returning to the cryptocurrency industry in general, what happens? Have you anticipated that the Bitcoin Cash fork has had such an impact on the industry?
"Personally, I did not pay much attention to market fluctuations, nor did I notice the BCH crossroads, so it's difficult for me to answer this question," he said. However, he added:
From what I have observed, a sector must eliminate underperforming projects to achieve growth.
Then he continues to release an unexpected prediction:
In my opinion, Ethereum will sooner or later exceed Bitcoin and get the first position. But Ethereum will also have to face a very fierce competition from other projects like NEO.
Where do you see the future of cryptocurrency? Do traditional financial institutions have reason to fear it?
"As far as I know, many financial institutions are exploring the application of blockchain technology in financial scenarios," however:
I do not believe that traditional financial institutions can achieve concrete results in the blockchain field. Because, in my opinion, the nature of the blockchain is to reduce the cost of relocation of trust through decentralization and the nature of traditional financial institutions is to build trust through a centralized authority. These two ideas are against one another and difficult to unify.
Any hard line predictions for us?
"No, I'm not a wizard." (He also does not mince his words.)
Okay then, finally, can you tell us something about you that nobody knows?
"Remember, the NEO code is written by Erik's cat."
Shutterstock foreground image
[ad_2]
Source link
