NEO (formerly Antshares) is an open-source blockchain decentralized application platform founded in 2014 by Da HongFei and Erik Zhang. Since its rebranding to NEO from Antshares in 2017, the project's vision is to realise a “smart economy” by utilizing blockchain technology and smart contracts to issue and manage digitized assets.
The network runs on a proof of stake decentralized Byzantine fault tolerant (dBFT) consensus mechanism between a number of centrally approved nodes, and can support up to 10,000 transactions per second.
The base asset of the NEO blockchain is the non-divisible NEO token which generates GAS tokens. These GAS tokens, a separate asset on the network, can be used to pay for transaction fees. The inflation rate of GAS is controlled with a decaying half life algorithm that will release 100 million GAS over approximately 22 years.
A total of 100 million NEO were created in the Genesis Block. 50 million NEO were sold to early investors, with the remaining 50 million NEO locked into a smart contract. Each year, 15 million NEO tokens are unlocked which are used by the NEO development team to fund long term development goals.
The core of the NEO feature set revolves around tools that allow developers to efficiently deploy and scale smart contract applications on the NEO blockchain. X.509 Digital Identities allow developers to tie tokens to real world identities which aids in complying with KYC/AML and other regulatory requirements.