Ant Shares
NEO, aka Antshares, is a smart contract development platform that aims to automate the management of digital assets and provide a scalable network of decentralized applications
The Chinese Ethereum
Dubbed “The Chinese Ethereum”, the non-profit project was established in 2014 and has accumulated more than 65 community-built dApps on its platform.
The NEO ICO was hosted from July 1-9, 2016. 50,000,000 NEO was sold during the duration of the ICO at a rate of $0.036 per 1 NEO, while the other half was withheld by the NEO Council.
Similar To Ethereum
While the project is very similar to Ethereum, they do have their differences. For example, NEO supports multiple code bases such as Java / Kotlin, .NET C # / VB, JavaScript / Typescript, Python, and Go, while Ethereum is based on Solidity.
Costs Of Gas
Neo also gas a thing called GAS. It is basically like a car, if you use your car it costs you gas. But if you park your car up and other people use it they give you a small amount of gas. This means your exchange wallet make you a small % of GAS.
Spending Neo costs you GAS, Saving Neo gives you GAS. Put simply.
Fuel the Contracts
GAS tokens are used to fuel the smart contracts and tokens on the NEO blockchain. The total supply is 100 million GAS but the maximum supply will not be reached until an estimated 20+ years.
File Sharing
The NeoFS is a decentralized file sharing and storage service based on Distributed Hash Table (DHT) technology where data is indexed by file content rather than file path. Files can be divided into smaller data blocks that are distributed and stored in multiple nodes.
Smart Contracts
This enables smart contracts the ability to store and access large files on the NEO blockchain. Storage is available for purchase using GAS (CGAS NEP-5), a resource generated from NEO tokens over time. Meanwhile, consumers of data do not need to pay to access data stored on NeoFS. In the future, there is mention of other possible payment options, including fiat.
Twin Token
NEO has a dual-token system comprised of a management token, NEO (symbol NEO), and the utility token, NeoGas (symbol GAS).
Non Divisible
NEO tokens are non-divisible and give token holders management rights including voting for bookkeeping, network parameter changes, etc. The total supply is 100 million NEO, which were all generated in the genesis block of the NEO network.
NEO holders get voting rights and GAS dividends from miners.
NeoVM contains three essential elements:
The Neo Virtual Machine (NeoVM) is a lightweight stack-based contract execution environment with good startup times and versatility, making suitable for small programs such as smart contracts. NeoVM can be ported to other blockchains as well as non-blockchain systems, which increases the utility of smart contracts.
NeoContract is a smart contract system built on NEO blockchain, serving the purpose of transaction validation, token sales, and decentralized app development.
It consists of:
DBFT
NEO uses the delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (dBFT) mechanism, which is an improved form of the traditional proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.
It ensures the system keeps its finality/availability as long as the Byzantine fault occurs on less than one-third of the nodes. Once confirmations are final, the transaction cannot be revoked or rolled back.
Rules
NEO cannot be mined, and it’s not divisible. It represents a share of the NEO market and is, therefore, a security. NEO holders get voting rights and GAS dividends from miners.
As for hardware wallets, your only choice as a NEO holder is the Ledger Nano S
Ledger
The Leger may come at a price and may isn’t the easiest to set up, but the security it provides, especially when it comes to storing larger amounts of NEO or any other cryptocurrency is priceless. As for using the Nano Ledger S, the first step towards setting up your device is unboxing your device and checking if you have received all the accessories with the device itself. Once you have unboxed your device, you need to configure it and initialize it before being able to use it. The process is quite simple and will hardly take about 20-30 minutes post which you will be set to use your Ledger Nano S device. This video does a pretty good job of explaining how the setup works. Once you’re set, you’ll have your NEO stored in probably the most secure wallet on the market. Just remember to always purchase your device from a reputable, trusted site, as there isn’t any lack of malicious fakes out there.
NEON Wallet
NEON Wallet is one of the best choices when it comes to desktop wallets. It allows you to store, receive, and send both NEO and GAS. The great thing about it is that you can automatically claim the generated GAS if you hold NEO cryptocurrency in the NEON Wallet.
Also, you don't need to worry about security, as private keys are not held anywhere on NEON's servers. This means you're in control of your funds. Another great alternative is NEO GUI, however, it is designed for advanced users and only people familiar with the NEO ecosystem and code are encouraged to use it.
Neo Tracker
NEO Tracker Wallet is a web-based wallet. It is written in Javascript and is an open-source project with a user-friendly application for storing, sending, and receiving NEO and GAS. It also allows its users to claim GAS for the amount they are holding in NEO. It is officially an offline wallet as it uses your machine’s browser to generate the necessary data, and nothing is ever stored on NEO Tracker’s servers, which is great for security. NEO Tracker is pretty straightforward to use, just create a password to encrypt your private key and you're pretty much done, just make sure to save your private key in a secure location.
Currently, there are few ways to buy NEO with a credit card.
Paybis
One way would be Paybis, which charges a %5 flat fee on credit card transactions. The site itself is fairly easy to use, just sign up with your email and go through the simple verification process, after that you'll be able to purchase all the cryptos that Paybis offers.
Binance
Another way you could do it is through Binance(which currently doesn't cater to US citizens due to regulation issues). Binance is one of the most well known and widely used crypto exchanges and allows its users to purchase most of the cryptocurrencies it offers with a credit card.
