Let’s talk about scaling and interoperability from an engineering perspective. The main problem that the blockchain is trying to solve is scaling transactions and interoperating with other apps. The Ethereum network is the most suitable as we already know from the use of ERC20 tokens in ICO’s. Turing complete smart contracts are the most well known applications of Ethereum. The only thing that is holding Ethereum back is the volume of transactions and the speed of the network. Cryptokitties showed just how inefficient the Ethereum network is when it comes to handling volumes of transactions. Ethereum also charges fees aka “gas money” for using the network during transactions, which does put some users off. Another issue is with developers in that the Ethereum network uses it’s own programming language called Solidity. It is not something you can just code using whatever programming language you like, though Ethereum does support others until you develop the smart contract. To develop smart contracts in Ethereum, learning Solidity is still the key. Too bad this has discouraged some enterprises from using smart contracts. A more familiar tool for development of smart contracts would make more sense for the majority of programmers. That was a good point made by Dan Larimer, the founder of Steemit, Bitshares and EOS.
That is why there is NEO, which I call the “New Ethereum Order” from China and EOS aka the “Ethereum On Steroids”. NEO is also called the “Chinese Ethereum” and one of it’s strong points, from an engineering stand, is enabling the development of smart contracts on their platform using popular programming languages like Java, C#, JavaScript, Go, Kotlin and Python. This is welcoming to most developers since they don’t need to learn a new programming language and IDE. EOS also does not require a new programming language since it is based on C++, something most developers are already familiar with. Both cryptocurrency projects are building their platform that improves upon Ethereum. They are both more advanced than Ethereum and have the scalability to meet transaction demands and network speed. We are talking industrial level systems most suitable for interoperability and mass volume transactions which Ethereum and even Bitcoin have been short on delivering. Both EOS and NEO are based on the Ethereum blockchain, but aim to improve it.
NEO, a smart economy platform for digital assets that utilizes smart contracts
EOS is building a platform on the blockchain that allows DApps to run on. EOS is thus like the “Ethereum Operating System” but is only based on Ethereum, since it uses it’s own token that is also called EOS. EOS is like Windows for distributed applications that execute smart contracts on a decentralized platform. NEO also takes after Ethereum to create a network that improves upon it’s shortcomings. NEO offers a more scalable and secure smart contract than Ethereum, with a more user friendly interface. Now there is another similar project called Cardano, which I didn’t include here because it’s ADA or just “Another Distributed Application”.
So “steroids” and “new order” will provide the technology that scales to millions of transactions per second, eliminates user fees and allows more rapid and simpler deployment of decentralized applications. It is like making a better Ethereum, that is not Ethereum. There is a lot of excitement for both NEO and EOS. Now it’s time to see them deliver on their potential utility as a GPT (General Purpose Technology).
Further Reading:
NEO — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEO_(cryptocurrency)
EOS — https://eos.io/