NEO is a community-driven, open-source platform that leverages blockchain technology and digital identity. Developers can digitize and automate asset management through smart contracts. NEO aims to build the infrastructure for the next generation of the internet using distributed networks, laying the groundwork for large-scale blockchain adoption, in pursuit of realizing a vision of a smart economy.

1. Project Introduction

Based on blockchain technology, NEO transforms real-world assets into digital assets, enabling intelligent management through smart contracts. Users select digital certificate authorities for identity verification. NEO is used to govern the NEO network. It is one of the more popular public chain projects among both domestic and international communities.
By combining peer-to-peer networks, Byzantine Fault Tolerance, digital certificates, smart contracts, superconducting transactions, and cross-chain interoperability protocols, NEO enables you to manage your smart assets quickly, efficiently, securely, and legally.
Consensus Mechanism: DBFT
DBFT, or Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance, is a consensus mechanism that achieves large-scale node participation through delegated voting. NEO token holders vote to elect the bookkeepers they support. The elected bookkeepers then use the BFT algorithm to reach consensus and generate new blocks. Voting occurs continuously in real-time within the NEO network, not on a fixed term basis.
DBFT provides fault tolerance for a consensus system composed of n consensus nodes, with f = ⌊(n-1)/3⌋, ensuring both security and availability. It can withstand general and Byzantine failures, making it suitable for any network environment. DBFT has strong finality, with a single confirmation considered final, preventing block forks and transaction reversals.
Under NEOs DBFT consensus mechanism, a block is generated every 15-20 seconds, achieving a throughput of approximately 1,000 TPS, which is outstanding for a public blockchain. With optimization, it can achieve 10,000 TPS, supporting large-scale commercial applications.
When combined with digital identity technology, bookkeepers can be real-name individuals or entities, allowing for unconventional operations like freezing, revocation, inheritance, recovery, and court-ordered transfers. This facilitates the registration and issuance of compliant financial assets on the NEO network. NEO plans to support such operations when necessary.
Smart Contract System: NeoContract
The NEO smart contract system consists of three components:

NeoVM - Universal Blockchain Virtual Machine: NeoVM is a lightweight, universal virtual machine with an architecture similar to JVM and .NET Runtime. It functions like a virtual CPU, reading and executing contract instructions sequentially, controlling flow, performing arithmetic and logical operations. Its fast startup speed and versatility make it ideal for small programs like smart contracts. It can also be ported to non-blockchain scenarios or integrated with IDEs for better development experiences. NeoVM functionalities can be extended with JIT (Just-In-Time) compilation to enhance instruction execution efficiency.
InteropService - Interoperability Services: These load underlying services such as blockchain ledgers, digital assets, digital identities, and persistent storage. They act like virtual devices for the virtual machine, enabling smart contracts to access these services during runtime for advanced features. Through this loosely coupled design, NeoVM can be ported to any blockchain or even non-blockchain systems, broadening the application scope of smart contracts.
DevPack - Compilers and IDE Plugins: The DevPack includes high-level language compilers and IDE plugins. Due to NeoVMs similarity to JVM and .NET Runtime architectures, these compilers can translate Java bytecode and .NET MSIL into NeoVM instruction sets. Java/Kotlin and C# developers do not need to learn new languages; they can start writing smart contracts immediately in familiar IDE environments like VS and Eclipse. This significantly reduces the learning curve and fosters a rich ecosystem of NeoContract smart contracts.
NeoContract can establish a call tree for smart contracts before execution through static analysis. With a deterministic call tree, NEO nodes can dynamically shard smart contracts, theoretically enabling unlimited scalability and overcoming the "busy intersection effect" seen in other blockchain systems due to static sharding.
Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol: NeoX
NeoX is a protocol for cross-chain interoperability. It comprises two parts: "Cross-Chain Asset Exchange Protocol" and "Cross-Chain Distributed Transaction Protocol."
Cross-Chain Asset Exchange Protocol:
NeoX extends existing atomic asset exchange protocols between two chains, allowing multiple participants to exchange assets across different blockchains while ensuring all steps succeed or fail together. To achieve this, NeoContracts create a contract account for each participant. Other blockchains can be compatible with NeoX if they offer basic smart contract functionality, even without full NeoContract compatibility.
Cross-Chain Distributed Transaction Protocol:
This protocol allows transactions with steps executed across different blockchains while maintaining consistency. It extends cross-chain asset exchanges to arbitrary actions, making cross-chain smart contracts possible. A smart contract can execute different parts on multiple blockchains, either completing all parts or reverting to the pre-execution state. This opens up significant possibilities for cross-chain collaboration, and we are exploring its potential applications.
Distributed Storage Protocol: NeoFS
NeoFS is a distributed storage protocol utilizing Distributed Hash Table technology. NeoFS indexes data by file content (hash) rather than file path (URI). Large files are split into fixed-size data chunks stored across many nodes.
The primary challenge for such systems is balancing redundancy and reliability. NeoFS plans to address this through token incentives and backbone node establishment. Users can choose their desired level of file reliability, with lower reliability files stored and accessed for free or nearly free, while higher reliability files receive stable and reliable service from backbone nodes.
NeoFS will serve as one of the InteropServices in the NeoContract system, enabling smart contracts to store large files on the blockchain and set access permissions. Additionally, NeoFS can integrate with digital identities, allowing digital certificates to be issued, transmitted, and revoked peer-to-peer without centralized server management. In the future, old block data can be stored in NeoFS, allowing most full nodes to release old data for greater scalability while ensuring historical data integrity.
Quantum-Resistant Cryptography: NeoQS
The advent of quantum computers poses significant challenges to cryptography based on RSA and ECC. Quantum computers can solve the large number factorization problem underlying RSA and the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem underlying ECC in a short time. NeoQS is a lattice-based cryptographic mechanism, with QS standing for Quantum Safe. Currently, quantum computers cannot rapidly solve the Shortest Vector Problem (SVP) and Closest Vector Problem (CVP), making lattice cryptography the most reliable algorithm against quantum computer threats.

2. Commentary

NEO is a community-driven, open-source platform. It leverages blockchain technology and digital identity, using smart contracts to digitize and automate asset management. Its goal is to build the infrastructure for the next generation of the internet using distributed networks, laying the foundation for large-scale blockchain adoption and creating a smart economy.
The NEO MainNet launched in 2016 and has been running stably for over three years. NEO anticipates launching NEO3 in 2020, a robust implementation with high throughput, enhanced stability and security, an optimized smart contract system, and a fully functional infrastructure aimed at driving developer adoption and accelerating enterprise-level blockchain innovation.

Relevant Links:
https://neo.org/
https://www.huobi.io/zh-cn/assetintro/#neo
http://www.qukuaiwang.com.cn/szhb/2334.html#jj
https://info.binance-cn.com/en/currencies/neo