On November 28th, NEO ran an all day summit in the heart of the Financial District in downtown Manhattan. The focus of the event was NEO’s future, and upcoming projects connected to NEO’s Blockchain. NEO’s CEO Da Hongfei was the Keynote speaker of the day along with Onchain’s Chief Architect Jun Li. We also witnessed the launch of Ontology – “A Distributed Trust Network Redefined.”

“Ontology Network is a blockchain/distributed ledger network which combines distributed identity verification, data exchange, data collaboration, procedure protocols, communities, attestation, and various industry-specific modules. Together this builds the infrastructure for a peer-to-peer trust network which is cross-chain, cross-system, cross-industry, cross-application, and cross-device.”

For those of you new to Blockchain, NEO was originally launched as “Antshares” in 2014 and had a long slow progression. I began to look at Antshares in early 2017, when it was gaining more momentum on CoinMarketCap. Although Da Hongfei has proclaimed that he does not like being called “The Chinese Ethereum” many people in the Blockchain community began to call it that. This created a viral effect and ultimately a rebranding to NEO. The price soared and the community skyrocketed. NEO at it’s height hit a top 5 Blockchain project, and FOMO spread like wildfire. As Da Hongei himself said yesterday “We are one of the most well known Blockchain projects in the space, and frequently in the top 10 on CoinMarketCap.”

Earlier in Autumn, news reports began to spread about China’s ban on Cryptocurrency exchanges. One attendee asked the question “What is the current state of affairs regarding the government?” This of course was a sensitive question, however Da Hongfei stated that Blockchain is perfectly legal in China. There are no regulations against Blockchain development.

Exciting Developments – OnChain, Ontology & NEO

Globally, Asian markets have a massive impact on Blockchain. We are seeing the legalization of Bitcoin in Japan, test pilots with UniQlo, BIC Camera, sponsored by BitFlyer, more and more small businesses starting to accept Bitcoin as a real currency. Spearheading the China efforts have been Da Hongfei and Jun Li. Onchain has been in the space along with NEO since 2014. Onchain created what is called the “Distributed Network Architecture” – or DNA.

“Team and partners provide technical support, application design, and reliable operation to customers according to their needs. We also explore blockchain application and related business model in every industry and provide comprehensive support including technology, talents, and funds.”

NEO’s New Projects

NEO’s first ICO was called “Red Pulse” and was a data & analytics platform launched in October 2017. It sold out and was highly anticipated. We are now seeing some very interesting projects emerging and here is the list:

Qlink – Founded by Susan Zhou, this project aims to be the world’s first decentralized mobile network dedicated to constructing an open-source telecom infrastructure on blockchain.

AlphaCat – Predictive market platform, which has been recognized as being an award winning project. It’s goal is to take the best traders strategies and aggregate data to predict future movements. There is currently a prototype and an 11 month test which has garnered winning results.

TheKey – Spearheaded by Yidong King, a former United Nations healthcare officer, and contributor to “Blockchain-Based Dynamic Multi-Dimension Identification” TheKey appears to be similar to CIVIC, another Blockchain identification project. It was not very clear to me what this will be specifically used for, but Yidong is very energetic and passionate about the project.

PeerAtlas – Headed by Brad Mattson, M.D., Colin Closser, M.D., Ling Wu, Ph.D.

“We propose an open-source online medical encyclopedia with peer-reviewed information available free of charge worldwide. The ATLAS token will be an NEP-5 asset registered on the NEO blockchain used to reward creators of articles and algorithms useful to medical professionals.”

DeepBrain – Initiated by Yong He, China’s first AI “Brain System.” It was not fully clear to me what markets this will be used for. However the founder has been recognized in China as an early pioneer in modern AI development.

NEX – Neon Meta Exchange. Decentralized exchange project, launching ICO in March 2018.

Full Speed Ahead for NEO?

With the rapid development and talented developers working on NEO and related projects, we should see a massive 2018 for NEO. It’s not easy to determine which projects will come out on top, however all of these projects should be noted.