Why we chose NEO over Ethereum

In this post we dive deep into why we chose to build on top of NEO rather than Ethereum.

A common question we receive at Orbis is, ‘Why build on NEO over Ethereum?’ Ethereum’s proponents point to it being the frontrunner in terms of notoriety, volume of ICO’s and market cap.

However at Orbis we take a long term and thoughtful approach not only to what we are building but also what we are building on top of. Our decision to build on top of the NEO blockchain is at the foundation of our company, our vision, and our mission.

Although Ethereum is a tremendous platform backed by outstanding people, at Orbis we feel that NEO is the more clear platform of the future despite its current position behind Ethereum from a markets standpoint. In this post we will highlight some of the key reasons we decided to tip our hats to NEO, and build our Blockchain based Bluetooth Mesh Networking Platform on the NEO blockchain.

The first reason is finality. NEO has no forks, and this is important to us. Many of the industries we are looking to disrupt and displace are not interested in building on a platform that one day could have its developers split into two camps based on a lack of consensus. With NEO, token holders are entitled to vote for bookkeepers. The bookkeepers propose the correct state of the next block, and with 66% support for the proposition, the transaction is placed on the blockchain. There is no chance that developer disagreements will result in a fork, with one community or perhaps both communities becoming less relevant or irrelevant because of a fork.

In addition, each bookkeeper has their digital identity known, which transitions into our second reason for choosing NEO over Ethereum; that being a commitment to compliance. By having bookkeepers identities known, NEO bakes trust into their platform on a level that other blockchains cannot compete with due to the lack of transparency in key decision makers.

The third reason is developer accessibility. Ethereum has one programming language which a developer must use to build on top of the Ethereum Blockchain: Solidity. Before working with Ethereum, a developer must learn Solidity. The Ethereum blockchain only supports development with Solidity. NEO, on the other hand, currently supports five programming languages, with plans to add five more in the future. This enables developers to build on the NEO blockchain without learning an independent language only relevant to the Ethereum blockchain. It also means companies can build on the NEO blockchain in some instances with less modification than would be necessary on the Ethereum blockchain.

Speaking of code, NEO’s Virtual Machine executes smart contracts in a far more advanced manner than that of Ethereum. NEO’s Virtual Machine optimizes the code in the most efficient way possible. Beyond that, the transaction speed of the NEO blockchain is superior to Ethereum in both practical and theoretical speed. Theoretical speeds refer to the maximum speed that is mathematically possible. NEO’s theoretical speed is 10,000 transactions per second (TPS), whereas Ethereum’s is 30 TPS. In terms of practical speed, NEO can do 1,000 TPS compared to Ethereum’s 15 TPS. So NEO trumps Ethereum in both transaction speed and smart contract execution speed.

In addition to finality, compliance, transparency, transaction speed, greater programming language support, and smart contract execution; we feel that NEO’s partnerships and community are setting itself up for long term mass adoption. NEO has a partnership with OnChain, who seeks to work with Chinese businesses and government. Furthermore, NEO serves as the foundation of DNA (OnChains System). DNA develops public and private blockchains for businesses who then join the decentralized economy on NEO. NEO provides the public blockchains and DNA provides the private blockchains. Onchains partnerships include a who’s who of industry titans including Alibaba, Microsoft China, an investment from Fosun Group (China’s largest private conglomerate), the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and collaboration with Chinese Regional Government.

To lay the foundation for a global blockchain, NEO funded City of Zion (CoZ). CoZ is an independent, open source community of individuals who work towards the advancement of NEO. They include developers, translators and designers whose mission is to incentivize project development on the NEO blockchain. Their contributions to NEO have been huge, having developed the NEON wallet, the NEO block scanner and the NEX Platform.

At Orbis we’re thrilled to be building on the NEO blockchain. We believe NEO is setting itself up to be the leader of the new smart economy; where decentralization and the accommodation of government regulation are baked into a blockchain that has finality, transparency, superior transaction speeds and smart contract execution; accommodates many coding languages with deep community support and partnerships.