Is This What NEO Believers Have Been Waiting For?

NEO is quickly gaining ground as a popular cryptocurrency especially with its current performance. For instance, the price of NEO has been showing strong gains, especially towards the end of January where most other coins (including Bitcoin) were struggling.

NEO comes roaring back with a 12% gain as the crypto market stabilizes after a brutal selloff. The strong rally led NEO to beat Litecoin and take the title of the world’s 6th most valuable cryptocurrency by market cap.

Its sibling GAS coin has also not been left behind. Both coins have recently been at the center stage receiving the attention of developers in conferences and live web shows.

Granted, both altcoins boast a strong marketing team but is there a real chance for NEO to be established as a smart and practical Blockchain ecosystem and be used for real-world transactions? Well, let’s check out what has been happening in the NEO space.

NEO’s wallets

Now that NEO coin is gaining popularity, developers have started creating wallet software that enables users to store their NEO safely. Whether you are an android or IOS user there are a variety of options available.

However, one particular developing NEO wallet posses even more potential. Reportedly NEO is working on a new and decentralized crypto exchange and wallet by the name Neon.

It will serve as the wallet for NEO with a unique design that offers the basic functionality of a wallet without requiring users to download the entire Blockchain to their mobile device.

Furthermore, reports also indicate that that NEON (a decentralized crypto exchange) will combine NEO’s Blockchain “with an off-chain matching engine to enable much faster and more complex trades than existing decentralized exchanges.”

NEON will also support ERC20 tokens and GAS in an effort to make NEON a cross-chain platform and cryptocurrency wallet. With the NEON wallet set to be developed in the 3rd quarter of 2018, there is no doubt that NEO will gain even more popularity in the crypto space for its solutions.

NEO and the Chinese government

Another factor that can really contribute to the growth of NEO in 2018 is the fact that its focus is mainly on the huge Chinese crypto market.

Although the Chinese government is not known for being friendly to cryptocurrencies, there have been signs to show possible acceptance of Blockchain technology considering the government has previously experimented with Blockchain by creating their own national cryptocurrency.

Even with its hard stance on ICOs, the Chinese government has been known to be willing to work with companies that play by the rules.

This is why NEO is positioning itself as the tech giant in China by playing by the rules through its centralized on-chain technology. Basically, NEO’s on-chain technology was designed to be regulatory friendly from the start with a centralized approach that is quite different from most (if not all) other cryptocurrencies.

Perhaps this will make NEO attractive to the Chinese government as an easy to control entity. According to DA Hongfei the founder of NEO, a centralized approach might be “more authoritative in the beginning but eventually be democratic.”

Conclusion

NEO stands out from its competitors with the centralized approach that makes it attractive to governments such as China.

In fact, the company’s founder mentions that a centralized approach makes it easy to make changes to the project quickly rather than wait for a majority consensus like it has been the case with Bitcoin and Ethereum.

It, however, remains to be seen whether NEO combined with NEON will gain an advantage by riding on China’s numbers to become the ultimate smart economy of the crypto space.