Rather than being described as a cryptocurrency, NEO is described as a smart economy. It works in a similar way to Ethereum . NEO seem to build a link between the real economy and the digital economy, because at the moment, they are pretty much completely separate. By working closely together, they can make the two more efficient, as well as regulated, which is a conflicting topic in the digital finance world. The reason that Ethereum and NEO are often compared is because everything that you can do on the Ethereum platform, you can do on NEO’s; however, it is worth bearing in mind that NEO is a newer cryptocurrency , and therefore has seen the flaws in the Ethereum platform, and has therefore worked hard to improve these. NEO has developed its own consensus algorithm, which makes it quicker than the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum because at any single point in the blockchain, there is only one block being proposed at any single time. It also means that there is a lower risk associated with large value transactions because you only have to wait for one confirmation. Although it is a centralised blockchain, this does not stand in their way, nor worry them. This is because they are decentralised in terms of ownership as the consensus nodes are distributed across the world. They are also developing an application form that allows anyone to register themselves as a potential nominee, and get their identity confirmed, and are working on other ways in which to get the structure completely decentralised, and already have a number of steps underway. One feature that really makes NEO stand out from others though is the transaction speed. It is currently completing 1,000 transactions per second, however experts from the NEO team are confident that this could be pushed to 10,000 transactions per second, by making improvements to the peer to peer network. By 2020, they want to have reached 100,000 transactions per second. One criticism is that NEO is not very scalable, however despite this drawback, it is so full of technical advances that it puts it way above other cryptocurrencies of a similar ilk. The problem that they face is that people are still choosing Ethereum over them because they are unaware of how it works, and Ethereum is a familiar platform. It is the second most popular cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalisation, which proves that more people have heard of it and trust it over NEO. The hard work doesn’t stop either, as well as working to make the platform decentralised, there are also plans to work on the hyper v-m to constantly make this platform better and better.