Way back in September of 2017 when we came out of no where and announced our ICO as the 2nd ICO on NEO (after RPX) we kept getting asked “Why NEO”? Today is no different, we still get asked that question all the time.

As a matter of fact, back on July 6th (Earth Aphelion Day) I was in Zug Switzerland promoting the launch of the testnet Aphelion DEX at a TechCrunch event watching a talk with Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin utter the now infamous words “I definitely hope centralized exchanges go burn in hell as much as possible”

I found myself cheering alongside a heap of Ethereum fans, while promoting a NEO project. I can’t tell you how many times I was asked “Why NEO”?

So why did Aphelion choose NEO?

Here are the facts:

Efficiency — dBFT ensures finality through highly efficient method

Secure Contracts — Integrated digital identity allows for real world applications

Development Languages — C#, .Net, Java, Python & GO which covers 90% of developers world wide

Scalability — Up to 10,000 transactions per second

Because NEO enables developers to build on programming languages they already know, it supports faster development and deployment of smart contract and projects. We can attest to this first hand, as it allowed us to pull together a world class team in a matter of days and start banging away on the smart contract to launch our ICO directly on the blockchain.

Sure, there are challenges, as there always is with new and advanced technologies, but it wasn't anything we couldn’t overcome in a short window. Not only have we been able to build some amazing tech but we’ve also easily been able to contribute to a stronger NEO through pull requests that have increased the overall performance of the blockchain…this is what decentralization and open source is all about.

We also analyzed the alternatives and found some massive blockers that cemented our decision and we’ve never looked back.

For example, dev languages and scalability are highly limited on several alternatives as are efficiencies. But with Atomic Swaps we’ll be able to communicate and exchange with those alternatives through interoperability.

Lastly, in addition to data we uncovered in our analysis, we had just witnessed a remarkable re-branding of Antshares to NEO. It was how that transition was handled, the new tech and road-map that came along with it that really helped us realize we shared in the NEO vision and wanted to help contribute to the New Smart Economy. That feeling hasn’t changed to this day, in fact, its only grown stronger as we’ve recently seen the roll-out out of NEO 3.0.

I can say stronger than ever: Aphelion is committed to the NEO Smart Economy and we promise to contribute wherever we can to a stronger, faster and more advanced NEO ecosystem.

If you are interested in giving our DEX a test run you can find it here:

Aphelion Android App here:

iOS, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, German coming soon.

Mainnet launches next month.

Thank you to our community for the continued support: Go NEO!

-Ian