NEO may be the most exciting smart contract platform in operation today. More established than EOS and faster/cheaper than Ethereum, NEO is becoming the new go-to platform for top-tier ICOs. Starting last year, NEO’s NEP5 token standard has grown into an impressive array of coins, tokens, and platforms. Today, we’ll go over some of the best reasons to buy NEO, as well as an exciting new inclusion: Asura.
NEO’s Altcoin Selection
NEO altcoins are called “NEP5” tokens. “NEP” stands for “NEO Enhancement Proposal”. Since transitioning from Antshares last year, NEO has slowly added a high-quality array of NEP5 tokens to its ecosystem. These tokens are associated with Dapps (decentralized applications) powered by the NEO blockchain. Users must buy GAS or NEO to trade for these tokens.
NEO holds its Dapps to a higher standard than most other smart contract platforms. While Ethereum makes it possible for just about anybody to create an ERC20 token, NEO is more selective. Would be NEO Dapps have to pay entry fees, and are selected according to their quality. This means that the NEO Smart Economy doesn’t have the redundancy and overall scamminess of certain competitor chains.
Without further ado, here are some of NEO’s NEP5 standouts:
Red Pulse (RPX)
Red Pulse is a research aggregation application for Chinese financial markets. Users provide research and data related to various financial topics. This information is evaluated and added to the collective pool. Users who provide good research are rewarded in RPX.
Qlink
Qlink is a decentralized internet service provider platform. With hardware and blockchain technology working in tandem, Qlink offers P2P internet and telecommunication services. Qlink wishes to upend the way the internet is transmitted, giving consumers options not found today in the modern monopolistic ISP industry.
imusify
This decentralized digital music platform allows anyone to contribute audio, video, blogging, etc. Content creators are rewarded with $IMU. imusify wishes to use the blockchain user incentive model to create a platform built organically by its users.
Asura: Decentralized eSports Betting Platform
This new eSports platform is quickly expanding on the NEO blockchain. Asura is built for eSports activities of many kinds, including betting, streaming, discussion, learning, and more. Users who contribute to the system will be rewarded in ASA tokens.
Asura already facilitates activities related to DOTA 2, Fortnite, League of Legends, and CS:GO. These competitive classic games are already industries unto themselves. Integration with Asura makes it much easier for users to bring all of their eSports activity into a single platform.
The Asura ICO concluded at the end of July 2018. Since then, the global crypto markets have been in a sad state. Asura has been transparent with its investors and users from the start. Despite global crypto devaluation, Asura development is right on schedule. The beta version goes public in Q4 2018, right on schedule.
Asura ASA coins will soon be tradeable on the LAToken exchange. This will be the only ASA exchange until the platform is better established. This way, issues like liquidity will be more easily managed than they would if ASA was traded on numerous exchanges.
NEO continues to demonstrate what a first-class smart contract platform looks like, even as the global cryptocurrency bear market slogs on. Many of NEOs Dapps are already useable, steadily adding users. NEO holders await further NEP5 expansion and the eventual release of NEO 3.0 in the not-too-distant future.