Difference #1 – BackersNEO is backed by the Chinese government. This has become the most important factor for NEO’s popularity in China, making it China’s first open-source public blockchain project. NEO is also backed by WINGS, Alibaba, and various Microsoft-like giants.
Ethereum is not backed by any nation’s government, but it is supported by the EEA-Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. This speaks volumes about its popularity and potential success on the world’s stage.
Difference #2 – Consensus mechanismNEO uses a delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerant (aka dBFT) consensus mechanism, which is an improved form of proof-of-stake.
Ethereum uses a proof-of-work mechanism.
dBFT is believed to be more energy efficient than proof-of-work, as POW is a very energy-intensive and expensive. But I don’t see this as a big advantage for NEO because we can eventually expect Ethereum to move to an efficient proof-of-stake mechanism.
Difference #3 – DivisibilityThe native crypto-fuel of NEO’s blockchain is not divisible. It only exists in whole numbers (1,2,50,1000, etc.).
The native crypto-fuel of Ethereum is divisible. It can be divided (3.4352, 283.399403, etc.)
Difference #4 – Fueling the blockchainNEO produces a special crypto asset called NeoGAS (or GAS) which is used as a crypto-fuel for NEO’s blockchain.
In Ethereum, small units of Ether are used as “gas” to fuel the network.
Difference #5 – LanguageNEO’s smart contracts and DApps can be written and compiled in C# and Java. In the future, developers will also be able to write smart contracts in Python and Go. This will drastically reduce the entry barrier for all developers around the world.
Currently, if you want to write smart contracts and DApps on Ethereum, then you have to learn a new programming language called Solidity. Very few people know this language.
Difference #6 – DirectionNEO is focused on making a smart economy by digitizing traditional real-world assets via digital identity, along with running smart contracts and DApps.
Ethereum is going in the direction of becoming the world’s only supercomputer based on the blockchain by hosting numerous use cases of digital identity, computing, decentralized exchanges, remittances, and KYC (to name a few).
Difference #7 – the International audienceThere isn’t much information available about NEO for the English-reading audience due to its Chinese roots.
Ethereum is already a global enterprise which fully caters to its international (and English-reading) audience.
Difference #8 – SpeedAt present, NEO can handle 10,000 transactions per second.
Ethereum can handle 15 transactions per second.
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