Antshares

Antshares, established in 2014 by co-founders Da Hongfei and Erik Zhang, represents China's inaugural public, open-source blockchain initiative. The project's source code was made available on GitHub in 2015, followed by the release of its white paper and the launch of its mainnet in October 2016. Da Hongfei, a graduate in English and Technology, became involved in the crypto industry in 2011, while Erik Zhang, a computer specialist with a background in information security, first encountered Bitcoin in 2013. The two met at a conference in 2014 and combined their expertise to create Antshares.

In a significant strategic move, Antshares was rebranded to Neo in June 2017. This rebranding marked a shift in focus towards building a "smart economy," an ecosystem for digital assets, digital identity, and smart contracts. The transition to Neo was also intended to resolve potential brand confusion with Ant Financial. An initial coin offering in 2016 raised $4.65 million, which funded the project's early development. The genesis block created 100 million tokens, with 50 million sold to early investors and the remaining 50 million secured in a smart contract to fund long-term development goals.

The platform functions as a blockchain for developing decentralized applications (dApps) and managing digital assets through smart contracts. A key differentiator for the platform, even from its Antshares days, is its support for multiple common programming languages like C#, Java, and Python for smart contract development, lowering the barrier to entry for a broad base of developers. The network employs a delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerant (dBFT) consensus mechanism, which allows it to process a high volume of transactions per second. The ecosystem utilizes a dual-token model. The primary token (formerly ANS, now NEO) represents ownership and voting rights in the network's governance, while the secondary token (formerly ANC, now GAS) is used to pay for transaction fees on the network.

Keywords: Antshares, Neo, Da Hongfei, Erik Zhang, blockchain, smart economy, smart contracts, digital assets, decentralized applications, dApps, open-source, delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerant, dBFT, cryptocurrency, China blockchain, digital identity, dual token model, Onchain, GAS token, crypto platform, public chain, distributed ledger technology, asset digitization, financial technology, blockchain development, consensus mechanism