The new kid on the blockchain 3.0 scene — NULS Vs NEO
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Introduction
Neo
Neo is a popular blockchain platform which is heralded as the “Ethereum of China”. It allows for the creation of smart contracts and development of dApps on its network. It hopes to be the base platform and industry leader on which successful applications are built on.
Nuls
NULS is a universal blockchain architecture, offering smart contracts, multi-chain and cross-chain infrastructures, that are customizable depending on a particular enterprise’s requirements. In essence, Nuls uses its modular architecture to offer businesses a way to customize and create their own blockchain to suit their own company's specific needs.
Team
NEO
Neo was founded by the extremely popular, and highly renowned, Dong Hongfei, in its earlier moniker Antshares. The team of Neo is essentially the Neo council and even though, Antshares was initially a digital assets project, it turned its focus onto smart contracts after re-branding to Neo. Although Neo is a decentralized project, the Neo council holds a lot of power when it comes to the project and controls all decisions that would affect it, including what dApps can be built on it.
Nuls
Cofounded by Lily Wang and Reaper Ran (Previously on Neo Community board), Nuls is based out of Chongqing China, and is an answer to the limitations of chain structures of traditional blockchain systems. Most of team have previously been part of the acclaimed Inchain project, allowing them to forge strong connections within the private sector, and the state government.
Partnerships
NEO
Initially, Neo used to be quite close with the public sector and Chinese government. However, since the crackdown on cryptocurrency in mainland China, things have cooled off and Neo is focusing on building partnerships within the private sector.
Neo has partnered with Fenbushi capital through a subsidiary and has a strategic partnership with Ontology Network. It has also partnered with KPN, a Dutch mobile and telecommunications firm.
Nuls
Nuls has established the Chongqing blockchain alliance, and partnered with Bitshares, Elephant alliance (major Chinese ecommerce player) and the China Blockchain Industry Alliance. Not only this but Nuls also recently partnered with the largest mining company in the blockchain space Bitmain as well as signing a deal with MC Payments which has links to Alipay.
Nuls has also recently inked a series of partnerships with renowned companies to form a Food Chain Alliance, which include acclaimed Singapore based industry stalwarts such as Veritag, SAKAE Fintech, Y3 Technologies Pte Ltd, Reefic Protocol and Morpheus Lab.
Price history
Neo
As an ICO, Antshares was sold at $0.03. Soon after its rebrand to Neo, it started climbing into $1–2 territory and over the past year, had touched an unimaginable high of $180. Currently it is trading at $18.
Nuls
Nuls did not have a traditional ICO, but was airdropped to all investors of the Inchain project. Price of the token hit its high of $8 in January and is currently trading at $1.9.
Technology
NEO
Neo blockchain aims to implement P2P networking, digital certificates, cross-chain interoperability, Superconducting Transactions and dBFT consensus technologies to effectively execute the management of smart assets.
The Neo network is powered by its internal currency GAS. Neo smart contracts can be written and compiled in C# and Java, and in future, python and other languages may be supported too.
The delegated Byzantine fault tolerance system had come under much criticism due to its centralized nature, which is an antithesis to the whole blockchain principle. In 2017, the whole network went offline due to issues with the nodes, affirming that the Neo council controls the whole network.
Block time for Neo is 20 seconds and it claims to process 1000 tx/sec, however this is yet to be seen and is capped at 33tx/sec. Neo does not support modular chains or pos/pow modules. While it has masternodes, public/private chains, there is no possibility of side-chains, cross chains or interoperability at present.
NULS
Nuls uses a modular architecture in its blockchain, which allows for easy customization and setting up of sub chains. Its uses a Proof of Credit consensus mechanism, which is similar to POS, where “staked tokens” called nodes are used for mining and validating transactions. There is also different node tiers, with masternodes offering varying dividends based on the commission and credit rating.
The main programming language used by Nuls is Java, with support for 3 additional languages. It has a 10 seconds block time and can process 2,000 tx/s, and millions through subchain.
Nuls offers modular blockchain, side chain mechanisms, smart contracts and cross chain mechanisms. But the most attractive feature of Nuls is the ability to create subchain (public and private) within the Nuls blockchain architecture that can be customized as per enterprise requirements.
Tokens
NEO
Neo runs on its own network and all Neo tokens can be held in the neon wallet. Neo can be traded on all major exchanges and numerous airdrops are offered to Neo holders. The total supply of Neo tokens is 100 million and current circulating supply is 65 million tokens. Its market cap current stands at 1.3 billion, which is quite an overvaluation for a token with very little real world applications.
NULS
Nuls has recently launched its own mainnet, and has swapped the majority of its erc-20 tokens for main net tokens. There are 100 million tokens in total with a circulation supply of 40 million tokens. Nuls can be traded at most major crypto exchanges with Binance and OKex leading trading volumes. Nuls tokens can be stored at their newly launched web wallet, available for both windows and Mac.
Conclusion
NEO
Neo aims to be the defacto blockchain of China with a mission to improve existing e-commerce systems and have dApps built onto it. The problem with Neo though is its highly centralized structure with only 7 nodes controlled by Neo council holding reigns to the whole network. There’s also the fact that success depends a lot on Chinese government and their shifting stance on crypto. Neo had always got the step fatherly treatment in China, and its problems only seem to mount with a lack of enterprise partnerships.
Nuls
Nuls hopes to optimize current businesses by creating an easily programmable blockchain to implement private chains for companies. With a market cap of just 55 million, Nuls is uniquely positioned among all blockchain platforms with regards to its valuation. It has strong partnerships across public/private sectors and is poised to grow at an exponential rate in the coming months.