Today I conclude NEO’s sub-ratings review by updating its “System” (Security- Velocity- Engineering- Transparency).
NEO positions itself as the full-stack “smart contract platform” and features the “NeoVM — Universal Block Chain Virtual Machine” as well as InteropService or Interoperable Services (described as “virtual machine for virtual machine” which enables different services like digital assets and identity) and “DevPack — Compiler and IDE plugin”.
I still can’t find any ingenuity in NEO system’s architecture. Almost everything reminds me of something, which I have already seen. That might, also, be considered as an advantage, because it leaves limited space for the outright incompetence (“Engineering”: “b-”).
NEO uses dBFT or “the Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerant” consensus mechanism the main advantage of which is an increased throughput (1000 TPS claimed) (“Velocity”: b-) and the main disadvantage — an high level of centralization (they use the so-called “consensus nodes”). “Transparency”: “c+”.
Extract (WP): “The dBFT is called the Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerant, a Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus mechanism that enables large-scale participation in consensus through proxy voting. The holder of the NEO token can, by voting, pick the consensus node it supports. The selected group of consensus nodes, through BFT algorithm, reach a consensus and generate new blocks. Voting in the Neo network continues in real time, rather than in accordance with a fixed term.”
The question (the same for any other types of delegated consensus algorithms) “how resistant is dBFT to the Sybil attack?” still remains open. (“Security”: c+)
Extracts (WP): “Chain governance: NEO token holders are the network owners and managers, managing the network through voting in the network, using the GAS generated from NEO to utilize the functions in the network. NEO tokens can be transferred. …
… Off-chain governance: Neo Council consists of the founding members of the Neo project, under which the management committee, technical committee and the secretariat, respectively, are responsible for strategic decision -making, technical decision-making and specific implementation. The Neo Council is responsible to the Neo community for the promotion and development of Neo ecosystem as its primary objective. … “
Result: “System” (Security- Velocity- Engineering- Transparency): c+b-b-c+
Link: https://docs.neo.org/docs/en-us/basic/whitepaper.html#governance-mechanism
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