NEO Dedicated Node

The NEO network, which is of Chinese origin, was created as a direct competitor to the Ethereum network. The network was launched in 2017. Since the NEO algorithm is a variation of the DpoS (Delegated Proof-of-Stake) algorithm, mining is not possible. Instead, 100 million coins were created simultaneously at launch. NEO coins are used both for transactions between nodes and for voting when choosing the further development of the project.

Each NEO client, whether it is a mobile wallet or PC wallet, becomes a light node. Since they only transmit transactions between each other, they are often called relay nodes. A transaction is transmitted between the light nodes until it reaches one of the consensus nodes. These are the nodes that perform deep verification of the transaction and decide whether to include the transaction in the blockchain or discard it. Using dedicated nodes is a great way to save developers time and effort for building dApps. NEO dedicated node is a dedicated server.

The network relies on NEO public and dedicated nodes to validate transactions. To prevent forks, at least two-thirds of the nodes decide to include a transaction in the blockchain. There are 7 consensus nodes: 5 free blockchain nodes belong to NEO Foundation, 1 public node is CityOfZion and 1 node provider is KPN. These consensus nodes receive remuneration for processing transactions between NEO nodes, as well as for executing blockchain smart contracts in the network. This remuneration is accrued in GAS coins. Any of the users can entrust their NEO coins to one of the 7 consensus nodes and start receiving remuneration. The size of the reward is proportional to the number of coins entrusted to the NEO consensus node. Such a solution made it possible to increase the number of transactions between nodes up to several thousand TPS (transaction per second). At the same time such a technical solution significantly reduces the level of decentralization of the network.

The network uses both NEO and GAS coins. This separation is intended to facilitate the work with blockchain smart contracts. Also GAS coins are used to pay fees in the network. The number of GAS coins in the network is also limited to 100 million coins. GAS coins are credited to users who store NEO coins in a special wallet (NEO client). Some NEO clients can store both GAS and NEO coins.

The developers of web3 apps, dApps and blockchain smart contracts can't do without NEO dedicated nodes. The writing of blockchain smart contracts in common programming languages like C#, VB.Net, F#, Java, Kotlin, and Python are supported. There are both mainnet and testnet nodes. Developers testing the functionality of their web3 apps, dApps and blockchain smart contracts run them in testnet first. Coins in testnet have no value whatsoever. It is also possible to issue custom tokens based on the blockchain. The NEO API is a powerful tool designed for nodes to receive data from the blockchain. The interface is provided via JSON-RPC blockchain API. The nodes just need to install the RpcServer plugin. JSON-RPC blockchain API has a lot of commands for developers.

Setting up a NEO dedicated node is extremely complicated even for an experienced developer. A good solution is blockchain node as a service, which will save a lot of hassle of installing and configuring NEO dedicated nodes. Overall the network potential is very high. However, it can be fully revealed only when using NEO dedicated nodes or blockchain nodes as a service.