NEO’s GAS vs Ethereum’s Gas

It appears there is a fair bit of confusion regarding both Ethereum and NEO right now. People know the Ethereum network requires gas to complete transactions. This gas is similar to mining fees in the Bitcoin world. However, the NEO ecosystem – which aims to rival Ethereum – has its own native asset called GAS. It was formerly known as Antcoin, but the rebrand to GAS is not necessarily the greatest idea. Let’s take a look at what makes NEO’s GAS so appealing.

GAS and gas are not the Same Thing

Back when NEO was still known as Antshares, the project made slightly more sense for novice users. On the one hand, there are the Antshares themselves, which allowed holders to collect Antcoin or ANC. The value of this ANC was expected to increase as the AntShares platform becomes more popular. It is also used to collect transaction fees through both ANC and fiat currency. Having ANC gives users voting rights to change the fees in the future, if ever necessary. It is a way to introduce charges for “extra services” rendered by ANS holders.

Having two built-in assets on Antshares is quite significant, but it was one of the main reasons so many people start paying attention to this project in the first places. Every Antshare is a representation of ownership and are used for future elections, bookkeeping, and generating AntCoins as dividends for holders. The Antcoins themselves are considered to be the value required to use the Antshares blockchain and paying systemic fees. A systemic fee is paid every time someone wants to write data into the blockchain, including transaction. It still makes sense, and the distinction between the two assets is easy enough for people to understand.

The Antshares blockchain provides some extra features. These features have to be paid in Antcoin, which means users can enhance AntShares-related actions by sacrificing some of their freely received ANC assets. There is no limit as to how high this extra service can be in value or what it can be used for. All Antshares holders control the blockchain and how it is being used. This is an intriguing concept that is certainly different from anything else we have seen to date.

So far, everything is perfectly clear, but things get a bit hairy when AntShares decided to rebrand to NEO. All of the coins known as AntShares – or ANS – are now known as NEO. However, the Antcoins created in the past are also rebranded to GAS. It is not hard to see why would work confusing, although it is also a  brilliant marketing strategy. The Ethereum network uses gas for transactions, but NEO has its own GAS asset which has a separate value from the main native currency.

Ethereum, on the other hand, uses gas as a transaction fee, which is still denominated in Ether. One could argue people spend ETH to transact in Ether, which is similar to how Bitcoin works. With NEO, however, one uses the GAS asset to complete NEO transactions. Capitalization of the asset is of the utmost importance in this regard, although it will still make things pretty complicated for a lot of people. Especially those who have never shown an interest in cryptocurrency before NEO launched will have some homework to do to keep up.

While most people keep an eye on the NEO price, the value of GAS is almost as high as NEO’s right now. There is only 8.240.123 GAS in circulation on the network, each of which has a price tag of $23.29. NEO itself is valued at $36.76 per token, with a supply of 50 million. It is a very intriguing project which has a lot more value attached to it than most people realize. It is of the utmost importance to distinguish between Ethereum’s gas and NEO’s GAS. They are completely different things.