CNEO Tokens Make NEO Better Suited For Smart Contracts

Two new NEO-based tokens, CNEO and CGAS, have been added to the NEO blockchain. The “C” stands for “contract”, which indicates that the tokens are designed for use in smart contracts.

The underlying concept is simple: CNEO is essentially an independent token that is pegged to the price of the NEO token. Meanwhile, CGAS is a token that is tied to the price of NEO GAS. Both tokens can be exchanged with their counterparts at the market rate.

With so many similarities, what makes these new tokens different from their counterparts?

Smart Contract Complications

Currently, the NEO token cannot be transferred into smart contracts due to various limitations. Instead, smart contract developers must create their own NEO-based tokens using the NEP-5 standard.

However, creating a new token is not always ideal. Custom tokens can suffer from lack of recognition and are difficult to put on exchanges, as the NEO blog notes:

“Whenever any project issues a NEP-5 token for that contract, the community might not recognize its token or exchanges are not willing to list it for circulation. As such, it is costly for the project.”

CNEO and CGAS solve this problem. By serving as general-purpose NEP-5 tokens, they eliminate the need for developers to create and manage their own tokens. These new tokens can readily be processed by smart contracts and traded for “real” NEO tokens.

Suggested Reading : Keep up to date on NEO’s price here.

An Addition, Not an Upgrade

The two new tokens are not part of an upgrade, and they do not make any changes to the NEO blockchain. They were, however, created by NEO Global Development, a core part of the NEO team. This makes the new tokens a quasi-official addition to the platform.

The addition is prominent enough that several projects have already adopted the tokens. The NEO Name Service, BlaCat, and Alchemint are already using (or will soon use) the new tokens. The O3 wallet is also planning to add support in the near future.

This means that the new tokens may become widely adopted. But as one reporter notes, CNEO and CGAS are “stopgaps rather than permanent solutions.” They are just one way of solving a problem, and the actual NEO token may soon undergo a similar but separate change:

“Permanent conversion of the native assets NEO and GAS [to NEP-5] is under discussion…the changes may be adopted as part of the 3.0 milestone for the NEO blockchain, but would need to be implemented as part of a new chain.”

A release date for version 3.0 of NEO has not yet been announced, but it will bring many changes. The upgrade has been described as an “entirely new version” of the platform by developers. It will bring major changes to NEO’s economic model, and NEO tokens will likely become more versatile.

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