I want to highlight 2 projects that are looking good for the big time as we head into 2020. These are Lisk and NEO and I’ll explain why soon, but let me first let me tell you a little bit about both projects.

Lisk (LSK) is a platform that is primarily aimed at helping enterprise entities build their own blockchain solutions. NEO (NEO) is essentially Ethereum, but with a focus on digital identities and asset management which can be important for something like developing smart cities, which they are currently doing.

But why these two very specific projects?

LISK Makes Blockchain Possible With JavaScript

JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages on the planet and not a very difficult one to learn. It’s popularity means a lot of businesses and teams will probably have the necessary resources to build blockchain solutions with - and we may soon be coming to a time where many businesses will want to integrate blockchain, only to find they are short on money to hire and/or manpower to execute the job. 

Lisk’s exhaustive development kit means companies can run their own sidechains and build their own dapps, all in JS. This will make blockchain development accessible, reduce costs and make it much quicker to deploy the blockchain. 

Lisk’s fantastic development roadmap gives a clear understanding of what the team is working on at the moment, which just happens to be a lot. Some things are unsurprising but nonetheless important aspects, like improving transaction process efficiency, that are currently in development. Other things are in research, like improving multi-signature solutions and replacing the address system. Of course, a delegated proof-of-stake system (with multiple major goals related to it) is also a big development step in the coming years.

Now you may ask why all this is important? One general high-level answer is that I think we are heading into a turning point where these decentralized systems enter the realm of small and medium businesses. But if the question is why these particular development milestones matter at all, it is that I think they are giving themselves even more space between all other competitors.

With a whole host of products and software releases, I think LSK is in a great position to get a lot of the BaaS market.

NEO Has Actually Taken Steps Towards Creating Smart Cities

NEO has a tagline of  “an open network for a smart economy”, which is a pretty good description of the project. The project underwent a heavy rebranding a few years ago and pivoted towards a smart economy focused project. There was some comparison to Ethereum around that time, but it has since gone onto be seen as a platform that uses smart contracts and asset digitization to create a smart city.

NEO announced in May NEO 3.0, a new version with several improvements that was aimed at addressing issues in the smart contracts space. A blog post from the team itself states that the growth of large scale commercial applications will be supported by the enhancements seen in NEO 3.0, such as better performance, stability, security and an optimized smart contract system. 

The entire changes planned under NEO 3.0 will be completed by Q2 2020, with the migration plan for migrating to NEO 3.0’s official release being launched in Q1 2020. 

So there is about half a year before NEO 3.0 arrives to users. Assuming a few months delay, for the sake of it, then we should see the full launch by Q3 2020, at the latest. 

And there are some really big features in NEO 3.0, including NeoID, a digital identity for individuals or companies, and a data storage platform called NeoFS, intended for data storage by dapps. Other changes include improvements to the P2P protocol and an upgrade to the consensus mechanism.

The large list of significant changes I think will make NEO succeed in its goal of creating smart economies. The identity management feature and the steps to make dapp development and execution stronger are big milestones towards this.