NEO Smart Economy is a next generation economy and trade where trade agreements are written in almost any programming language using a Smart Contract.
The Smart Contract is stored in a decentralized immutable blockchain and will be executed according to the trading agreement and exactly at the time specified in the smart contract. This allows for an economy where two or even thousands of parties can agree on a contract without the need to trust each other.
NEO is often touted as "China's Ethereum" because of it's similiarities to the Etherum blockchain. NEO's first ICO, Red Pulse, is scheduled to launch on October 8th, 2017
GAS is distributed by holding NEO in your wallet. Do note, many exchanges do not award GAS, so the wallet must be one where you hold the private (WIF) key.
GAS is used to fuel transactions on the NEO blockchain. As an example, deploying a smart contract will require GAS.
The rate at which GAS is awarded depends on the estimated block generation rate based on the amount of blocks generated the last 24 hours (per day).