Neo - A blockchain platform driven by an open-source community

Neo is a blockchain platform driven by an open-source community. As the most comprehensive blockchain development platform, Neo developers can digitize assets and automate management through smart contracts. Neo also provides a strong native infrastructure, including decentralized storage, oracle and decentralized identity system, to lay a solid foundation for the next generation of Internet.

Since its establishment in 2014, Neo has grown into a leading smart contract platform. Relying on the global developer community, we are committed to promoting large-scale innovation and implementation of blockchain technology.

Major events

In 2014, Dahongfei and Zhang Zhengwen jointly founded Little Ant, which was later officially renamed Neo. Open sourced on GitHub in July 2015, and the mainnet was launched in October 2016.

In 2017, with the integration of smart contract 2.0, the Little Ant brand was reshaped as Neo. Many new developers have flooded into the blockchain industry, and Neo is a leader in this industry expansion frenzy. The earliest development teams to join the Neo community included CoZ, Neo EconoLabs, and O3 Labs.

In 2021, Neo will be upgraded to N3. As a project that began in June 2018, the N3 upgrade represents the comprehensive evolution of Neo. It has pioneered a one-stop development experience for the blockchain industry, bringing many native features including decentralized storage, oracle, and decentralized identity systems. Neo N3 also has a simpler and more modular architecture, as well as new governance and economic models.

Neo is a pioneer in the blockchain industry. It is not only the first open smart contract platform born in China, but also the first open network to use a dual token model, and the first blockchain to use BFT type consensus mechanism.

Development philosophy

Over the years, Neo's organizational structure has become increasingly sophisticated, and its operational team in Shanghai has grown from less than twelve people to over fifty people. Community groups dedicated to developing Neo technology have also increased. Nowadays, Neo's developers are spread all over the world, focusing on protocol layer core development, infrastructure and tool development. Many of them have worked for technology giants such as Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Samsung, Dell, Seagate, etc.

The main working groups of Neo can be divided as follows:

Neo Foundation

Core Developer

Neo Global Development Department (NGD)

Developer Community

In the eyes of idealists, Neo's primary goal is to become a decentralized open network serving the intelligent economy. However, pragmatists are more aware that in order to achieve this goal in a timely manner, a certain degree of centralization is inevitable.

For this reason, the Neo Foundation was born. As the strategic command center of Neo, the Neo Foundation sets overall goals for the project and provides funding to other community groups to achieve broader development objectives.

Neo is also well aware that the business framework of the blockchain industry needs to constantly adapt to the existing regulatory system. Only by working together can we create a future of intelligent economy.

To address these issues, Neo has established and joined multiple industry organizations to jointly establish standards, communicate regulations, and continuously improve infrastructure.

Neo will launch Neo N3 in 2021 to accelerate the process of decentralization. NEO token holders will have the opportunity to participate in Neo committee elections, which are responsible for managing the blockchain, running consensus nodes, and setting key on chain parameters.