On Friday, June 5th, Neo Global Development (NGD) head of Eco Growth, John Wang, and Eco Growth associate manager, Denis Suslov, participated in an Ask Me Anything (AMA) event on Atomic Wallet’s official Telegram channel.

In the AMA, Wang and Suslov discussed the Neo developer community, plans for Neo3, NeoFS, the recent establishment of the InterWork Alliance (IWA), and more.

Christine (Atomic Wallet): Hey guys! Thanks for joining our AMA with Neo!

Neo is an open-source, community driven platform that is leveraging the intrinsic advantages of blockchain technology to realize the optimized digital world of the future.

John Wang is the head of Neo Ecosystem Growth, he has many years of experience in supply chain management consulting, and several successful entrepreneurial experiences. He is currently responsible for Neo ecosystem development.

Denis Suslov is an associate manager in Neo Ecosystem Growth, he has experience in the FinTech and payments industry in research and consulting, as well as in business development and fundraising for technology startups.

Denis Suslov: Hi everyone! We are happy to be together with Atomic community today!

John Wang: Hey guys, thanks for having us here!

Q1: What are the future plans for Neo?

John: Great question! As a project, Neo doesn’t aim to be ranked Top 10 by market cap, but rather the team seeks to become the most developer-friendly blockchain platform. To achieve this standard, Neo has three goals.

First, through the development and launch of Neo3, which intends to make Neo ready for large-scale commerce and enterprise clients.

Second, through the Neo EcoBoost project coupled with our ecosystem partners, Neo seeks to provide full life-cycle support for ecosystem projects, as well as attract talented developers and projects to the platform.

Third, Neo aims to become the most developer-friendly blockchain. To achieve this goal, NGD Seattle is focusing on minimizing the thresholds of blockchain development, which is part of Neo’s goal to bring more outside developers into the ecosystem.

Through the culmination of these three goals, Neo aims to become an important piece of the infrastructure for the next generation internet.

Q2: Can you tell us a bit more about Neo3?

Denis: Neo3 will be released later in 2020, which includes some of the features that have slowly been released on the current iteration of the blockchain, Neo2, earlier this year.

Some of the major features include the built-in oracle implementation, which aims to allow smart contracts to access Internet resources.

Another major feature will be NeoID, which is a decentralized identity protocol built on Neo. NeoID will support the issuance of decentralized identifiers, in addition to being compatible with the industry-standard X.509 level certificate issuance model.

Another important part of Neo3 is the Neo virtual machine (NeoVM), which will be completely decoupled from the blockchain in Neo3. The decoupling is intended to offer several benefits including the support of non-blockchain applications and easy contract debugging without requiring the integration of all blockchain data.

Finally, there will be significant reductions in smart contract deployment costs, which is great news for everyone building on Neo!

These are the main points about Neo3. More information about Neo3 can be found at the link below:
https://neonewstoday.com/road-to-neo3/

John: And Neo3, will run a new on-chain governance model. So, users could potentially see staking on Neo.

Q3: Can you also tell us a bit about NeoFS?

John: NeoFS will be one of the most important aspects of Neo3. Most of the development for the NeoFS architecture is done by one of Neo’s developer communities, Neo St. Petersburg Competence Center (Neo SPCC).

NeoFS will be a decentralized file storage platform integrated with the Neo blockchain. It will be primarily used by dApps as a data storage infrastructure, and will also serve as a Content Delivery Network (CDN).

Anyone who is interested can test the distributed storage platform here:
https://send.fs.neo.org/

Denis: Feel free to test the link! Users can upload and download files, which are stored in a decentralized manner.

Q4: The majority of blockchain-related activity seems to be taking place in DeFi sector. Does Neo plan to integrate DeFi, or does it have other interesting paths that are separate from DeFi?

John: Yes! DeFi is quite an important use case, especially for US-based blockchain users. As the Atomic community is probably aware, the value of any blockchain platform is derived from its assets that are stored on-chain.

However, to offer DeFi services, we do have to build better infrastructure to make it possible for developers to create DeFi applications for users. Up until now, Neo has built portions of the necessary infrastructure for DeFi applications, such as decentralized exchanges (DEX), stable coins, borrowing and lending protocol, and atomic swap functionality.

Q5: Most of the DEX platforms are not easy to use and require a high level of technical understanding. How do Neo-based DEX’s make these platforms user-friendly and easy to use for traders?

Denis: There are two DEX’s in the Neo ecosystem, Nash and Switcheo. Both have very strong technology teams. Their KYC requirements are slightly different, but I recommend that the Atomic Wallet community take a look at both exchanges.

Both strive to be user-friendly. When the user goes to their website, they click “connect your wallet.” Once your Neo wallet pops up (which can either be the O3 Wallet or NeoLine wallet), all the user needs to do is click “confirm.” Overall it’s quite easy now, once the third-party wallet is installed.

Q6: What’s your outlook on the future of cryptocurrencies? What can you do to keep increasing adoption?

John: Well, in general, as a payment method, cryptocurrencies will be accepted by lots of people [and businesses]. For Neo as a public blockchain, we have to lower the barriers to entry for both the user and the developer.

Q7: Can you talk about the beginnings of the Neo project?

Denis: We have two founders, a classic combination I would say: a technical and a business founder.

Da Hongfei had experience in leading companies before founding Neo, and saw this opportunity with a public blockchain to contribute to the global technology industry.

Erik Zhang was one of the first blockchain developers in China, and he envisioned that one of the best consensus mechanisms would be delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (dBFT). Neo became the first project to use this consensus mechanism, which has also been implemented by projects like Libra and Telegram.

Q8: As one of the five sponsor members of the InterWork Alliance (IWA), how do you think this collaboration will benefit Neo?

John: As you might have noticed, the founding members of the IWA are well-recognized and accomplished individuals. Previously, the founding members had exhibited influence in the technology industry through their previous roles, but they lacked experience in the blockchain industry. Neo’s experience in the blockchain industry is the knowledge and value we can bring to the table.

Through the IWA, we intend to explore how to establish blockchain as a platform that can be ready for mass adoption.

Q9: Many projects have died because of bear market and COVID-19, how will you survive this?

Denis: Well here in China, concerns surrounding COVID-19 have been minimal for about two months, and Neo is lucky to be in an internet-based industry. So, our core developers that are located all over the world have been able to work from home and continued to ship code!

Q10: What are the advantages that Neo offers to dApp developers?  Does the Neo project have any plans to attract more quality dApp developers?

Denis: Yes, dApp developers really enjoy our tools, as well as the fact that they don’t have to learn new programming language to start developing. Also, we provide support to dApps and developers through various promotion mediums, as well as providing financial support to cover fees [such as costs to launch smart contracts].

If you’re a developer interested in building a dApp on the Neo platform, please contact me!

Q11: For a developer who seeks to build on Neo, what programming language do they need to know?

John: We support most of mainstream programming languages, so if you are a Python, Go, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, or C# developer, you will feel comfortable on Neo. We are always trying to lower the barriers to entry, and have designed vast documentation to help developers new to the ecosystem. So, please take a look at our documentation to begin developing on Neo.

Q12: Your metamorphosis is a laudable, how have you been able to survive consecutive bear markets and continue evolving into greatness? Your aim to become the foundation for next generation internet, how do you view the contribution of internet, 5G network, to help you achieve your aim?

Denis: Thank you. In fact, in the past few years, various other projects have moved in and out of the Top 20, and we have generally remained in the Top 20 [by market cap].

We believe that 5G will contribute greatly to the next generation internet by offering more people access to the internet. These new users might be located in in countries that have unstable fiat currencies. I believe that they will benefit greatly from cryptographic technologies such as Bitcoin, Neo, and stable coins.

Q13: Does Neo have any program or plans to integrate with universities?

Denis: Yes, we have had courses with a number of universities in Switzerland, Russia, Vietnam, and the US, amongst other. We have materials ready and can provide teaching staff. I encourage any university representatives to discuss any potential integration with me!

Q14: What role does the community play in the Neo ecosystem?

John: The community and its developers are the most important part of Neo ecosystem. Currently, there are nine international Neo developer communities. Further, the community has more than 2 million users, and over 50 dApps deployed on Neo.

Q15: Are there any new partnerships and interesting upcoming use cases?

John: All IWA members are our new partners. As for the upcoming use cases, I see uses for DeFi, non-fungible tokens (NFT), and security token offerings (STO) as directions we will continue to focus on.

Q16: What is the role of Developers in Neo ecosystem? Who can build on the platform? What are the Requirements?

Denis: Very important for sure. Experienced senior blockchain developers can contribute as core developers, and dApp/game/blockchain developers can build their projects and products using our platform.

If you are new to this space, check out our course:
https://neocourse.mywish.io/courses/

Q17:  When will NeoFS go operational for platforms looking to use the file storage system of the Neo platform?

John: I believe NeoFS is currently under testing, once the official product released all will be welcome to use. Here is a link, for your reference:

https://send.fs.neo.org/

Q18: Why did Neo choose the dBFT consensus algorithm, as opposed to other consensuses like PoW, PoS, or PoA?

Denis: dBFT doesn’t require wasting electricity like Proof of Work (PoW) does. And compared to both Proof of Stake (PoS) and POW, dBFT has 100% finality.

Further, large nodes cannot collude to recreate blockchain records (cancelling transactions, for example someone sending you money, then receiving the payment for you, and then deleting the record of sending you money).

Q19: What is happening with the other implementations of Neo, such as Java and Go?

Denis: Go implementation is going really well, it is being developed by the Neo SPCC community, and can be seen here:
https://github.com/nspcc-dev/neo-go

Q20: Are you still working close with Red Pulse? Any other cool collaborations on the horizon?

John: As one of the earliest NEP-5 projects on Neo, we provided initial support to the Red Pulse team. As for their own development, the team opted to move a portion of their tokens to Binance chain.

Q21: What role does NeoFS play in the Neo ecosystem?

Denis: NeoFS will provide storage for dApps and a content delivery network (CDN) for traditional centralized services.

Q22: Neo has two forms of digital assets: global assets and contract assets. Can you just elaborate on the differences?

Denis: This is the way Neo2 was designed, NEO and GAS tokens are global assets, which were designed before the Neo blockchain had fully developed its smart contract framework. And, NEP-5 (similar to ERC-20) tokens use smart contracts, which is why they are denominated as contract assets.

Q24: How long does it take to synchronize a Neo wallet?

Denis: The synchronization process is nearly instantaneous.

Christine: Very hyped you joined us today! Thanks a lot, John and Denis for the interesting insights and your great approach on the decentralization and the blockchain!

John: Thank you, guys!

Denis: Thank you, everyone. Feel free to check out the Neo News Today podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSSG0GCRt4pxynlVv5PurqQNq5en7Yd-D

Note: Some edits have been made for formatting and readability. The full conversation can be found at: https://t.me/AtomicWallet/429657

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