NEO News Today recently interviewed the leaders of the China-based NEXT development community, which hopes to become the largest NEO community for dApp incubation. The group is also running a NEO dApp competition, which aims to promote the innovation of blockchain applications.
NEXT developers are responsible for several projects in the NEO ecosystem, including the ExChain “intelligent identity network,” the Endorsit decentralized content ecosystem, the Blolys block explorer, and the wallet application iWallic.
Introduction
The NEXT community was started in 2017 following the merger of two separate project teams. The first team was working on a platform known as ExChain which intends to be a “decentralized resume asset management tool,” comparable to LinkedIn. The second team was working on Endorsit, an open content platform that aims to compete with Twitter and Steemit amongst other similar platforms.
The newly formed NEXT community had a strong direction in mind for these projects, however, the team was small and required more developers. They reached out and invited volunteers to join the project, which helped expand the team and led to the creation of iWallic and Blolys.
NEXT notes: “Our main long-term target is to merge more and more developers to become the biggest NEO community for dApp incubation, with the most developers and blockchain development in the NEO community.”
The community, which currently lists 26 team members on its https://neonext.club/ website, is funded by both NEO Global Development and NEO Global Capital, and claims to currently have more than CN¥1,000,000 in funding.
NEO dApp Competition
On December 21st 2018, NEXT opened registrations for its “NEO dAPP Global Blockchain Application Development Challenge,” which it hopes will “promote the continued innovation of blockchain applications and form a strong blockchain application developer ecosystem.”
The total prize pool exceeds CN¥300,000, which will be shared across various awards. 10 finalist awards will be distributed, alongside six unique rewards in different categories; best dApp, best creative, most commercial value, visual effects, technical effect, and most popular. A bonus pool will be present for “cooperation project winners,” which will scale as more teams join.
Submitted dApps will be evaluated based on their application and use of the blockchain, technological performance, visual design, feasibility of the business model, popularity and completeness of development.
More information on the competition, including the rules, registration method and selection criteria, can be found at the following link:
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/it_v8haaCmP_ONO4idaBzQ
The registration deadline for the competition has been extended from March 9th to March 31st, 2019.
Current Projects
Alongside iWallic and Blolys, NEXT is currently developing a Chrome extension known as NEO Line. The extension is intended to act as a NEO equivalent to the popular Ethereum-based browser wallet MetaMask, allowing users to access dApps in a secure manner directly from their browser.
Although the team does work as a typical NEO development community by providing tooling, resources and utilities, NEXT predominantly intends to function as a NEO dApp incubator.
NEXT considers its flagship project to be ExChain, a NEO-based “intelligent identity network” which aims to “completely replace the centralized identification of ID cards, passports, etc” and operate as a decentralized personal resume tool.
Edison, the founder of the project said that his motivation to build ExChain was that he had “stepped on many pits for many years. Many of them are trust issues.” He noted that when parties transact, it is easier for larger parties to take advantage of smaller parties knowing that their financial power is enough to dissuade most challenges.
NEXT believe that smart contracts are a solution to this issue and that smart identity will be a cornerstone feature in moving towards a trustless society.
ExChain enables users to make claims about their identity to be verified by others within the network. For example, users could prove they are an undergraduate student by having the claim verified by their university. For more difficult claims, such as winning a competition at the university, the user can broadcast the claim to other students, teachers and the school for verification. If the claim is verified by more than 51% of participants, it is considered to be true. Users are incentivized with EXT tokens for providing correct information.
Endorsit is another important project for NEXT, which is intended to be a decentralized content ecosystem for all types of user-created content including articles, live videos, and web courses.
The Endorsit dApp is the core product of the EDS ecosystem, acting as a permanent record of content operations that can be leveraged in numerous ways. The platform aims to be neutral and community-driven, allowing its users to judge the quality of content and subsequent rewards.
NEXT commented: “The complete Endorsit dApp ecosystem will be a new ecosystem in the content 2.0 era that completely disrupts the way people interact in the content space.”
The team aims to release the Endorsit beta in approximately two months, with NEXT claiming to have more than 500,000 interested users, stemming from an existing WeChat content platform that it currently operates. Endorsit has been advertised to these users an updated version of the platform.
The NEXT technical team is also responsible for the creation of a Chinese community blockchain forum, which can be found here.
More information on NEXT can be found at its website neonext.club.
About The Author: Brett Rhodes
Brett is a blockchain enthusiast and freelance writer who originally began producing content for the gaming & eSports industries. Now he spends most of his time contributing in the Neo ecosystem.
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