On November 6th, 2018, NEO Colorado hosted its inaugural meetup in Denver, Colorado. The event was oriented to be an “in-depth 101-level discussion,” as prior to the event many local blockchain enthusiasts conveyed they had minimal knowledge of the NEO blockchain. The event organizer, Dylan Grabowski, is an editor at NEO News Today, and will spearhead NEO Colorado’s community development. The meetup was held at Enterprise Coworking, a venue that was offered through coordination efforts with Colorado Blockchain, a consortium of blockchain and cryptocurrency enthusiasts, investors, and developers.

The presentation began with a brief overview of Dylan’s background as an urban planner, and his transition to a full-time role as an editor at NEO News Today. Additionally, attendee’s were presented information about NEO News Today, and its objectives as a source of information in the NEO Smart Economy. 

Next, he covered a brief history of NEO, from the inception of Onchain, to how Da Hongfei and Erik Zhang established the concept of Antshares, and the rebranding to NEO in August of 2017. Additionally, the presentation included slides about NEO’s delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (dBFT) consensus mechanism, its dual-token model, and on-chain and off-chain governance.

Dylan went on to provide an overview of NEO’s largest developer groups, City of Zion, NewEconoLabs, and NeoResearch. The overview included background information as well as some of their key products. He then went on to cover some of the dApps in the broader NEO ecosystem, which included individual slides on decentralized exchanges (Neon Exchange, Aphelion, and Switcheo), Moonlight, and nOS.

Lastly, Dylan discussed previous competitions that have been held by City of Zion and NEO Global Development, along with their reward pools. To incentivize developers to build on top of NEO, he also shared current opportunities to work on NEO solutions and compensation via the NEO Developer Bounty Program or City of Zion project contributions.

The presentation concluded with a few projects on the roadmap to NEO 3.0, which included user voted consensus nodes, anti-spam mechanisms, an update to the token model, NEO virtual machine (NeoVM) updates, and token standard upgrades.

For its first meetup, NEO Colorado was able to attract 20 attendees to participate in the hour long session. Additionally, the meetup was happy to have representatives from City of Zion, Aphelion, and NeoTracker/NEO-ONE in the audience, among members of other Colorado blockchain startup companies and communities.

When polled at the beginning of the presentation, about half the room identified themselves as developers, and an equal amount had conveyed they’d heard of the NEO blockchain before.

Following the 30-minute presentation, a question and answer session was held where participants asked questions on the following topics:

  • What’s the timeline for transitioning from 7 consensus nodes to the potential of 1,000+ nodes?
  • Are there any established standards that NEO holders need “x” amount of NEO coins to vote?
  • If the NEO Foundation holds 50% of the total coin allocation, does that mean it gets to overwhelmingly decide the first wave of nodes?
  • Why isn’t NEO divisible? 
  • Is there any data highlighting daily activity on NEO-oriented dApps or on the NEO blockchain?
  • As far as marketing is concerned, what is NEO doing to attract new users? What does that marketing look like?
  • What are the times and dates for the release of Moonlight and nOS?

The full presentation and Q&A session can be viewed in the video below.

For more information about NEO Colorado, join the Meetup channel to stay informed about upcoming events:

https://www.meetup.com/NEO-Colorado/

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