On Tuesday, July 28th, Neo Global Development (NGD) Ecosystem Growth director, John Wang, participated in an ask me anything (AMA) on the Crypto.com’s official Telegram channel to celebrate the launch of NEO trading on its platform.

In the AMA, Wang discussed his role in NGD, Neo’s efforts with the InterWork Alliance and Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN), upcoming developments in Neo3, non-custodial exchanges in the Neo ecosystem, NeoFS, and much more.

The full transcript can be found below:

Dahnee (Crypto.com community operations specialist): Welcome to Neo x Crypto.com Community AMA! Today we have three sections in total:

  • Brief introduction of NEO
  • Q&A (Pre-collected questions through Google Form)
  • Live Q&A (7 questions selected on the spot)

Today we welcome our guest from Neo, John Wang, NGD Ecosystem Growth director.

Hello John! Welcome!

Can you briefly introduce the project and your role in Neo?

John Wang: Hi, everyone. I’m glad to be at Crypto.com AMA and meet your large and enthusiastic community!

Dahnee: Glad to have you here today!

John: I am the head of Neo Ecosystem Growth and have many years of experience in supply chain management consulting, some successful entrepreneurial experiences, and currently, I’m responsible for Neo ecosystem development.

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.

Dahnee: Thanks for your introduction, John. Now let’s jump into the Q&A section!

John: We are trying to bring a future digital world to reality, today.

Q1: Neo just recently joined InterWork Alliance (IWA) as a founding board member. How will it be beneficial to Neo, develop tokenization standards in enterprises around the world, and encourage mainstream adoption of blockchain technology?

John: We have announced our joining the InterWork Alliance (IWA) as a founding member alongside Microsoft, Accenture, SDX, and Digital Asset, to realize its vision of the “Next-gen Internet” (NGI). We’re really happy to work together with these partners.

The IWA is a non-profit organization that aims to empower organizations to adopt protocol-agnostic token-powered services and dApps. Other launch members include companies such as IBM, Nasdaq, UBS, Hedera Hashgraph, DID Alliance, Hyperledger, and more.

You can learn a bit more about the partnership at the following link:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbrett/2020/06/04/accenture-ibm-microsoft-nasdaq-digital-asset-and-more-unveil-new-token-standards-association/#10d40dad4cac

As an IWA member, Neo aims to influence the development of global standards and ensure our products are up-to-date with the leading standards. The first framework, the Token Taxonomy Framework (TTF), provides token classifications and definitions intended to bridge the gap between blockchain developers, business executives, and regulators. Standards set by the TTF have already been implemented in NGD Seattle’s Visual Token Designer.

Lastly, NGD Seattle lead, John deVadoss, sits on the board of directors. Those interested can follow John deVadoss’ Twitter account at the following link:
https://twitter.com/john_devadoss

Q2: When I first saw Neo 2.x’s proposed features, it was the first time I realized Neo was more than just a blockchain, it was a complete ecosystem. I was blown away and have been a fan ever since. However, NeoFS and NeoX have not been delivered and are now advertised to be part of Neo3. The feature set of Neo3 looks incredible, but how do we know these features will be included this time? Can you please highlight the features that will be integral pieces of Neo3 from Day One? If possible could you confirm how progress is going and when it is likely we will get to see and experience the new platform?

John: Thank you for the question. Neo3 is very important to us. Neo3 will be released at the end of 2020, with some of the features first released on Neo 2.x earlier this year.

Some of the major features will be a built-in oracle implementation, which will allow smart contracts to access the Internet.

NeoID, a decentralized identity protocol built on Neo, will support the issuance of decentralized identifiers and be compatible with the industry-standard X.509 level certificate issuance model.

NeoVM will be completely decoupled from the blockchain in Neo3, which intends to offer several benefits, including the support of non-blockchain applications and simple, smart contract debugging without needing blockchain data.

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

We have a whole section devoted to Neo3 on Neo News Today:
https://neonewstoday.com/road-to-neo3/

Q3: Presently, Neo has two decentralized exchanges (DEX) in its ecosystem, Nash and Switcheo. Does Neo have any plan of adding more DEX’s to its ecosystem?

John: Maybe there will be some, but mostly we will focus on Nash and Switcheo, which are great already. Consider the recent updates from Switcheo. Earlier this year, Switcheo announced the development of its second trading platform, Demex, which aims to be a fully non-custodial platform that focuses on margin and derivatives trading.

Also, take a close look at Switcheo’s future order matching engine, Switcheo TradeHub. It will feature an automated market making (AMM) model that allows users to stake SWTH tokens into liquidity pools for spot trading, similar to the Uniswap protocol on the Ethereum blockchain.

Switcheo intends to implement a process where staked tokens will earn SWTH from transaction and trading fees as compensation for acting as the transaction validation collateral.

Other SWTH token use cases will include the ability to contribute to liquidity pools of Switcheo TradeHub, contribute to the insurance fund system of the Demex derivatives exchange, and serve as the native currency for future listing fees.

Check out Switcheo, it’s very hot right now!

Q4: Can you explain more about NeoFS and the role it will play in the Neo ecosystem?

John: NeoFS will be a decentralized file storage platform built on Neo. It will be primarily used by dApps as data storage infrastructure, in addition to acting as a Content Delivery Network. Right now, you can play with it here:
send.fs.neo.org

Some technical details from an earlier NGD article: “NeoFS sources storage space from any users, with commodity or enterprise-grade hardware, who can rent out unused HDD/SDD capacity to the network in return for GAS. Data placement is calculated deterministically through the use of rendezvous hashing over a network multigraph, making the solution extremely scalable despite the distributed environment by removing the need for unnecessary metadata transfer between nodes. The solution also introduces an interactive zero-knowledge proof protocol, which is based on homomorphic hashing to preserve data integrity across the network asynchronously. This protocol provides consistent auditing; failure to pass the audit prevents payment, preventing nodes from trying to game the network by deleting data.”

Q5: Why did Neo choose the delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (dBFT) consensus algorithm, as opposed to other consensus protocols like Proof of Work (PoW), Proof of Stake (PoS), etc.?

John: First of all, I have to mention that dBFT is a much more environmentally friendly type of consensus than some others. Compared to other blockchains with thousands of miners, Neo dBFT requires fewer nodes without implementing mining, which consumes much less electricity.

And compared to both PoS and PoW, dBFT has 100% finality. This means that large nodes cannot collude to re-create blockchain records, such as canceling transactions (e.g., someone sending you money, receiving the payment for you, and then deleting the record of sending you money).

Libra was going to use dBFT, too!

Q6: If Neo3 is a brand new blockchain what will happen to our current Neo tokens? Will they be exchanged or upgraded? NeoVM will be completely separated in the Neo3 update and become a true virtual machine. What are the benefits of decoupling the VM?

John: In general, we won’t change our economic mechanism. The NEO token still will be used for voting and governance, and GAS will be used as a system fee. NEO won’t become divisible, but NEO and GAS will become contract assets which are the same as all NEP-5. It should positively affect NEO/GAS liquidity. As you know, smart contracts can’t invoke NEO/GAS in Neo2.X, but in Neo3, they will be able to invoke contract-assets. It will also simplify the development a lot.

About our virtual machine, I replied a bit above, but decoupling of NeoVM from the blockchain in Neo3 is intended to offer several benefits, including the support of non-blockchain applications and easy contract debugging (without needing blockchain data).

Q7: How will China’s blockchain infrastructure help towards Neo’s adoption?

John: Neo has announced it is joining the Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN), part of China’s national initiative designed to boost the integration and adoption of blockchain in enterprise, small business, and local government.

Neo is among the first batch of public blockchain platforms to partner with BSN and aims to become one of the technological pillars of the service network. BSN has also partnered with the Chinese State Information Center, China UnionPay (largest bank card processor), and China Mobile (the number two telecom provider).

It’s good for Neo because corporate partnerships with the government are very important in China and will ensure the stable and successful operation of Neo in the country and abroad.

We are really excited about the IWA and BSN partnerships. Those interested can learn more by following the link below:
https://www.coindesk.com/chinas-blockchain-infrastructure-to-extend-global-reach-with-six-public-chains

Q8: To help my understanding, can you share what plans are set in motion to add value to Neo in 2020? Can you share Neo’s vision for decentralized finance (DeFi)? What features are built into Neo to support DeFi?

John: Neo does not aims to become a top ten market cap project, but the most developer-friendly project. To achieve this goal, Neo3 aims to make Neo ready for large-scale commerce. Second, the Neo EcoBoost project, will together with Eco Partners provide full life cycle support for Neo ecosystem projects, and seeks to attract many talented developers and projects to Neo.

On the DeFi side, we are preparing something exciting, too early to announce, but you can check out Switcheo for now. Staking is coming, and users can already exchange NEO to ETH, and vice versa, in a completely decentralized manner!

Q9: Can you share with us a little about the initial idea that started the Neo project?

John: Two partners founded the project, Erik Zhang, a talented blockchain developer, and Da Hongfei, who had experience in the business. They had the idea that smart contract space was ripe for innovation and so they started Neo.

Q10: Are there physical wallets that support NEO?

John: A few hardware wallets support Neo already, such as Ledger and SafePal.

Q11: Neo is an established and well-known company. So why is the main reason Neo does AMA’s?

John: It’s always good to talk to the community, get the feeling about our project, and, to share the updates! Not everyone has heard about the IWA and BSN, even though these two are rather major developments in the industry!

Q12: What do you think about fractional bias, and do you think that NEO doesn’t support fractional transactions is one of the reasons why some people may have lost interest in Neo?

John: Actually, GAS is divisible, and NEO produces gas for its holders. These two features make both tokens attractive already, but it’s something to think about.

Q13: Can you explain the difference between Neo’s smart contract and Ethereum’s smart contract?

John: The main difference is that NEO produces GAS, and GAS can be used for micropayments (in games and dApps), and smart contract deployment.

Q14: I understand part of your team is in China. How does the recent COVID-19 affect harmony, especially technically? What precautionary measures do you have to secure your team? Do you have any plans to attract non-crypto investors to Neo, and how? What are the actions to increase awareness around Tezos in non-crypto space?

John: Thankfully, we were able to come back to the office were early on, two weeks after the Chinese New Year, in mid-February. We are lucky to be in the digital space, and developers in our community have been working from their homes all over the world.

Finally, epidemics like this show the strengths of digital currencies. When banks and offline payment outlets are closed, you can use cryptocurrency like NEO to make payments, in your country or cross-border!

Dahee: Much appreciation for your insightful responses, John. I’m sure our community enjoyed it a lot!

John: Thanks to everyone who read my answers, and please follow the links!

Note: Some edits have been made for formatting and readability. The full conversation can be found at https://t.me/CryptoComOfficial/744664.

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