On October 25th, Neo co-founder and Neo Global Development (NGD) CEO, Da Hongfei, and co-founder and core developer, Erik Zhang, participated in a Reddit ask me anything (AMA). In the AMA, the Neo co-founders answered questions from the community, which were collected over 24 hours.

In the AMA, the pair responded to inquiries about Neo3, developer attraction and retainment, decentralized finance (DeFi), and stablecoins in addition to other topics.

Neo3

In his responses, Zhang iterated that Neo3 will not be completed until 2020, with the absolute earliest MainNet launch estimated for April 2020. The Neo development team will require more time to build the protocol and integrate various facilities such as NeoFS and an upcoming NeoID standard into the network.

While the first preview of Neo3 released in September 2019, Zhang anticipates releasing multiple previews based on the progress of development. From a technical perspective, he said, “there are currently no technical obstacles to Neo3 development, and only a few minor details need to be discussed.”

One participant inquired if Neo3 will be able to achieve 20,000 transactions per second (TPS). Zhang responded, “I think this number should not be difficult to reach.”

The total supply of NEO and GAS is currently not expected to change, however, if a change is required, a native voting contract developed for use in Neo3 could be used to help with decision making. Da said, “theoretically, [the voting contract] can be used to do on-chain governance on critical decisions.” Further, the NF highlighted its motivation to incentivize effective voting actions in Neo3.

One participant asked about incorporating more privacy into the Neo blockchain. Zhang responded, “in the future, most of the business data will be stored on NeoFS, and the data will be stored encrypted. The on-chain data can be protected by homomorphic calculations or zero-knowledge proofs.”

Developers

Many participants asked about Neo’s efforts to attract developers to the ecosystem. Da pointed toward the efforts of NGD Seattle, which is currently working on creating better tooling, documentation, industrial exposure, and collaborating with tech giants.

In terms of attracting talent from the FAANG sector, Da invited all developers to review the “How to become a Neo Core Developer” documentation. Zhang also encouraged users to examine Neo’s open source-code on the Neo GitHub page.

While Neo is actively trying to attract developers, the O3 Labs developer team was recently acquired by Bitcoin.com, prompting AMA participants to seek Da’s opinion on their departure from the ecosystem. First, Da said, “I congratulated the O3 team as soon as we heard of it weeks ago.” In another response, he said, “I think the most effective way to retain a prosperous ecosystem is not by persuading people to stay or handing out money, but [by building] up an infrastructure where they can make money building stuff on top of it.”

To build such an infrastructure, Da believes the answer lies in fostering the growth and adoption of stablecoins and non-custodial exchanges.

DeFi and stablecoins

A popular topic of conversation in the AMA was DeFi and stable coins. Multiple times, Da referred to an upcoming stablecoin project. In one question from a participant about his perspective on the most exciting dApp in the Neo ecosystem, Da responded, “I hope in a few month’s time, I can say stablecoin.”

Da focused on DeFi due to his belief that future banking and loan processes will remove the dependency on fiat currency through the introduction of digital assets. He said, “[imagine] anyone can automatically get a loan from a banking smart contract based on their personal assets or future income, and you are the stakeholder of that banking smart contract. Most of our wealth will be stored in various smart contracts and grow along with overall economic growth instead of holding on inflationary fiat.”

Therefore, the Neo Foundation (NF) has prioritized fostering stablecoins in the Neo ecosystem and will aim to maintain relationships with non-custodial exchanges. Da said, “as the digital asset protocol, Neo has a high priority on enabling applications such as collateral-based stablecoin and non-custodial exchange. There are two working non-custodial exchanges now, but we lack a well-received stablecoin comparable to DAI on Ethereum.” The NF aims to partner with a team to build a multi-asset collateral-based stablecoin project, then collaborate with non-custodial exchanges to integrate the solution as a commonly accepted stablecoin.

One Redditor asked if the development team has thought of stabilizing GAS since it is the payment asset in the Neo network. Da responded, “GAS price is driven by demand and supply. It will be difficult to make GAS stable without changing the whole economic model.”

Currently, John Wang, NGD director of EcoGrowth, is coordinating and collaborating with DeFi projects.

DevCon 3

At the time of press, the location for Neo DevCon 3 is unknown. However, Da said, “I vote for Europe.”

The full AMA can be found at the link below:
https://www.reddit.com/r/NEO/comments/dlxlat/hongfei_and_erik_founders_of_neo_are_here_to/

Tags: ,