As Neo3 development nears completion, the Neo Foundation (NF) seeks to propel the Neo blockchain into its next growth phase through a new grants program. In the most recent Neo News Today podcast, NF developer community strategist, Longfei Wang, discussed Neo leadership’s direction. Wang said,

Once we have Neo3 released, and all the infrastructure ready, what’s the next step for Neo? From the current situation, we don’t see that we have enough resources, we don’t have enough research in terms of building the Smart Economy and enterprise adoption. We think it’s the best time to encourage Neo research and new core [developer] teams to join Neo.

Having recently moved from Neo Global Development to the NF, Wang is spearheading the establishment of a grants program to attract talent to the Neo ecosystem. Currently, the NF is drafting a plan that will seek to incentivize development through three tracts: general, core development, and research.

  • General grants will aim to motivate developers to build out the infrastructure of the Neo ecosystem (i.e., second layer solutions).
  • Core developer grants will encourage developers to contribute to Neo’s protocol layer (i.e. consensus protocol, TPS, decentralization).
  • Research grants will incentivise researchers to bring practical improvements and new features to the Neo blockchain. (i.e. stablecoin, lending, liquidity, and asset management protocols).

Looking forward, Wang hopes the grants will help drive the development of new infrastructure necessary for digital assets and decentralized finance.

NF has formed an oversight grants committee to review proposals. More information about this program is expected to be released in the coming quarter.

In addition to Wang, Neo Global Development (NGD) Seattle lead, John deVadoss, has also come aboard the NF team. Wang and deVadoss join the existing members: Neo co-founders Da Hongfei and Erik Zhang; Neo communications director, Grace Gui; and NF technologist, Stephen Liu.

Assuming the role of head of enterprise adoption, deVadoss’ NF involvement signals Neo’s intent to become a more entrepreneur-friendly blockchain platform. Steps have already been made in this direction through Neo joining the InterWork Alliance (IWA) as a founding sponsor member in June 2020. The IWA is helping develop business-level standards, which will help Neo gain adoption at the enterprise level through support of widely accepted token standards.

The full NNT pod interview with Longfei Wang can be found below:

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