NEO

Flamingo Finance launched its Perp trading competition. The competition offers a 100,000 FLM prize pool and is designed to test the Perp protocol. Participants can trade virtual Bitcoin using TestUSD test coins at up to 5x leverage and are ranked by profit and loss calculation. The competition began on Jan. 8 and runs through Jan. 22, 2021.

NGD Enterprise released the Neo Blockchain Toolkit for Preview4, which includes offline mode (PrivateNet), oracle development and debugging, NEP-17 compatibility, enhanced smart contract invocation and management, and a new test framework using fluent assertions, plus more.

NGD Enterprise lead John deVadoss authored a Neo Column article that focused on test-driven blockchain development and how NGD Enterprise integrated TDD support in the Neo Blockchain Toolkit.

Neo founder Da Hongfei, NGD head of marketing Yuan Gao, and Neo Foundation developer community strategist Longfei Wang participated in an AMA conducted in Chinese on ChainNews. Discussion topics included the three guests’ views and outlook on the future of the blockchain industry, the latest Neo and Flamingo Finance developments, and DeFi. The text was translated to English by an r/Neo community member.

Neo founder Da Hongfei offered his perspective on what 2021 might have in store for the blockchain industry in a CoinTelegraph article.

NNT Catch Up

Neo St. Petersburg Competence Center released a new milestone update to the NeoGo project. It includes compatibility with the core Neo3 Preview4 implementation and brings a range of other improvements across the node, SDK, and compiler. To assess the recent Preview4 improvements across the C# and Go implementations, Neo SPCC also ran the new builds through its benchmark tool, neo-bench. The results showed substantial throughput improvements for both nodes since Preview3, both being capable of processing thousands of transactions per second with single block finality.

O3 Labs released a transcript of an AMA recently held on the Neo WeChat for the Chinese community. Operations manager, Caroline, spoke about the history of O3 Labs and its products, the geographic diversity of the team, its focus on Neo3 development in Q4 2020, and roadmap for 2021.

Developer Groups

NEXT released its monthly report for Dec. 2020, which noted updates to NeoLine and NeoTube to bring them into line with the Neo3 Preview4 release, plus more.

Ecosystem

Jan. 4, The first level of prizes in the Nash League trading competition was unlocked as trading volume surpassed US $50 million. Participants now have access to an equivalent of $30,000 in prizes. The second level will unlock once volume surpasses $75 million, raising the prize pool to $55,000. 

Jan. 4, O3 Labs announced it will decommission the O3 Block Explorer, on Jan. 8, 2021, to “provide a better service experience for Neo users” by cooperating with NeoTube.

Jan. 6, DeepBrain Chain released its 2020 year in review, which noted product development and marketing progress, as well as efforts oriented toward ecosystem building. The report included a 2021 roadmap that focuses on launching a DeepBrain Chain MainNet, mining smart contracts, and supporting dual-mode containers and virtual machines.

Jan. 6, Nash received unanimous approval from a community vote to make cosmetic changes to the user interface.

Jan. 7, Switcheo proposed the sixth TradeHub Improvement Proposal, which seeks to upgrade the protocol to v1.11. The upgrade will include bug fixes for issues found during trading testing, removes potentially malicious code that could cause consensus failure, and fixes off-chain volume querying.

Jan. 8, Nash was featured in a CryptoLark video, which highlighted the platform’s non-custodial features, Nash Cash, and the Nash League competition.

Jan. 8, Switcheo and Demex CEO Ivan Poon was interviewed by Pacific Node Validators to discuss the non-custodial trading platforms that operate on the Neo, Ethereum, and EOS blockchains. In the interview, Poon discussed Layer 2 solutions, the team’s goal of attracting 100 node validators, and how users can help spread the word about Switcheo and Demex.