NEO Global Development (NGD) recently released a two-part LOVE NEO episode (first half and second half), which featured NGD Seattle lead John deVadoss as a guest. NEO LOVE is an ongoing initiative from NGD to provide exposure to NEO-based projects. NEO development engineer, Longfei Wang, and NGD ecosystem growth manager, Denis Suslov, hosted the ninth LOVE NEO episode.

In the interview, deVadoss reiterates his previous experience building large-scale platforms for Microsoft, and reasons for choosing to build on NEO. He cites Da Hongfei’s vision of the Smart Economy as a “very compelling” reason to contribute the project. deVadoss said, “It was very clear there was no other platform like NEO, from the architectural basis.”

As for NGD Seattle, deVadoss is trying to make it possible for every developer to build smart contracts and dApps. He said, “what we’re doing here at NGD Seattle is to help take NEO mainstream.” The F5 Experience is an integral piece of the solution, which is the culmination of four components: ease of use, productivity, collaboration, and elegance.

For ease of use, NEO Express and NEO Toolkit are designed for traditional developers to quickly spin up a PrivateNet to edit, compile, debug, test, and deploy smart contracts. To increase productivity, the NEO Toolkit can help developers “get something simple up and running” in a matter of minutes. The F5 Experience offers opportunity for collaboration across multiple developers and teams, from idea to application production. Lastly, it should strive to provide elegant design solutions for finished products.

deVadoss’ time at Microsoft instilled in him an interest to build platforms used by millions of people, not just developers, through three primary elements. First, builders and tools for building – a platform is only as good as the developers and their tooling. Second, incentives – efforts like EcoBoost incentivize startups across blockchain protocols and various dApps to “push the envelope.” Thirdly, the better the NEO ecosystem can share stories of people and developers, the more compelling it will be to build with NEO.

Lastly, deVadoss highlighted what he’s most excited for with NEO3 and addressed the migration to a new blockchain. In particular, deVadoss is most intrigued by the pricing changes, decoupling the virtual machine from the blockchain, and interoperability (across NEO and Ontology), amongst others. Regarding the migration, deVadoss said, “there are some points in the lifetime of a platform where I see the need and imperative to shift” and “it’s the right thing to do.”

Looking forward, deVadoss is excited for potential opportunities with cross-chain and multi-chain interoperability. Additionally, once NEO Toolkit and NEO Express are released in September, the Seattle-based office expects to announce new hires.

Part one can be found below:

Part two can be found below: