Former members and co-founders of the Neo SPCC development group have announced a fork of the NeoFS project. Under the new name TrueCloudLab, led by Anatoly and Stanislav Bogatyrev, the members will continue development of the project as FrostFS.

The announcement was made on Discord, citing a desire by the former team members to encourage a more “community-driven development process”. The fork occurred internally on Dec. 5, with the former team members making their usual contributions to NeoFS in the lead up to the public announcement. Additionally, TrueCloudLab noted that it will continue to submit fixes for outstanding issues with the stable NeoFS release.

As with NeoFS, FrostFS will be developed under a GPLv3 open source license. FrostFS will also remain integrated with the Neo blockchain; the TrueCloudLab team commented that it has no plans to migrate to other ecosystems. According to TCL, work on the new solution will be completed by several teams of experienced developers and QA specialists, including ex-NeoFS core developers and architects.

According to Neo SPCC co-founder Sergei Liubich, the split was the result of ideological differences. As before, NeoFS remains under the care of Neo SPCC and its legal representative Morphbits, who will continue to develop and maintain the platform with the remaining core contributors while hiring to fill vacant positions. Neo SPCC also retains full responsibility for NeoGo and its other contributions to the ecosystem, including consensus node operation and GrantShares participation.

Though both decentralized storage solutions will remain operational on Neo, it is expected that technical differences between the two will emerge over time. Each team is free to pursue its own path when choosing new features to prioritize or resolving shortcomings in the platform. Neo SPCC reports it will continue the development in close consultation with the Neo Foundation and Neo Global Development.

TrueCloudLab reported that it will soon complete its branding efforts and launch a new website for the project. In the meantime, FrostFS queries may be sent to realloc@realloc.spb.ru and gangleon@gmail.com. Neo SPCC can be reached via info@nspcc.ru.