NEO founder Da Hongfei appeared at the April 16 virtual conference Blockdown 2020 where he spoke about the role of blockchain in the post-pandemic environment.

The project’s founder called the “Chinese Ethereum” indicated the world is seeing a trend of de-globalization now. Hongfei claims would be the technology that brings humanity back on track to become a global society.

Hongfei noted that blockchain is an agnostic philosophy. And although various nations might have various financial ideas and principles, blockchain can be the neutral ground that bridges those gaps:

“First of all, blockchain is ideology neutral. Also, not backed by capitalism, it’s not backed by socialism. It is jurisdiction agnostic… Sometimes people say code is law, I think that’s a smart way of saying blockchain is jurisdiction agnostic.”

Blockchain as a Worldwide Economy

Hongfei added that post-pandemic countries will fail to recover from their own disrupted supply chains and infrastructure. The founder of the NEO proposed that while nations could be tempted by nationalism as a defensive mechanism in the coming months. Moreover, the blockchain would act as the host of the global marketplace:

“Blockchain can become a global marketplace. A ledger is a global database. If we can put all of the global assets on the blockchain, we can have a global marketplace where everyone can trade with everyone.”

That being said, Hongfei doesn’t actually think the existing blockchain crop is ready to meet the demands of hosting a global economy. Moreover, much of the world’s wealth tied up in fiat money. And it’ll have to change in three main areas before blockchain can take over, Hongfei said. Added:

“Is today’s blockchain technology ready? Unfortunately my answer is no. I don’t think today’s blockchain can fulfill the mission to hold the human economy on top of it. We can improve in three aspects: interoperability, tokenization and adoption.”

NEO founded under the name Antshares in 2014. And a rebranding job in 2017 saw the group change focus to digital assets and “smart economies”. NEO is now serving as a forum for other blockchain ventures. Most notably Ontology (ONT), currently ranked 30th by global market cap.

Blockdown 2020 will run for the next two days. And feature a variety of speakers and personalities from within the domain of the blockchain.