Chinese ‘Smart economy’ network NEO has announced it will host its own DevCon in 2018 in conjunction with Microsoft.

Billed as “China’s first dev competition,” the event will feature support from several other emerging Blockchain entities including Onchain and Elastos.

Final entrants will be eligible to win prizes of up to $150,000 from a bounty pool totaling almost $500,000.

Neo DevCon. We are waiting for you!? pic.twitter.com/xfqCKBGLDn — NEO Smart Economy (@NEO_Blockchain) November 20, 2017

“Contestants are encouraged to deliver excellent apps with the support of NEO Blockchain and Microsoft’s development environment and tools. Such efforts being made, we are one step closer to a mightier Blockchain developer ecosystem,” an accompanying blog post explains.

The announcement and Microsoft partnership will be music to the ears of an investment community which has seen the value of NEO tokens slip following China’s multifaceted ban and Bitcoin’s rapid rise to over $8,000.

Prices hit over $45 for the second time in the token’s history over the weekend, having since settled around the $36 mark.

“Experts from Microsoft China” along with NEO founder Da Hongfei and others will judge entries from dev teams, while a “live online night course” Dec. 1 will act as a primer.