2019 was a full year for Neo, which saw many events, online activities, community development initiatives, and progress on Neo3. As 2019 draws to a close, Neo News Today reached out to representatives from across the Neo ecosystem to collect their thoughts on the year that was from a range of different perspectives.

Their comments can be found below:

Blockchain Industry

John deVadoss – Head of NGD Seattle:

Only the paranoid survive. And it was true for the blockchain industry in 2019. Players with a short-term view, and with a story rather than a platform have fallen on the wayside. A clear vision (Smart Economy), a long view with clarity (most developer-friendly platform), and the commitment to execute have ensured that we demonstrate our leadership in the industry. 2019 has been a special year for Neo – beginning with the 2nd Neo DevCon and the disclosure of the Neo3 roadmap in Seattle, the launch of EcoBoost in New York, our Global Community Assembly in Shanghai, our joint partnerships with Microsoft in Redmond, and the availability of the NEO Toolkit for .NET from Seattle, 2019 lays the foundation for us to launch Neo3 in 2020. Onwards to Neo3!

John Wang – Head of Eco Growth:

For many people who are new to blockchain, 2019 may be a very tough year, but in my opinion 2019 is a promising year. Compared with before, the blockchain no longer only belongs to the geek’s world. I have heard Bitcoin mentioned many times in the conversations of young people. I have also discussed the use of blockchain in many government meetings. Even my parents will tell me about Bitcoin news sometimes. In 2019, there were many keywords for blockchain – Libra, DCEP, dApps, Defi, cross-chain, next generation internet etc., and we have introduced Neo’s technology, ecosystem and vision in many places. But from the perspective of an ordinary person I think it is simple to judge the future of an industry by if more and more people are knowing this industry. Maybe there are still many people who don’t know what blockchain technology is, but I believe that when you mention Bitcoin, most of people will say they know it – this is completely different from 2017. “Consensus” is the most important element of the blockchain. By “consensus” I do not only mean consensus mechanisms, but also a consensus on human thought. It is the basis of any technological development in human history for thousands of years. At the end, I want to apply Da Hongfei‘s words to summarize blockchain in 2019: “There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

Yuan Gao – NGD marketing director:

2019 was an eventful year for the blockchain industry. From a fundamental standpoint, thanks to both the public and private sector efforts, awareness has tremendously grown. While nations compete to lead in this inevitable trend of blockchain revolution by devising policies and incentive plans for industry adoptions, major corporations are starting to integrate blockchain technologies into their businesses to push boundaries. The big question now is not “if” but “when.” Zooming into the blockchain space, the focus is no longer about creating proof of concepts and hitting benchmarks. As the technology gradually matures, the competition becomes multifaceted – to create a robust, sustainable and evolving ecosystem becomes crucial, which is what we are striving to achieve at Neo. I can’t wait to see what is yet to come in 2020. My personal wild predictions of the Buzzwords in 2020: Defi (or Open Finance), Middleware and Permissioned blockchain.

Neo Ecosystem

Denis Suslov – Neo Eco Growth manager:

In 2019 we saw new games launched, battle-testing our smart-contracts and blockchain throughput. Also, game developers that worked with us have provided good feedback about the global nature of our user base and certain system aspects, such as free transactions. We’ve also seen how many industry players that haven’t worked with Neo for some reason, have been reaching out to us to integrate Neo into their services, such as wallets, payment systems and more. The new university course we’ve launched has further polished our tutorial materials, making them ready for more extensive use in both online and offline education. Universities are interested in adding Neo materials into their curriculums thanks to our unique consensus algorithm and the support of multiple programming languages. The Community Assembly in Shanghai was an extremely productive event, also showing how all core developers are deeply involved into the process. I feel like participants went back home with “recharged” inspiration, confident that Neo’s development process is one of the best in the industry, especially with respect to how open the community is to innovative suggestions and its willingness to implement the best ideas. The project that I’m most looking forward to in 2020 is probably NeoFS, recently I was re-listening the podcast with the NSPCC team and it made me think again about how a decentralized system like Neo enables something unique: file storage that is reliable, user-friendly yet immune to the pitfalls of a centrally-run system.

Tyler Adams – COZ & Moonlight founder:

Each year in the Neo ecosystem is very different and I can honestly say that I am proud of how the community has banded together during a particularly turbulent year in the space. It shows the maturity and resolve of the ecosystem’s core as well as many community members who have stepped up to ensure that everyone from developers to shills are correctly informed, engaged, and productive. At DC2, there was a focus on the delivery of a quality ecosystem that was distinct from the previous year, which was focused more on marketing and token sales. We saw that energy grow throughout the year, fostered by the work of the various Neo teams, core developers, and numerous ecosystem groups until it reached a head in Shanghai for the Neo Community Assembly. As a result of that event, the ecosystem collaboration levels have reached an all-time high and I am very excited for Neo in 2020. See you at DC3 fellow ants!

Tom Chilli – Neo Telegram moderator:

I think overall the ecosystem (across the whole of blockchain) has taken a hit since the massive bull run. We are now in a period of time where if projects want to succeed, they need to prove themselves as financially savvy and business orientated. Although the market has been bearish, lots of smart projects in the Neo ecosystem are making huge inroads in regards to project development. Unfortunately speculators rarely follow project development and roadmaps, instead focusing on price as a means of measuring a projects success. I believe in the coming years we will see some really successful NEP-5 projects, as well as projects from the broader ecosystems. Currently it’s nice to be reminded just how diligently these teams are working – so communication in the current market it more vital then ever.

Neo Community

Steven Liu – Neo Foundation technologist:

For the whole community of Neo, 2019 was not easy, but we all experienced a great time. Although the whole cryptocurrency market is not as good as before, every community developer insists on working on their project and contributes to the Neo ecosystem. In 2019, we had monthly meetings with founders from all different communities. We shared ideas, debated on several topics and provided solutions. In September, we had a community assembly in Shanghai, and most of our community members came to the NGD office. During that week, we had great communications that strengthened our understanding of each other and enriched the expectations of the future of Neo. Besides those old friends, Neo is always looking forward to the new blood. After a number of meet-ups and workshops, more developers are coming from those countries that Neo did not get in touch with before. Thanks for everyone’s contribution to Neo’s community in 2019. I believe in 2020, with the Neo3 coming, the whole community will become more stable and keep growing.

Songping Que – Neo community operations specialist:

As 2019 is coming to an end, I look back at all events Neo has organized/participated, and so many precious moments came to my mind. Just before our DevCon in early February, Seattle went through a series of rare storms and all traffic was cut off one week before the event. Luckily, the sun shined on the day of our event, and we welcomed over 400 participants on site, including a batch of curious developers from local tech giants, such as Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and etc. New York was rainy and windy this May. However, our hearts were so warmed by big smiles we saw at the Neo booth during Consensus 2019. People were telling us that they knew Neo back to the Antshares era and were eager to learn about Neo’s latest technological developments, especially Neo3. The weather was finally clear when we had our inaugural Neo Community Assembly in September, just in time for the best season in Shanghai. 30+ leaders representing 10+ Neo communities flew in from 30+ cities around the world. The communities had a week-long in-depth discussion about how Neo can strive to become the most developer-friendly platform to build the infrastructure of the next-gen internet. Three products including NeoFS, NEO-ONE and the Neo Blockchain Toolkit for VS were released at the end of the Assembly. Besides these 3 major events, we also brought Neo and Neo’s ecosystem to so many meetups and events globally, introducing Neo to hundreds of people from different continents, speaking different languages and working in different disciplines. 2019 marks my freshmen year in the blockchain industry, witnessing crazy ups and downs in the market. I feel lucky and blessed to work in Neo with such a passionate and innovative team, and I believe there is so much more we could achieve in the coming year!

Igor Coelho – NeoResearch and & Neo Core developer:

NeoResearch organized more than 5 micro events in Universities in Brazil. A student finished his master thesis mentioning Neo as a Blockchain platform for hosting a solution to the energy industry. A prototype of a smart contract using the NEOVM C# compiler was also developed in this research. PhD and MD students investigated CUDA parallelism and microcontroller implementation of NEOVM cryptographic calculations, writing and submitting research articles. One of them was presented on the International SBAC-PAD conference. Two papers were also published in the IEEE proceedings, focused on Neo as IoT for home security and a new library for BFT problems. Novel promising partnerships with universities emerged in the form of a partnership with an enterprise focused on R&D, settled in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. NeoResearch wrote more than 10 technical blogs and informative notes, as well as an active Twitter account. Online interactive tutorials proposed by the group have already helped attract and instruct new high-quality contributors to the project. A researcher of NGD, Wang Yong Qiang, visited members of NeoResearch team for discussing the evolution of dBFT and NEO governance. Regarding 2019, we can say the year was much more mature than 2018, with deeper discussions and achievements, far beyond previous technical contributions and general ideas previously proposed. More than ever, we believe that achieving great things is just a matter of allowing great people to get more involved. Next year brings more opportunities than ever before, we welcome and congratulate all great minds involved in this amazing project.

Neo3

Jaime Kindelan – Red4Sec & Neo Core developer:

Blockchain technology is growing and evolving to points we had not imagined before. With this evolution we have seen different generations succeed, and during 2019 a new generation of blockchain has been taking shape. This year we have also seen new ideas and projects feeding the technology, solving problems of the past and adding new functionalities – a product of the clear maturation process that blockchain is suffering. I believe that work done in Neo during 2019, especially on Neo3, has been the right bet not only to evolve, but to build the best possible environment where all projects can take full advantage of the possibilities offered by this new technology.

Longfei Wang – NGD engineer: