Last month, NEO Global Development (NGD) released its monthly report for August using a new template, which was based on community feedback. As this new version has received a positive response, our monthly report for September will use the same format. We appreciate the continued feedback and contributions from the community.

Please find our NGD monthly report for September, 2018 below:

Highlights

NEO-CLI 2.9.0 and Akka framework

This month we released NEO and NEO-CLI 2.9.0. The most remarkable feature of NEO 2.9.0 is that it is using the Akka framework. The Akka framework uses the Actor model to overcome the limitations of traditional object-oriented programming and will help solve the challenges of a highly concurrent distributed system.

It is also worth mentioning that in this version of NEO-CLI, many additional functions are packaged in the form of plugins, focused on enhancing the safety, stability and flexibility of NEO nodes. Users can choose the additional models without having to input cumbersome commands to start NEO-CLI. This will help avoid many manual mistakes, and the operations of either opening wallet or getting applicationlogs are simplified, which makes deploying nodes more convenient.

Another feature is that the applicationlogs are stored in the form of levelDB which has greatly decreased the number of applicationlogs and solved the “out of inodes” issue on Linux. You can find more details about these updates at the following link: https://medium.com/neo-smart-economy/latest-advances-on-neo-operational-perspectives-58d306ba2e41.

CNEO and CGAS

With the growth of the NEO ecosystem, an increasing number of decentralized applications (dApps) have been implemented on the NEO blockchain, requiring a diverse set of asset types. In response to requests made by the community, NGD has developed CNEO and CGAS, two contract assets that correspondingly map NEO and GAS, two global assets, to NEP-5 smart contract equivalents. CNEO and CGAS were created because NEO’s UTXO assets (NEO and GAS) cannot be easily used by smart contracts. By converting NEO and GAS to NEP-5 equivalent, developers can have access to full smart contract functionality and make use of the NEO and GAS tokens within applications. CNEO and CGAS can be correspondingly exchanged for NEO and GAS at a 1:1 ratio and are fully refundable. More details can be found at https://medium.com/neo-smart-economy/15-things-you-should-know-about-cneo-and-cgas-1029770d76e0.

NEO Vulnerability Bounty Program

The NEO Vulnerability Bounty Program (NEO VBP) was announced this month, in alignment with NGD’s commitment to the security of the NEO network. The program calls on security experts to help bolster NEO’s security, by offering incentives for teams and individuals who identify and submit eligible vulnerabilities. Rewards will be determined on the severity of the vulnerability submitted. Visit https://neo.org/dev/bounty for more information.

NEO Creative Design Competition

The NEO Creative Design Competition was officially launched in September. The event is organized by NGD and calls for the community to create website and icon designs that reflect NEO’s philosophy of “Smart Economy”. A prize pool of US$30,000 is up for grabs and submissions are open until October 14th. More details can be found at http://neo.org/design.html.

NGD Team Expansion

NGD (NEO Global Development) is an organization that was founded by the NEO Foundation (NF) in March of 2018. Its purpose is to focus on the execution of NF strategies surrounding technological research and development (R&D), marketing, community development, and ecosystem growth. We are in an exciting phase that NGD is growing very fast. In the past one month, we had a number of new talent join the team, and continue to remain on the lookout for outstanding individuals. Visit http://neo.org/team for more information.

Development Progress

NEO-CLI 2.9.0 with an enhanced developer experience was officially released this month.

Core updates

• Released NEO and NEO-CLI 2.9.0 (https://github.com/neo-project/NEO-CLI/releases/tag/v2.9.0)

General updates

• Tested NEO-CLI 2.9.0 and added documentation
• Upgraded & deployed CNEO & CGAS smart contract (https://github.com/neo-ngd/CNEO-Contract)    (https://github.com/neo-ngd/CGAS-Contract)
• Launched NEO VBP (NEO Vulnerability Bounty Program) (https://neo.org/dev/bounty)
• Added neo-auto-test (https://github.com/neo-ngd/neo-auto-test)
• Enabled auto management of offline packages through sync.ngd.network (https://github.com/neo-ngd/chaindata-updater)    (https://github.com/neo-ngd/neo-chain-uploader)
• Swisscom Blockchain consensus node was voted in on TestNet

Community

In September, the community continued to grow steadily. We were pleased to receive lots of positive feedback and many helpful suggestions from the community through our #suggestions channel and dedicated mailbox.

Social media updates

• Twitter: 315,708
• Facebook: 30,080
• Reddit: 96,883
• Discord: 21,991
• Medium: 1,881
• Youtube: 3,188
• Wechat Official Page: 16,808
• Weibo: 8,289

The NEO Discord channels have been adjusted for easier navigation and more focused discussions.

Suggestions

• Added Dutch channel in Discord
• Added upcoming events to monthly report

Events

The NEO Blockchain Open Course program continued to dig deeper into blockchain technology this month, receiving positive feedback from participating developers. Meanwhile, we also held several hackathons and challenges worldwide. Core NGD members are leaving their footprints all over the world, attending meaningful events and enhancing NEO’s global presence and community’s awareness.

Workshops

• September 8^th: NEO Blockchain Open Course (3^rd session): NEO Blockchain Development Workshop in Shanghai, China (Link)
• September 22^nd: NEO Blockchain Open Course (4^th session): Development and Commissioning of NEO Smart Contracts in Shanghai, China (Link)
• September 30^th: “Hands-on-Coding” co-organized by NGD and Keymakers (Japan-based NEO community) in Tokyo, Japan

Hackathons

• September 22^nd-23^rd: NEO Blockchain Challenge in Chengdu, China
• September 28^th-30^th: NEO Black Sea Hackathon in Tbilisi, Georgia

Conferences

• September 3^rd: Malcolm Lerider delivered a keynote speech titled “The Danger of Extreme Decentralization” at the ASEAN Decentralized 2.0 Summit held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
• September 5^th: NeoResearch gave a presentation titled “From the basics to the latest advances in the NEO Blockchain: High performance agreements” at the Uruguay Blockchain Summit in Montevideo, Uruguay.
• September 14^th: Da Hongfei delivered a keynote speech titled “Blockchain & Smart Economy” at the Upbit Developers Conference in Jeju-do, South Korea.
• September 18^th: Johnson Zhao participated in a panel discussion titled “How does the global emerging market have positive impacts on future development of blockchain industry?” at the “11-ELEVEN” Global Meetup in Singapore.
• September 20^th: Da Hongfei attended Consensus: Singapore and participated in a panel discussion titled “Ethereum meets NEO” in Marina Bay Sands, Singapore. (Link)

Meetups

• September 3^rd: NeoResearch held a NEO community meetup with the support of NGD in Montevideo, Uruguay.
• September 5^th: The NEOMY community held a NEO meetup with the support of NGD in Cyberjaya, Malaysia. The event was attended by Malcolm Lerider who shared his insights.
• September 19^th: The NEO Singapore community held a NEO meetup with the support of NGD in Singapore. Da Hongfei, Johnson Zhao (NGD general manager), and Piyush Chaplot (partner at NGC) shared their views on NEO ecosystem growth.

Competitions

• September 12^th: NGD launched the NEO Creative Design Competition, and opened the submission channel for designs that reflect the theme of NEO’s “Smart Economy.” Entries will be accepted through October 14^th. Learn more about the competition at https://neo.org/design.html.

General Progress

We established the NEO Global Development Shanghai office in March of 2018. We are in an exciting phase that NGD is growing very fast. In the past one month, we had a number of talented individuals join the team and remain on the lookout for outstanding individuals in the future. NEO founders, Da Hongfei and Erik Zhang, provided progress updates regarding issues of community concerns through media interviews.

Interviews and Livestreams

• September 3^rd: Erik Zhang addressed topics of community concerns in an interview with Interchain Pulse, reaffirming that NEO and Ontology are two independent teams, and there has been no transfer of technical personnel between the two projects. (Link)
• September 19^th: Da Hongfei was interviewed by Bitcoin Magazine NL. Topics of discussion included the development of NEO 3.0, game development on NEO, and Chinese regulatory approaches etc. (Link)
• September 26^th: Da Hongfei participated in a livestream talk on “Beauty and the IT Beast,” a Microsoft open course program. (Link)

External Relations

• NEO was added to Blockfolio’s Signals notifications.

New team members

Mengyu Liu - NEO software developer

Mengyu has a Communication Engineering degree from Shanghai University and has been in charge of industrial software development and plant information system renovations for well-known domestic data communication corporations since 2016.

Xinyi (Nicole) Lu - NEO quality assurance engineer

Nicole has an Information Engineering degree from Southeast University and previously worked as automation developer at Autodesk and software testing engineer at Canon.

Shuyun (Jessica) Zhang - NEO senior quality assurance engineer

Jessica has a master’s degree in Computer Software from Fudan University and previously served as testing manager at Wanda Finance Group and as senior quality engineer at DELL EMC.

Yuyang (Sue) Su - NEO quality assurance engineer

Sue has a master’s degree in Surveying and Mapping from Wuhan University. Sue has been employed by well-known domestic data communication corporations as a product manager and software testing engineer since 2016.

Denis Suslov - Associate manager in NEO Ecosystem Growth department

Denis has a Finance degree from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. He previously served as investment analyst in AA Ventures and his commentary addressing the financial industry in China was quoted by Forbes, CNBC and South China Morning Post.

Ping (Sarah) Song - Associate manager in NEO Ecosystem Growth department

Sarah has a MSc in Global Operations from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Sarah previously worked as the management trainee of Sinopec (HK) Petroleum and Financial Planning & Operations Manager for a key partner of Alibaba.

Qiao Jin - NEO software developer

Qiao has a master’s degree in Computer Science and Technology from Tsinghua University. Qiao previously worked as software engineer & deputy IT Manager in a U.S. research institute and NCR CORP.

Chuan Lu - NEO senior software developer

Chuan has a master’s degree in Formal Verification from Tsinghua University. Chuan was previously responsible for data platform construction and development for Freewheel and Guazi.com.

Longfei Wang - NEO software developer

Longfei has a master’s degree in Applied Information Technologies from Towson University, USA. Since his graduation, Longfei has been working as a software developer for Premier, USAC and Wanxiang Blockchain Labs. He has been dedicated to research on blockchain technology and previously contributed to the creation of international blockchain standards (ISO/TC 307).

Others

• Overseas based NGD Ecosystem Growth members Lili Zhao (Switzerland), Mik Hayama (Japan), and Evan Hong (Korea) visited Shanghai for an ecosystem growth strategy session.

Upcoming Events

For three consecutive weekends between October 20th to November 4th, NGD will hold a hackathon tour across the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland. 1,500 NEO and 4,050 GAS in prizes is up for grabs across the whole tour and developers are welcome to attend!

• October 2^nd: NEO Helsinki Meetup
• October 20^th: NEO Blockchain Open Course (5thsession) - Shanghai
• October 20^th - 21^st: NEO Hackathon Tour - Rotterdam and Delft (Build dApps of NEO with Golang)
• October 26^th: NEO Berlin Meetup
• October 27^th - 28^th: NEO Hackathon Tour - Berlin (Build NFT dApps on NEO)
• November 3^rd - 4^th: NEO Hackathon Tour - Zurich (32-hour hackathon)