NEO consensus node page released recently was a major step towards decentralization. Now, KPN has been officially voted in as a NEO MainNet consensus node, indicating a further step towards decentralization. Previously, 6 of the 7 mainnet consensus nodes were hosted by NEO Foundation while 1 was hosted by CoZ.

NEO MainNet officially launched on Oct 17, 2016 and has been running in a stable capacity for two years. Since the mainnet release, decentralization has been written in the project roadmap as a major goal and pursued unwaveringly by NEO in the past two years. On July 4, 2018, NEO Developer Community CoZ became the first entity other than NEO Foundation that hosted a consensus node on NEO MainNet, bringing NEO into the era of decentralization. As a key partner in NEO ecosystem, KPN began to act as a consensus node on NEO TestNet in July 2018 and has since maintained stable operation that has been widely acknowledged by the community. Therefore NEO Foundation determined to complete the MainNet election 3 months ahead of schedule.

In the latest NEO consensus node election, KPN was officially elected a consensus node running on NEO MainNet at 6:13:12 on October 20, 2018 (GMT+8). The number of consensus nodes controlled by NEO Foundation now decreased from 7 to 5, indicating a further stride towards NEO decentralization.

The NEO consensus node page updates the latest node status and votes with a visual display of applicant info for “on-chain governance” and “off-chain governance” respectively. In the future, NEO Foundation will further delegate the consensus nodes to reliable, trustworthy and qualified partners to fully realize decentralization.

7 consensus nodes currently running on NEO MainNet:

• 5 maintained by NEO Foundation
• 1 maintained by CityOfZion
• 1 maintained by KPN

7 consensus nodes currently running NEO TestNet:

• 2 maintained by NEO Foundation
• 1 maintained by NEO Global Development
• 2 maintained by CityOfZion
• 1 maintained by KPN
• 1 maintained by Swisscom Blockchain

NEO Decentralization Timeline:

November, 2015: TestNet launched.

April, 2016: ANTSHARES-GUI consensus node voting system went live.

October, 2016: MainNet launched with 7 nodes hosted by NEO Council voted in as consensus nodes on NEO MainNet.

July, 2017: ANTSHARES-GUI was renamed to NEO-GUI and a latest update was released.

January, 2018: The voting algorithm was optimized.

January, 2018: NEO-GUI was adapted to the optimized voting algorithm.

January, 2018: CoZ ran consensus node on TestNet.

January, 2018: KPN, the largest telecom service provider in Netherlands, ran consensus node on TestNet.

May, 2018: P2P network was improved.

July, 2018: Consensus node candidate information website was released.

July, 2018: CoZ was voted in as a mainnet consensus node by NEO Foundation.

September, 2018: Swisscom Blockchain, was voted in as a consensus node by NEO Foundation on TestNet.

October, 2018: KPN was voted in as a mainnet consensus node by NEO Foundation.

2019: NEO is scheduled to fully democratize the election of consensus nodes.