2018 has been a year of ups and downs, however, with the help of the community NEO has achieved steadfast progress. At the beggining of the year, we held the first ever NEO DevCon. Now in the closing month of 2018, we are intensely preparing for NEO DevCon 2019.

Adopting “ContiNEO” as our motto for DevCon 2019, we will continue moving forward and never waver in our efforts to realize the new Smart Economy.

Below is NGD’s December 2018 monthly report.

Highlights

NEO DevCon 2019

This month we officially announced NEO DevCon 2019 which will be held in Seattle, US on February 16th and 17th. We aim to deliver a top-level developer conference for the NEO community. The confirmed list of speakers includes senior executives from companies like Microsoft and Accenture with more still to be announced. Tickets are now available with the discounted early-bird offering ending soon. We welcome you to grab tickets at devcon.neo.org.

Decentralization

Consensus node decentralization is a high priority and an important step to realize full decentralization of the NEO network. In December, NGD released an updated “How to Become a Consensus Node” document containing detailed information on consensus node distribution and its selection schedule. All of the 7 consensus nodes are scheduled to be delegated to independent parties within 2019 to complete the decentralization of the network architecture. The document can be found here.

Development progress

Core progress

NEO-CLI 2.9.3 Released [Link]

Added

• Hash interop names to save space in compiled bytecode (smart contract).
• Hot configurations for plugins.
• changeAddress CLI command option to claim GAS.

Changed

• Limit incoming P2P connections based on parameters.
• Improved performance of the P2P network for header and block propagation.

Fixed

• Fixed an issue that could cause chain sync to get stuck.
• Fixed a display error after opening the NEO-CLI wallet.
• Fixed bugs in the consensus algorithm.
• Fixed a minor bug in smart contract cost calculation.
• Catch exception in the UPnP layer when reconnecting or network error.

NeoVM was upgraded from v2.3.1.1 to v2.3.3 with a minor fix on encoding and a hash dictionary added for interop services. The interop service was then changed from class to portal InteropService, which decoupled NeoVM thoroughly, making it much easier for NeoVM to be deployed outside of the NEO network. In December, 2018, NeoVM maintenance and all-around improvements continued to make the execution more secure and reliable.

Community

It is clear when looking back to 2018 that our community is the driving force behind NEO. Developer communities are being established all over the world, and as they continue to grow and mature, the NEO community will expand further.

Social Media

Twitter: 315,851

Facebook: 30,500

Reddit: 97,829

Discord: 23,955

Medium: 2,100

Youtube: 3,302

Wechat: 19,915

Weibo: 8,913

Events

Throughout Q3 and Q4 of 2018 NGD hosted, sponsored and participated in dozens of events, including technical workshops, industry meetings and community meetups held globally. These events helped consolidate the bonds between NEO and the community. In an effort to make NEO DevCon 2019 as successful as it can be, NGD has spent much of December investing time into in the planning and preparation of the Seattle conference.

Hackathons

• December 8th - 9th: The NEO Saint Petersburg Competency Centre held a hackathon titled “Use Python, C# and Javascript to Create Smart Contract Prototype for Services on NEO Blockchain” in St Petersburg, Russia.

Conferences

• December 1st: Lili Zhao, NGD EG director, attended the Blockchain Symposium held by the Universität Freiburg in Freiburg, Germany. [Link]

Other progress

NEO Foundation financial report

Since the roles of NEO Foundation include determining relevant strategies about NEO development and increasing the transparency of information disclosure to the community, in the second half of this year, the entity has initiated a financial report preparation plan and plans to disclose the financial data of the Foundation, including both NGD and NGC’s collected as of December 31, 2018 within three weeks.

Interviews

• December 17th: Wang Jiachao, EG manager, discussed “A Natural Fit - Games and Blockchain” in an interview with Hufu Blockchain.[Link]
• December 20th: Da Hongfei provided an interview to Forbes news updating on the preparation work for NEO DevCon 2019 [Link]

New Office

NGD moved into new office this month.

Recruitment

Gao Yuan
Yuan graduated from Columbia University with a master’s degree in International Economics and Financial Policy. He previously served China UnionPay International, Qdaily, and The Beast, and now joins the NGD marketing department as senior international marketing manager.

We sincerely appreciated all the efforts and supports from Neo community, for more information regarding our annual progress, please read our 2018 Annual Report.