On June 28th, the NEO St. Petersburg Competence Center (NEOSPCC), a community-based technology institution that supports the NEO core and ecosystem development, was voted into joining the NEO TestNet as a consensus node operator

Erik Zhang, founder and core developer of NEO, said, "NEOSPCC has been an integral part of NEO community. NeoFS is one of the critical components of our NEO3 architecture. We are more than excited to see that NEOSPCC has extended their effort to participate in NEO's decentralization process."

About NEO’s Network Decentralization

Following NEOSPCC joining the NEO TestNet, the NEO Foundation will have fully distributed its responsibility and will no longer maintain any consensus nodes on TestNet. The seven consensus nodes will be run by KPN, Swisscom, NEO Global Development, MatPool, City of Zion, Red4Sec, and now NEOSPCC. According to NEO’s consensus node approval mechanism, a minimum test-run period of six months is required before a consensus node applicant may qualify to host a consensus node on the NEO MainNet.

NEO3 is a major ongoing effort that will impact the entire NEO ecosystem. The core code overhaul is an ambitious implementation, designed to enable the NEO blockchain to handle large-scale commercial applications. As many code changes are expected during the development and transition phase to NEO3, integrating new consensus nodes on the NEO MainNet is temporarily suspended to ensure network stability. Following migration from NEO 2.x to NEO3, the TestNet to MainNet approval process will resume. It is the NEO Foundation’s intent to distribute the responsibility of maintaining each MainNet consensus node to other independent parties.

Fabian Wahle, the strategic advisor of NEOSPCC, said, “at the NEOSPCC, we strongly believe that NEO's progressive approach is the best method to achieve geographical and political decentralization. We are honored and excited by the opportunity to help power the backbone of future economies.”

About NEOSPCC

The formation of the NEOSPCC was primarily driven by City of Zion and Neon Exchange co-founder, Fabian Wahle (also known as “fabwa” within the NEO community), along with engineers Sergei Liubich, Anatoly Bogatyrev, and Maksim Vinter, who is the head of RACIB North-West, a large Russian blockchain association.

NEOSPCC are responsible for creating a distributed decentralized storage network, "NeoFS." NeoFS will be integrated with the NEO blockchain and implements client-side encryption, which allows users to transfer and share data without reliance on a third-party storage provider. NeoFS will be used by decentralized applications (dApps) for data storage and as a Content Delivery Network (CDN).

Additionally, NEOSPCC will also drive NEO community growth in Russia. Such efforts include hosting NEO-themed meetups, conducting research projects in collaboration with universities, and supporting projects that incorporate NEO technologies.