Today, NEO joined the .NET Foundation, the Microsoft-created, globally leading open-source foundation, during the .NET Conference 2019, as the latter’s first-ever blockchain project. Based on their shared open-source heritage, NEO and the .NET Foundation will furtherempower millions of developers to build the foundation for next-gen Internet. This partnership comes after NEO’s release of Blockchain Toolkit for .NET and NEO Express in September, thus reaffirming NEO’s leading position in the industry.

Speaking during the .NET Conference 2019, John deVadoss, Head of NGD Seattle, remarked that, “As the first blockchain project to join the .NET Foundation, we’re excited to come together based on our shared commitment to open-source, to developers, and to world-wide community collaboration. Based on our shared core values and principles, I am confident that this partnership will accelerate developer innovation to drive mass adoption of blockchain and build the foundation for next-gen Internet.”

Reflecting his sentiment, Jon Galloway, Executive Director of the .NET Foundation, noted that, "The .NET Foundation is very excited to welcome NEO as the very first blockchain platform to join our community.  NEO is a pioneer in adopting the .NET platform, and we support them in building an innovative decentralized platform and developer community. NEO is joining the .NET Foundation at an exciting time of growth for the .NET Foundation, as well, and we're very happy to have them on-board!"

Underscoring its developer-centric approach, NEO shared the preview of the NEO Blockchain Toolkit for .NET and NEO Express which aim to jump start smart contract development and accelerate the creation of innovative dApps by enabling the following capabilities:

• NEO Smart Contract Debugger - to debut a fully integrated Smart Contract debugging experience inside of Visual Studio Code.
• NEO Express - to enable comprehensive end-to-end SDLC scenarios for NEO2 and NEO3 with the ability to be managed from within Visual Studio Code and using command-line utilities.
• NEO Smart Contract Compiler Enhancements - to enable a fully friction-free Smart Contract edit-compiling-debug-testing-deploy experience.
• NEO-FX Library – to provide the Unified Programming Model for NEO, delivering a consistent and highly productive developer experience with a common set of fundamental types (such as large unsigned integers for hash values and elliptic curves for cryptography), domain models (such as blocks and transactions) and service abstractions (such as retrieving a transaction or invoking a smart contract).
• NEO Visual DevTracker - to debut as an innovative developer-focused chain explorer and tracker fully integrated inside Visual Studio Code.

Speaking on the NEO Blockchain Toolkit for .NET, Erik Zhang, Founder of NEO, remarked that, “We are very glad to be the first blockchain project joining the .NET Foundation. Moving forward, we anticipate closely collaborating with the .NET Foundation to deliver the most developer-friendly blockchain infrastructure for .NET developers—as exemplified by our recently launched NEO Blockchain Toolkit for .NET.”

As NEO achieves a milestone by becoming the first blockchain project to join the .NET Foundation, it is set to usher in a new era of blockchain adoption through a collaborative and community-driven approach with developers at its core. With NEO3’s full-scale launch rapidly approaching, NEO and the .NET Foundation are prepared to embrace the smart economy of the future by developing the foundation for next-gen Internet in collaboration with their community of millions of developers.