Neo Smart Economy Sees a Walk to Decentralization, Not a Race

Blockworks exclusive: The open source, community-driven platform told Blockworks that it believes blockchain interoperability is the future

article-image

Andrey Bayda/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

Neo, a smart contract platform founded in 2014, has been called the Chinese Ethereum. In fact, on Neo’s website, it bills itself as the first platform of its kind to be launched in the country. 

Da Hongfei, founder of Neo, told Blockworks that the protocol sees itself as a pragmatic player in the effort to drive toward a world that relies on blockchain technology for its transacting needs.

He added that he doesn’t view decentralized innovation as a race, and hopes to see Neo’s long term vision eventually come to fruition. 

Blockchain interoperability, the idea that different blockchains should be able to communicate with one another, was something that Hongfei stressed as one important development that needs to be made in the crypto space.

It isn’t a new idea. Crypto bridges were one means to that end, and there was a lot of hype around them at the beginning of last year. In fact, JPMorgan analysts wrote in a January report that 2022 was “possibly the year of the blockchain bridge.”

Instead, bridge hacks accounted for more than a billion dollars in stolen funds in 2022, according to research from blockchain analytics and compliance firm Elliptic.

Neo wasn’t isolated from this phenomenon. Da Hongfei told Blockworks that “in 2020 Neo joined co-founding members Ontology and Switcheo to launch the interoperability protocol Poly Network to pioneer heterogeneous interoperability across numerous chains including Ethereum, Ontology and Cosmos-SDK.”

Just under a year later, hackers made away with over $600 million from Poly Network. It remains one of the largest decentralized finance breaches in history, only behind the $625 million hack of Ronin Network

“Neo’s experiences have shown, it’s a ‘walk towards decentralization,’” Hongfei said in a written statement. “We recognize that there are further steps to undertake.”

Neo has indeed taken steps toward realizing its goals. Just before the Poly Network hack, Neo launched version N3 of its platform in August 2021, which “boasts more powerful and complete features, a highly modular architecture, and an enhanced governance and economic model for users,” Hongfei said.

The importance of modular blockchains is that they allow much more transactions to be verified, Nick White, chief operating officer at Celestia Labs, told Blockworks on the 0xResearch podcast in early April.

Beyond adding modular structure to Neo’s smart economy, Hongfei added that since launching N3, NEO tokens are now listed on over 50 exchanges and fees on the network have been reduced 80%. He noted that Neo has also developed encrypted messaging and digital identity solutions, allowing users to communicate via NeoChat and register a domain name through NeoNS. 

On Monday, Neo announced it had struck up a partnership with payments solution provider Alchemy Pay, which set up an on-ramp for Neo users to purchase crypto with their local fiat currencies. Alchemy Pay is supported in over 170 countries and accepts over 50 fiat currencies, “enabling even more people across the globe to access this service,” Hongfei said.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template (10).png

Research

Innovations on Aptos’ technical design through Raptr, Shardines, and Zaptos approach near-optimal latency and throughput by unlocking 100% utilization of network resources, with the capacity to settle 260k transactions per second with latencies less than 800ms. The original Move language was revamped with the launch of Move 2, supporting more expressivity in smart contract logic and a scalable ability to interact with high volume datasets. The ecosystem has benefitted from strong asset inflows, now hosting over $1.3B in stablecoins, $450M in bridged BTC, and $530M in RWAs. Activity in the Aptos ecosystem has grown notably over the past year, with monthly application revenue reaching ~$835k and monthly DEX volumes growing to over $5B, both at new all time highs.

article-image

The Stripe-acquired firm has big plans for a streamlined, multi-wallet future

article-image

Both founders of the former crypto lender have now landed in new crypto industry roles

article-image

Bitcoin’s recent peak is a victory lap for curvers left and right

article-image

Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo says institutions are eager to get exposure to tokenization

article-image

Trade isn’t war and prosperity isn’t a contest