NEO will be upgraded to version 3.0 next year, but will the 100,000 unclaimed tokens be "swallowed" by the foundation?

This article comes fromCoinDesk, original author: Leigh Cuen

Odaily Translator |

This article comes from

, original author: Leigh Cuen

Odaily Translator |

A year from now, the technology behind the cryptocurrency NEO is expected to be reconfigured.

In April of this year, NEO co-founder Erik Zhang announced that its blockchain network will re-launch a new optimized version NEO 3.0 in 2020. Due to major changes in the underlying infrastructure, existing NEO token holders will need to replace their "old" assets with newly issued tokens.

Zhang Zhengwen said that the token replacement process does not require KYC (know your customer) information, because the Singapore-based NEO Foundation plans to simply destroy the old assets, and then airdrop the new tokens into designated wallets, he said. explain:

"Users only need to keep their own needs, and the new tokens will be automatically released to their wallet addresses. Community leaders will also cooperate with cryptocurrency exchanges to convert tokens originally stored in exchanges into new ones. Tokens, we need to make sure that old tokens and new tokens don’t flow in the market at the same time.”

However, since the old tokens have been circulating in the market for several years, it is difficult to say what impact this centralized redistribution will have on the entire NEO ecosystem.

According to the financial report released by the NEO Foundation, they raised $97,517 and 8169 BTC through the initial coin offering (ICO) in 2016, and cashed out most of the bitcoins for $8.3 million in February 2018.

But according to the NEO Foundation, there were about 100,000 NEO tokens purchased at the time of the ICO but never added to the wallet — in other words, these tokens are currently unclaimed. The NEO Foundation stated in its financial report that if the relevant wallet is not registered for token replacement, the NEO tokens in it will be transferred to the NEO Foundation in October 2019.

According to CoinMarketCap, the NEO token is currently trading at around $11 for delivery.

This approach seems to go against the spirit of cypherpunk. Of course, compared to most grassroots cryptocurrencies, the community has always felt that the NEO project is more like a commercial enterprise, and its internal structure is not transparent, and it is sometimes called a "Chinese version of Ethereum" that is good for supervision.

Dovey Wan, formerly of Danhua Capital, once called NEO a "compliant" blockchain project. Danhua Capital had previously invested in Onchain, the sister company of the founder of NEO, and these companies themselves controlled absolutely Most of the "master nodes" (masternode).

“Due to the need to implement the NEO 3.0 migration work now, the decentralization plan is currently on hold to allow for a more efficient migration plan.”

For many NEO token holders, they are uneasy about the slump in token prices in 2018, and they are also worried that NEO co-founders Da Hongfei and Zhang Zhengwen will shift their focus to Onchain. When explaining the relationship between Onchain and the NEO ecosystem, Da Hongfei said:

“Onchain and NEO have the same smart contracts, so if you know how to handle smart contracts on NEO, it will be very easy on Onchain.”

secondary title

non-profit organization

Many NEO-related companies have proven that the two co-founders of NEO actually made money.

Zhang Zhengwen and Da Hongfei distributed some of the bitcoins raised in the ICO to several independent entities, including Neo Global Capital (NGC), NEO Eco Fund, and Neo Global Development Fund (NGD Fund). They used the funds to invest in outside startups such as Chromaway, Ontology, StarkWare and Oasis Labs, according to related financial reports. Not only that, Da Hongfei revealed that so far, the total return value of NEO Eco Fund and Neo Global Capital has exceeded 10 BTC.

However, regarding this type of investment and how to use these Bitcoin investment returns, Da Hongfei said that the NEO community does not have a formal voting mechanism. He said that decisions are usually made by himself and Zhang Zhengwen.

Ethan Fast is a member of the City of Zion team and is responsible for operating one of the two NEO external consensus nodes. In 2018, Ethan Fast called the NEO ecosystem a "benevolent oligarchy."

Back in the day, half of the original NEO tokens were sold during the ICO to fund the foundation's operations, as well as the salaries of 50 employees in their Shanghai office. Da Hongfei said most of the staff worked for various other funds rather than community-oriented funds of funds. Onchain is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup focused on working with businesses that have no formal relationship with the NEO Foundation, but are co-located with the NEO Foundation.

In addition to his leadership roles in NEO-affiliated entities, Da Hongfei is now the CEO of Onchain, while Zhang Zhengwen is its CTO. Currently, Onchain is seeking a new round of venture capital, while the NEO ecosystem is undergoing a token redistribution plan.

secondary title

“Teardown” NEO ICO

According to NEO's relevant financial report, 30% of the remaining ICO tokens were allocated to NEO Foundation's investment institutions and an emergency fund. Da Hongfei also said that the last 20% of ICO tokens Assigned to "motivate" developers.

According to a statement previously disclosed by the NEO Foundation, there are at least 10 organized developer teams contributing to the NEO blockchain, but two of them are in China. Da Hongfei said:

“Most of the core developers are abroad, many of these people work full-time, but they are not employed by us, they are not employed by anyone, but we give them NEO tokens as compensation.”