NEO

NEO is primarily used for governance of the Neo N3 network and participation in its GAS distribution model.

1. Governance: Each NEO represents one vote that its holder can assign to a registered candidate for the Neo Council. The 21 candidates receiving the most votes form the Council.

2. Consensus Node Selection: The seven highest-ranked Neo Council members also operate as consensus nodes. These nodes propose and validate blocks under Neo's dBFT consensus mechanism.

3. Network Governance: The Neo Council can make changes to selected network parameters, including network and system fees, GAS issuance, storage pricing and designated network roles. NEO holders influence the composition of the Council through their votes rather than voting directly on each network parameter.

4. GAS Distribution: Holding NEO allows users to receive a share of newly generated GAS. NEO holders who participate in governance by voting can receive additional GAS under Neo N3's incentive model. GAS is used separately from NEO to pay network fees and smart contract execution costs.

The Neo blockchain also supports applications and services including tokenised assets, decentralised applications, NeoFS storage, NeoNS domains, Oracle services, self-sovereign identity and interoperability with Neo X. These are capabilities of the Neo platform rather than direct uses of the NEO token.

Neo N3 was introduced as a new version of the Neo protocol. Because some of its protocol changes were not backwards compatible with Neo Legacy, N3 was launched as a separate blockchain. NEO and GAS held on Neo Legacy could be migrated to their Neo N3 equivalents at a 1:1 ratio.

Migration Process

Before the shutdown of Neo Legacy, users could migrate NEO and GAS through Neo's migration system, supported wallets or participating exchanges. Migration generally involved creating an N3 address and transferring Neo Legacy assets through the migration system, which released the equivalent amount on Neo N3.

Migration Requirements

Before the Legacy network shutdown:

• Migrations of at least 10 NEO or 20 GAS did not incur the additional 1 GAS migration fee.
• Migrations below 10 NEO or 20 GAS incurred an additional fee of 1 GAS.
• NEO and GAS were migrated separately.

Neo Legacy has since been shut down and no longer produces blocks. As a result, assets remaining on the Legacy network can no longer be transferred or migrated through the original migration process.

Assets migrated before the shutdown became available on Neo N3, where NEO can be used for network governance and participation in the GAS distribution model.

Neo was co-founded in 2014 by Da Hongfei and Erik Zhang under the original name AntShares. In 2017, the project was rebranded to Neo to reflect a broader platform vision and the integration of smart contracts.

Da Hongfei is a Chinese entrepreneur who co-founded both Neo and Onchain, a blockchain infrastructure company that develops technology for enterprise and institutional use. He has played a key role in promoting blockchain adoption in China and has been actively involved in public and enterprise blockchain development.

Erik Zhang is the lead developer of Neo and the architect of its Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (dBFT) consensus algorithm. He continues to be involved in the technical design and implementation of core features of the Neo blockchain.

Neo's strategic direction and ecosystem development are overseen by the Neo Foundation, which manages funding and long-term planning. The Neo Global Development (NGD) team, established by the Foundation, handles global community outreach, technical development, and ecosystem partnerships.

Independent developer communities also contribute to Neo’s infrastructure and applications, including:

• COZ (City of Zion): An open-source development group responsible for building core tools such as wallets, SDKs, and explorers.
• NeoSPCC (Neo Saint Petersburg Competence Center): A team focused on infrastructure development, including the decentralised storage layer NeoFS.
• NeoEconoLabs (NEL): A China-based developer group supporting smart contract tooling and broader ecosystem participation.

These groups collaborate with the Foundation to support the platform's decentralised development model and ongoing upgrades.