The developers of NEO, a blockchain platform supporting an open network and smart economy, reveal that the Neo Frontier Launchpad winners were recently announced.
Around two months back, the NEO team had put out a call for “trailblazers” who were “up to the challenge” of being among the first to create applications using N3. Over 670 blockchain developers had signed up to answer that call – and NEO’s team say they’re quite pleased with the results.
Participants submitted 60 different plans and 58 projects during the competition, according to a blog post published by NEO. These decentralized applications (dApps) used many of N3’s new features, including native Oracles as well as NeoFS, demonstrating functionality that was “never before possible on a single chain.”
The update from NEO developers further noted that contestants were “the first to use the many tools developed by [their] global community, including the Neo Blockchain Toolkit, the Neo Python Suite, Neow3j, and many more.”
As mentioned in the update, contestants were able to offer “critical feedback that will help improve Neo’s developer experience and provided real-world dApp examples that will benefit the next wave of N3 pioneers.” (Note: for more details on this announcement check here.)
In another update, the NEO team confirmed that Neo N3 RC4 codebase had been released on July 20, 2021. The corresponding testnet was scheduled to be set up on July 21, 2021. This update reportedly includes “the completion of all the tasks required for Neo N3, and is a candidate of the Neo N3 Formal TestNet.”
The extensive list of enhancements and optimizations in this version include:
- Nonce-based random number generator for smart contracts that can be improved with BLS in the future
- OSX compatibility
- Get network syscall
- Various bug fixes and optimizations “especially in VM and Oracle”
The deployment of RC4 is “a step on the final road to Neo N3 MainNet,” the announcement from NEO noted while confirming that in the coming weeks, Neo will “systematically onboard critical components of the network, such as Initial Council members, NeoFS nodes, and Oracle nodes.”
As stated in NEO’s most recent monthly report:
“June proved to be one of the most active months so far in terms of development in the Neo ecosystem. Hackathon participants strived to complete their projects as the Neo Frontier Launchpad’s development phase draws to a close, while developer community members remained close by to lend their support and guidance.”
As mentioned in the report from NEO, these final stages between N3 RC3 and the official N3 release will involve Neo’s core developers working to optimize the codebase. At the core protocol level, the benefits of the ongoing hackathon may “already be witnessed.” Several enhancements carried out last month can “trace their origins to hackathon participant feedback, such as changes in the Oracle module and various bug fixes.”
As explained in the report:
“Much of the remaining work in the Neo codebase is to do with optimization and bug fixes, but the core developers also continue to add useful new features and make other changes intended to improve developer experience. A notable example from last month was the implementation of a built-in random number generator powered by a verifiable random function (VRF).”