Updated on:12/02/2025 05:54 PM 
The Neo blockchain has recently launched its major update, Neo 3, which the development team describes as "the most feature-rich blockchain platform." We spoke with Lili Zhao, Neo Ecosystem Growth and Global Development Director, who provided valuable insights into the vision of Neo, the future of NFTs, and the roadmap ahead.
When asked what Neo represents to her, Zhao compared the blockchain to its Ethereum counterpart.
"Neo is the one. When I think about the blockchain platform, Neo is truly the one. The vision is to open the door for the smart economy. We live in a smart economy which is defined by three elements: digital assets, digital identity, and smart contracts."
The latest version of the Neo blockchain contains several advanced features that enable it to make such a claim. These features include enhanced blockchain interoperability, increased transaction speed, lower gas fees, Neo Virtual Machine smart contracts, built-in oracles, and file storage. Some of these features support dApps, layer one solutions, and off-chain transactions on other layer one networks. The storage of content for NFTs, for example, requires a connection with services like IPFS to store files using blockchain technology in a decentralized manner. While an NFT can exist on chains such as Ethereum, the video and image content is often kept on IPFS or centrally stored platforms like AWS. Storing files on central servers rather than a blockchain presents several problems, including the possibility for the media to be deleted.
Another advanced Neo 3 (N3) feature is that it has built-in an oracle. This could theoretically help protect against oracle-targeted exploits. Details on how the built-in oracles will protect projects from such exploits are something that Zhao said is best to come from the developers themselves. We are working on a piece for our Edge members to deep dive into this at a later date.
Zhao expressed that the blockchain community is starting to pay more attention to Neo because "people who are looking at the fundamentals see that we are working hard to create the most feature-rich blockchain platform."
Neo is often referred to as a Chinese project. This is something that Zhao does not believe is a fair assessment of Neo in its current state. She highlights that only one of our core developers is Chinese. The rest are in Europe, the US, and Brazil.
"Neo was founded by two Chinese individuals but today it is very much global. It is an open-source project which by definition has no legal entity, it has no nationality. We do not judge other open-source projects by the nationality of the founders and it should be the same case with Neo."
Zhao also noted how NFTs have created their own community that brings mainstream audiences to crypto. Through NFTs, crypto is "breaking into mainstream marketing" according to the Neo executive. She also remarked how there are many potential use cases for NFTs but that the name might be causing issues. The phrase Non-Fungible Token is a difficult one to understand at first glance. The term fungible is not common within everyday knowledge. This could be creating a barrier to mainstream adoption. She believes the phrase 'decentralized digital certificate', DDC, is better suited to the tokenization of assets. Zhao explained that
"industry experts predict assets worth billions will be tokenized at the DDC. It may have started as a niche but this is definitely a mainstream adoption area."
While some may question the validity of a centrally controlled state-backed blockchain, the use of Neo's technology to build such a vast infrastructure is undoubtedly impressive. With the launch of N3 and their Variable Protocol, Neo could be one solution. Will developers see the benefit of a single feature-rich blockchain compared to connecting multiple chains and technology such as Ethereum?
