NEO Soars 40% as Founder's 'Rethinking Layer 1s' Speech Makes Waves in Hong Kong Web3 Fest

Neo, a decade-old blockchain project, has risen from the ashes to reach its highest price in nearly two years.
The surge comes on the back of a speech made by the project’s founder at a Web3 Festival in Hong Kong, causing a 40% price rise in just a few days.
The speech outlined a vision for the future of blockchain tech, causing optimism about cryptocurrency to resonate throughout the audience.
Da HongFei noted improvements in settlement times, scalability and privacy as key developments likely to take place in the coming years.

Neo is a blockchain project that’s been around the block. The original network, named Antshares, was founded almost a decade ago in 2014, before undergoing a rebrand in 2017. In its 10 years of existence, the coin has fallen a long way from its 2018 heights, where it was trading at well over USD $150 (AUD $227). But after an impressive turnaround in the past week, Neo may be on its way to reclaiming a triple-figure status.

Neo, all-time chart, source: CoinMarketCap

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What is NEO and What’s Behind the Comeback?

Neo is a blockchain project that leverages smart contract technology to create what the developers coin a “smart economy”. Buzzwords aside, this basically means everything is digitised and financial matters can seamlessly settle without a third-party (thanks to smart contracts). So digital assets – cryptocurrencies, tokenised assets like fiat or gold, etc. – and digital identity verification are the crux of this decentralised vision.

NEO’s massive spike in volume and price was incited by the founder, Da HongFei, speaking at a blockchain festival in Hong Kong on the future of Layer 1 blockchains (like Neo, Bitcoin and so on). The speech did get a little technical at times, but breaking it down as simply as possible:

As the blockchain world advances, the performance and settlement times of decentralised ledgers is set to significantly improve. Eventually, Layer 1s will become so efficient that their capabilities will outpace demand, thus putting an end to transaction fees.
Inequality in the mining industry will be phased out thanks to progression in consensus mechanisms and PoW codes.
HongFei sees a world where Bitcoin transforms into a hybrid blockchain that supports staking while maintaining “the permisionless nature of PoW”. This would see Bitcoin remain incredibly secure while also improving its settlement times and scalability.
He also mentioned that zero-knowledge proofs may be the solution to privacy and scalability in the industry, finally solving the blockchain trilemma.

While his talk only indirectly related to the Neo project, it appeared the crypto community is enamoured with HongFei’s vision of the Web3 world going forward. Whether he and his development team will usher in a new era of blockchain tech remains to be seen, but his speech has certainly caused a stir.

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