Neo Polaris Launchpad Hackathon Community Kickoff: Recap of the March 7, 2022 Live-Streamed Event
Neo launched its developer-friendly Polaris Launchpad hackathon event in a virtual community kickoff session on March 7, 2022. Four guest speakers joined the kickoff to share details about the newest Neo hackathon and field questions from the audience. Check out this article for a recap of each leader’s session in the live-streamed kickoff.
Da Hongfei, Founder of Neo
Da Hongfei, founder of the Neo Foundation, opened the event with a walkthrough of the relationship between Neo and Web3. “Web3 is the new iteration of Web1 and Web2, it is an innovation of different layers of the internet,” he said. He explained that Web1 and Web2 represent innovation at the content and platform levels, while Web3 innovations target lower stacks at the level of protocols themselves. Based on these innovations at the protocol level, Web3 enables people to do a new range of things such as digital asset transactions, value transfers, and more. Thus, Web3 is much more than a simple replacement of Web1 and Web 2; it is an innovation that incorporates and builds upon both.
Da described how Erik Zhang, who founded Neo along with Da, spent three years working alongside the rest of the core Neo developer team to build and launch Neo N3 on the MainNet. Da said that Neo N3 has continued to run smoothly in the several months since its launch. Thanks to its new capabilities, Neo N3 now offers developers the best infrastructure available for Web3 development, he said. He cited examples of the functionalities in Neo N3 such as multi-language support that enables developers to build smart contracts in the languages they already know best; one-block finality for DeFi usage; and a range of new modules and functionalities.
Last year’s milestone events (including the large-scale migration of Neo Legacy to Neo N3 and the successful hosting of the Frontier Launchpad hackathon) provided a solid foundation to this year’s Polaris Hackathon, Da said. He highlighted the fact that Neo’s global communities have been key to supporting and contributing to all that Neo has achieved.
He concluded by introducing the new Polaris Launchpad hackathon and extending a warm welcome to all developers who wish to participate.
Steven Liu, Head of Development
Steven Liu, Head of Development at the Neo Global Development (NGD), provided a briefing on the Neo N3 technology stack. He gave an overview of key features and functions. Key points included the evolution in Neo N3 compared to the capabilities of Neo Legacy and the interoperability offered by Neo N3. He described advanced functionalities such as NeoID for customization of attribute verification; NeoFS Network for decentralized storage; a native oracle service to enable new ways to create decentralized services; and Neo Name Service (NNS), a native name service to provide domain-mapping for numerous record types. Liu said that providing developers with this rich new set of capabilities supports Neo’s vision helping developers easily build on Neo N3–setting them up to succeed in the Polaris Launchpad hackathon.
Catherine Lu, Business Development Manager
Catherine Lu, Business Development Manager with Neo Global Development (NGD), described the financial support that NGD can provide for Polaris Launchpad winners. Lu also gave an overview of the types of projects that NGD seeks to incubate and see built on Neo N3. These include DeFi; on-chain information aggregators and explorers; Metaverse infrastructure; middleware components; an IDO/IGO platform; cross-chain apps; and other projects that are scalable, sustainable, and disruptive.
Dean Jeffs, Founder of Neo News Today
Dean Jeffs, the founder of Neo News Today, introduced the rules and specifics of the Polaris Launchpad event. The hackathon includes five tracks of competition: DeFi, NFT and Metaverse, Infrastructure, DAO, and General. Jeffs described the prize system for each competition track as well as for the different phases of the Polaris Launchpad: the Planathon, the Hackathon, and Polaris Plus. Jeffs also provided information on logistics and resources such as the registration website, the new New Developer Resources portal containing a comprehensive collection of tools and resources to help developers build on Neo N3, the Neo community Discord channel, and more. Jeffs concluded by telling the audience that Neo is a fun community and a fun platform to build on. He invited participants to jump in and have a great time competing in the Polaris Launchpad hackathon.
Kickoff Call Conclusion and Call to Action
At the end of the kickoff, the speakers addressed audience questions such as the details of the BSN collaborations, what makes Neo more competitive to build on compared to other blockchain platforms, the story behind the “Polaris” concept, and so on.
The community kickoff call marked the official start of the Polaris Launchpad Planathon phase. The Neo leadership team invites talented developers worldwide to register today to create the next set of amazing projects that may become part of the Neo N3 ecosystem.
Learn more
Neo official website: https://neo.org
Follow Neo on Twitter: @Neo_Blockchain
