- NEO has announced that it will become decentralized in 2019
- Two out of its seven nodes have already been decentralized and it outlined the process to apply for node hosting
NEO has, in a new statement, announced that it aims to achieve complete decentralization in 2019.
There has been a significant buildup to this as earlier in October, the NEO Global Development (NGD) releases a document which details how one can host a Neo consensus node.
The document has been updated thus far in a bid to push the decentralization of nodes which is the first step in complete decentralization.
Node hosting
NEO has seven nodes, five of which are hosted by the NEO Foundation.
The other two are hosted by the Netherlands-based telecommunications company, KPN, and open-source community group, City of Zion.
With these in place, a new version of the document has been released, along with a statement by NEO.
“After nearly a year of continuous improvements, protocol upgrades, and exploration of decentralization paths, NEO is mature and stable enough to accelerate the decentralization process. It is expected that complete network decentralization will be realized in 2019,” the statement says.
Moving forward
NEO, intending to become fully decentralized in 2019, outlines the selection process for node hosting.
There are two types of node hosting, which are on-chain governance and off-chain governance.
On-chain governance is determined through voting by NEO holders while off-chain governance is determined through votes by the support of the NEO Foundation.
Selection process
According to NEO, the process for node selection is as follows:
- Candidates who are interested in hosting a consensus node should first e-mail their organization information and an operation and maintenance proposal to consensus@neo.org
- The NEO Foundation will review all proposals and select candidates based on their qualifications and potential contributions to the NEO ecosystem. Successful applicants will be voted in as a consensus node on the NEO TestNet.
- A consensus node will be eligible to be voted in on the NEO MainNet only after six months of stable operation on the NEO TestNet and will replace one of the consensus nodes currently hosted by the NEO Foundation.