NEO Foundation Seeking to Decentralize Four of Its Seven Nodes

NEO has announced that it is looking to decentralize the nodes on its network.

NEO Foundation, which currently runs five of the seven nodes on its system, is opening the process to applicants who wish to run one of these nodes.

In an press release sent to CryptoSlate on Dec. 5th, NEO Global Development announced plans to decentralize its network through a "Selection process," encouraging third-party organizations to participate in the consensus mechanism for NEO. According to Peter Lin, Director of Research and Development at NGD:. "NEO is embarking on its next phase, which will see far more public involvement in efforts of greater decentralization."

At the moment, five of the seven nodes are managed by the NEO foundation.

In 2019, NEO stated that they are replacing four of its five consensus nodes with applicants who have "Passed a screening process" and have completed a six month trial on the NEO test network.

"After the first seven consensus nodes are selected, the next number of consensus nodes should be 10, then 13, and so forth. Once the seven existing consensus nodes are fully decentralized, the number of consensus nodes is likely to increase through additional selection cycles at the discretion of the NEO Foundation."

The breakdown of ownership: 10 million are earmarked "Motivate NEO developers and members of the NEO Council," 10 million to "Motivate developers in the NEO ecosystem," 15 million are used to "Cross-invest in other blockchain projects, which are owned by the NEO Council," and 15 million are retained as contingency.

"As an increasing amount of NEO tokens held by the NEO Foundation are unlocked, they will flow into the market and add to the amount of NEO in circulation," Lin noted.

Over time, "As the NEO Foundation distributes tokens through ecosystem funding, the amount of influence it holds on the voting process is diminished," according to the NEO blog.

At the moment, the NEO Foundation provides funding to the City of Zion, NewEconoLabs, NEO St. Petersburg Competence Center, and NEO Research.