Hi folks,
At this point in development and where things stand overall, as promised I've put together somewhat of a progress report to keep things transparent and the community updated. The upcoming release of Neos (v3.0) is undoubtedly the most work and contains in my opinion - the most innovative features and functionality in comparison to previous releases. For years now, blockchain tech is what I've wanted to focus on at the core of Neos usability and power. In our last release, while it was unique and contained a slew of features that were by community feedback "awesome" - reliability on third-party services proved to definitely be the wrong path to take. Our goal moving forward isn't as simple as one idea or method - but a collaborative effort to create something that combines the best of all while improving the areas that lacked suitable solutions. At the end of this post I'll provide upcoming dates for private testing and initial releases. First I'll outline a few of the fundamental changes that are currently in motion and will be ready by release.
The Neos code baseInitially the base we chose several months ago seemed like a perfect fit for our vision moving forward. Since then it has unfortunately proven otherwise on various levels of reliability, accounting and other functionality. Ahmed is busy working on a new base that will fall in line with our current model, preserving features like PoS and Masternodes. This base however, will be more current and contain a number of improvements and upgrades.
The entire model and use case for Neos has changedI'll be outlining literally every feature that our new platform is capable of and what to expect moving forward closer to the beta release date. This is obviously to protect our ideas from leaking into the open before they're ready. What I can disclose however, is that this version of Neos and every aspect of use and impact on the network and economy has been considered. We're reaching out to new audiences that might not be familiar with crypto but will be able to both understand and prosper from our platform. Our goal is to eliminate the typical barrier-to-entry points and we've come up with a solution that we believe may very well do that.
The look of NeosI had planned on waiting for our designer to provide the final adjustments to our new logo as well as color scheme, but that's not ready as of today. When it is, I will be updating this post so that the community can give us their feedback and take a look at what we feel is the best visual representation for the project.
Where do we stand with the current development process? What are we working on now?The initial steps of development were to test things on a network/functionality level. Throughout the process there have been a multitude of changes as you can expect as certain methods might have proven more efficient over others and code refactoring takes place, etc. The feature set the upcoming release contains is 85% complete. At this point in development, the code is in a state where it can be given a face (the user interface, graphical means to execute these new features). I'm currently working on the new user interface and once that's complete, I will be providing a demo.
I've been working with the current base for testing while Ahmed continues his work on the new base. When the new base is ready, I'll be porting all of the new features into it. At that point, private testing and stress testing can commence.
ETA's, timelines, and in-betweensThe expected date for a demo and a more in-depth breakdown of new features is March 3, 2017. Private testing should begin March 4, 2017 while a code audit for security purposes will be taking place by a third-party professional. Between March 3rd and March 10th, testing and any applicable changes based on the audit report will take place. March 10 - 15 will be another week of testing of any applicable changes to ensure the final revision is ready for public consumption. Provided everything is successful, we expect new sources with a commit history to be made public by March 17, 2017 as well as binaries for Windows and Mac. Once the demo has been released, our marketing campaigns will begin to welcome both new and existing communities to our new platform. This is in effort to correct past mistakes where the area we fell short in consistently was marketing.
Resources and documentationWhat has been built thus far is not something I would call any small feat or task. Along the way documentation has also been created for points of reference and to attempt to explain the internals of the system to those who might be curious but might not have the same technical familiarity as others. A new website is a must as what is currently there does not paint the most accurate picture of what we'll be offering with Neos 3.0, and a wiki will be set up. We're all very excited to reach even the point of demo as it has been an incredibly long journey from where we've started and where we're going to be.
We've opened up our slack invite for anyone who has any questions or would just like to come in and keep updated on any discussion that transpires there. You can get your invite automatically by visiting
http://slack.neoscoin.com/.
Thank you all for your continued support and patience. If our history reflects anything, it is that we deliver and we're looking forward to it.