Neo News: Week in Review – January 12 – January 18

Source: CryptoNewsNet Original Title: Neo News: Week in Review – January 12 – January 18 Original Link:

General Updates

Neo co-founders Da Hongfei and Erik Zhang announced plans to meet in Hong Kong to discuss issues related to the Neo financial report and the Neo Foundation treasury, and to assign roles and responsibilities for Neo N3, Neo X, and SpoonOS.

Neo’s Zhang released a tentative overview of Neo 3.9, the first major protocol update since his return to active core development. The update introduces several developer-focused improvements, including ABI-based smart contract invocation, better local contract storage, and a standardized REST API server plugin to simplify integrations. On the protocol side, a new Treasury native contract improves on-chain fund management, while a free contract whitelist lowers costs for essential infrastructure and user interactions. The release will also add mechanisms to handle frozen funds through formal recovery processes. Performance, stability, and observability are enhanced through multiple optimizations and improved logging. While fully compatible with Neo N3, v3.9.0 also backports select features from the Neo 4 roadmap and will roll out to TestNet before MainNet deployment.

Neo and SpoonOS announced Tokyo as the next stop on the Scoop AI Hackathon global tour, marking the sixth event in the series exploring the convergence of blockchain and AI. The Tokyo Bowl will take place on Jan. 31 at MIDORI.so Shibuya / CryptoBase, and will feature a one-day, idea-focused hackathon format.

SpoonOS participated in a panel titled “Privacy, Payments & AI: Unlocking A2A Payments with x402z.”

Vaulten kicked off an event offering 15 GAS in rewards to participants who solved new fragments added to the on-chain word-puzzle game. The event is currently live and will conclude on Saturday, Jan. 24, with rewards distributed within 48 hours of the event’s conclusion at 4:00 p.m. (UTC).

nDapp released a weekly N3 GAS check-in, noting that network users claimed approximately 71,336 GAS over the past week and that on-chain activity burned about 255 GAS.

Frank Coin hosted a GasBot trivia contest on the FrankCoin channel of the NeoF1 Discord server, rewarding participants with 3 GAS. Additionally, FRANK shared a brief World of Elements update, which noted the addition of a character skill tree to the skill point menu.

NNT Catch Up

NNT released Episode 105 of The Smart Economy Podcast featuring Tomasz Stanczak, co-executive director at the Ethereum Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports the development and long-term health of the Ethereum blockchain. Topics of discussion include how internal restructuring is supporting builders, applications, and ecosystem growth; why L2 diversity, interoperability, and alignment with Ethereum matter for the long-term; how institutions are approaching tokenization, privacy, and on-chain settlement; and what the Ethereum Foundation is prioritizing as it plans for 2026.

NNT hosted Crypto Coffee and Blockchain Beer Spaces #80 on the official The Smart Economy Podcast X account. Topics of discussion included the enduring value of censorship resistance, energy as backing for money, lessons learned one year after launch, empowering miners, and how merge mining, token emissions, and other measures can embolden the Quai ecosystem.

In Case You Missed It

Flamingo Finance announced that FLM.FUN TestNet will launch on BSC in January, and MainNet in February. The platform is a new hyper-prediction market that offers users the opportunity to participate in fast rounds and make bold market predictions.

Events

Jan. 23: NNT hosting CC & BB #81 on The Smart Economy Podcast official X account.