Neo Formally Closes Its Legacy Network As Neo N3 Takes Over

Neo is dead. Long live Neo. The original Neo blockchain, named Neo Legacy following its replacement by Neo N3, is officially being powered down in October. It leaves behind a fitting legacy, as the blockchain that’s credited with kickstarting China’s love for smart contract chains and tokenization. Famously once billed as the “Chinese Ethereum,” Neo began life as AntShares before rebranding to Neo.Now, it’s time to say goodbye to Neo Legacy, which has outlived its usefulness and been replaced by better tech. As the Neo team formally prepares to sunset the blockchain that’s been running strong for eight years, it’s taken the time to acknowledge the benchmarks and milestones that tell the Legacy chain’s history.

Neo Team Hits the Kill Switch

The idea of obsoleting a blockchain feels strange since decentralized networks by their nature are meant to live forever – or at least until the last node operator unplugs. In the case of Neo, the name and the network isn’t being killed stone dead: it’s already been replaced by Neo N3, and the shutdown of Neo Legacy is merely a formal note to remaining devs and users to move operations to the chain’s successor if they haven’t already.The Legacy testnet is poised to close on June 1, before the Legacy mainnet follows suit on October 31. Prior to this, a final snapshot of the network will be taken. This can be thought of as a time capsule, or perhaps a cryogenically preserved image of the Legacy chain in its final state. This isn’t being done just for posterity, incidentally: the eight years of blockchain data that the network has accrued continue to have value in attesting to various events that occurred onchain, and thus there is an economic and historical imperative to preserve this data.

Nostalgia for Neo

In its announcement confirming the legacy chain’s closure, the Neo team took time out to highlight the data points that attest to its impressive benchmarks. During its lifespan, the chain has produced over 14 million blocks, processed over 281 million transactions, and prompted the creation of nearly 3 million addresses. More poignantly, its team adds that “It's where many Neo developers began their journey and brought their dreams to life.”

But those dreams haven’t been put on pause: they’ve merely moved to Neo N3, which launched in 2021 as the next-gen successor to Neo Legacy. With developers and users having known for years that the Legacy chain was poised to be wound down, the official closure date won’t come as a shock. But it’ll nevertheless give crypto OGs a few feels as they think back to Neo’s remarkable run during the 2017 bull run, and the associated highs and lows that followed on a network that captured the industry’s imagination, not just in Asia, but around the world

So long Neo Legacy and thanks for the memories. Now it’s over to Neo N3 and its EVM sidechain Neo X for more of the same.

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