Blockchain Platform, NEO set to open an office in Seattle, United States
NEO Global Development (NGD) has announced the launch of a new office in the United States
According to the official announcement made by the NGD’s team on the firm’s website on the 15th of February, 2019, the Chinese blockchain platform will open a regional office in Seattle, Washington D.C.
According to the statement, the Seattle Office will open sometime in February while immediate efforts will be made to focus on recruiting local development talents in the Seattle metropolitan area.
The location of the new NGD facility is in furtherance to NEO’s recent efforts aimed at expanding the company in the U.S. market as well as establishing relationships with Microsoft and other local companies.
Seattle is a strategic city that is home to several tech companies such as Microsoft, T-Mobile, Amazon, and Expedia.
NEO’s founder Erik Zhang disclosed that Seattle’s reputation for tech talent was one of the main reasons why the company decided to situate its office there.
“Seattle has huge developer resources and a strong atmosphere of innovation, and NEO has always placed great importance in technology development. Now that we have set up the Seattle office, we have more resources for engineering and enhancing the NEO’s developer experience to make it the most developer-friendly blockchain platform.”
John deVadoss, a former executive at Microsoft, will assume the role of director in the new regional office.
DeVadoss who has more than 15 years of experience with Microsoft co-founded ‘text11’, a messaging service that integrates machine learning. In addition to building the Microsoft Digital to an over 500 million dollar firm, he was also responsible for the success of .NET in Microsoft’s competitive efforts against Java/J2EE.
The announcement comes barely a day to NEO’s proposed second DevCon, scheduled to hold in Seattle on the 16th and 17th of February.
The event which will take place at the Hyatt Regency Hotel is expected to feature presentations from Da Hongfei and Erik Zhang, Miha Kralj, Parimal Deshpande, as well as Dr. Joseph Williams.
NEO will also feature an all-day workshop on coding courses and mentorship for developers interested in building on the NEO blockchain. Participants will learn how to set up a NEO development environment, build a smart contract, and publish it on the blockchain.
Meanwhile, NEO 3.0, a major upgrade of the NEO blockchain platform, is expected to be activated next year (2020). The platform which was founded in 2014 and launched in 2016, is currently working to develop the upgrade which according to co-founder Da Hongfei is expected to bring faster transaction speeds, greater stability and expanded application programming interfaces for smart contracts.
Purportedly referred to as the “Ethereum of China,” NEO utilizes blockchain technology and digital identities to digitize assets and automate the management of digital assets using smart contracts.
NEO’s eponymous token currently has a market cap of 530 million dollars and is trading at about 8.19 dollars, according to CoinMarketCap the popular Cryptocurrency market rankings outfit.