The Neo Council voted to cut back the block time from 15 seconds to three seconds at its April 13 governance assembly attended by 14 of the 21 board members. The long-discussed parameter modifications are anticipated to take impact in early Could. Nonetheless, the proposed 100x discount in execution payment issue was deferred on account of a tie vote, with the Council selecting to attend for Neo SPCC’s dynamic opcode pricing resolution within the upcoming Gorgon exhausting fork.
This assembly marked the primary concrete vote on community parameters since COZ co-founder Tyler Adams launched Governance Proposal #7 in February. The proposal had been stalled for 2 months amid requires a convention attributable to disagreements over the safety implications of reducing charges.
3 second block time unanimously accredited
All 15 council members current voted to cut back GasPerBlock proportionately, altering Milli SecondsPerBlock from 15,000 to three,000, to take care of the identical GAS technology charge. This transformation is applied by way of a single voting transaction that calls the native coverage contract.
Jimmy, founding father of R3E Community, and Shargon, founding father of Red4Sec, create proposal transactions utilizing a brand new internet app for proposal signing that Jimmy developed. Council members have till Monday, April 21 to submit their signatures, and the deal is anticipated to be handed down in a couple of week.
Neo SPCC confirmed that 3-second blocks have been examined on Neo TestNet, which at the moment runs 1-second blocks. R3E Community independently pressure-tested C# nodes utilizing 512 transactions per block at 3-second intervals. The technical foundation of the change, specifically migrating MillisecondsPerBlock and MaxValidUntilBlockIncrement to coverage contracts, was accomplished in Could 2025.
Lowering block occasions has been mentioned no less than since Centerpoint #2 in Singapore in September 2025, the place consensus was reached however didn’t lead to on-chain motion.
Execution payment issue voting ends in a tie
The proposed discount in ExecutionFeeFactor – a 100x discount aimed toward permitting Neo to compete with different chains on transaction prices – divided the council evenly. Eight members voted for quick discount and eight voted to attend for dynamic opcode pricing for the Gorgon exhausting fork. The proposal did not cross with the 11 votes required for a majority.
Safety was on the coronary heart of the standoff. Roman Khimov, lead developer at Neo SPCC, claimed in a dialogue in February {that a} 100x discount in charges would enable full community lock-up for about $15 USD. Neo SPCC developer Anna Shaleva introduced the staff’s dynamic opcode pricing mannequin in its place that makes commonplace transactions like Flamingo token swaps about 100 occasions cheaper, whereas making malicious transactions exponentially dearer. She estimated that it might take two to a few weeks to evaluate and merge the characteristic into C# nodes, after which it might be deployed within the Gorgon exhausting fork.
Adams, who authored the unique proposal, argued that we must always act now as an alternative of ready, saying, “We have to fill the community after which use financial means to filter the noise out of our utilities.” After listening to Neo SPCC’s presentation on the dynamic pricing mannequin, a number of council members modified their votes throughout dialogue.
The implementation of dynamic opcode pricing is accomplished within the neo-go consumer. The preliminary model doesn’t embody a SYSCALL opcode worth that covers native contract calls and requires additional analysis. The deployment date for the Gorgon exhausting fork has not but been decided.
Most variety of transactions per block lowered
The council voted 12-3 to cut back MaxTransactionsPerBlock to 200 together with quicker block occasions. The present worth is 512 transactions per block.
In contrast to the block time and payment parameters, this transformation is an adjustment to node configuration reasonably than voting transactions. Because of this all committee nodes should work collectively to replace the configuration information. Shaleva coordinates the timing of updates throughout consensus and committee nodes.
Shargon favored a conservative strategy, noting that the community hardly ever reaches 200 transactions per block and {that a} sudden spike is probably going a sign of an assault. “If we see extra community utilization in that three-second interval, we could possibly change and enhance the time if vital,” he stated. “However in the event you do not want it, it is higher to decrease the worth.”
The council additionally mentioned MaxValidUntilBlockIncrement however determined to not change it. Shargon defined that the flexibility to reference future block numbers for signature assortment in proposed transactions eliminates the time stress considerations that originally motivated the change.
Defining the whitelist course of
Though contract whitelisting is not going to be applied as a broad non permanent measure previous to the Gorgon exhausting fork, the Council has established a course of for Flamingo Finance to pursue whitelisting of particular contract strategies. Flamingo, Neo’s largest DeFi platform, was not current on the assembly, however had submitted a written assertion supporting the governance proposal and requesting clarification on the whitelisting course of.
The agreed course of requires Flamingo to offer Red4Sec with a listing of strategies that require whitelisting, and Red4Sec will conduct a safety evaluate centered on free execution security. The council will then vote on whether or not to whitelist a specific technique. Upgrading your subscription robotically removes your whitelist standing.
Adams warned that free execution creates a denial-of-service assault floor and pointed to its complexity. Whitelisting is on the technique stage, not the contract stage, and intermediate contracts referred to as by whitelisted strategies additionally should be whitelisted.
Issues stay about attendance and accountability
Seven council seats have been unrepresented at this assembly: NGD (holding 3 seats, 2 of that are consensus nodes), Switcheo, Binance, MakeNeoGreatAgain, and Flamingo. Solely Flamingo offered advance discover of its incapability to attend the assembly and offered a written memo setting out its place on the difficulty previous to the convention name.
Adams questioned whether or not there have been sufficient voting rights, saying, “Greater than half of the voting rights inside this governing physique will not be legitimate. And it is the identical faces that present up each time.”
Neo Information Right this moment editor Dylan Grabowski referred to as for accountability for follow-through. “That is the third time we have voted on one thing and other people ended up doing nothing,” he stated. “So I do not assume we have to congratulate ourselves in any respect.”
subsequent step
The three-second block time transaction will probably be signed by April twentieth, and the modifications will probably be applied one week later. MaxTransactionsPerBlock reductions are adjusted throughout committee nodes together with block time modifications. Neo SPCC’s dynamic opcode pricing PR for C# nodes is anticipated later this month, with the Gorgon exhausting fork timeline to observe.
You’ll be able to watch your entire convention utilizing the hyperlink beneath.
