Da Hongfei is the founder of Neo and a core leader in China’s blockchain industry. A serial entrepreneur, he has provided strategic blockchain advisory services to banks, brokerages, and financial institutions across the region.
In 2011, he began to explore blockchain applications, becoming a well-known columnist in mainstream blockchain media such as 8BTC and serving as one of the sector’s earliest advocates.
In 2014, Da founded Neo, a community-driven blockchain platform that integrates digital identity, asset tokenisation, and smart contracts to support the development of a smart economy.
Beyond his work with Neo, he has played a role in shaping blockchain standards in China and contributed to the development of the international ISO/TC 307 blockchain standard.
With over a decade of experience and a forward-looking vision, Da remains a prominent voice in the blockchain space, recognised for helping define application trends and for his continued leadership in the industry.
What was it like building Neo in the early days of DeFi?
Neo was a real pioneer in smart contracts, supporting languages like C# and Java, which opened the door for tons of developers to jump in.
The early DeFi landscape was an exciting time for innovation, but there were still challenges with low liquidity and a limited user base.
Flamingo, Neo’s largest decentralised exchange, reached a TVL of $1.6 billion at its peak, which was impressive but still modest compared to Ethereum.
Expanding the developer ecosystem remained a hurdle, though we invested heavily in tools, hackathons, and grants to support adoption. This led to later advancements like Neo N3 and Neo X, which improved scalability and interoperability.
DeFi is still a fundamental part of blockchain, and over time, users may interact with it more simply without needing to understand which protocols are running in the background.
How does Neo’s philosophy of ‘pragmatic idealism’ influence your approach to AI in decentralised systems?
Pragmatic idealism is about balancing ambition with practical constraints. Our vision is a decentralised ecosystem where users control their assets, identities, and data, but we are also realistic about regulatory and technical limits.
This mindset guides how we think about AI autonomy, particularly in the context of SpoonOS. While Neo continues its focus on enabling a smart economy, SpoonOS is exploring what we call a “sentient economy” — one where AI agents operate independently, collaborate, and optimise value creation in a decentralised setting.
These agents could manage assets or fine-tune financial strategies without centralised oversight. While many web3 and AI initiatives remain early-stage or impractical, our priority is to give developers the tools to build functional and effective AI agents.
What prompted the launch of SpoonOS, and how does it fit within Neo’s long-term vision?
SpoonOS emerged from the convergence of large language model breakthroughs and improved blockchain infrastructure in 2024. It felt like a now-or-never moment to combine AI’s capabilities with decentralised systems.
Neo has long envisioned a smart economy based on digital assets, verified identities, and smart contracts, and now we’re seeing that foundation extend into new territory.
As AI becomes a key driver of productivity, we believe it will give rise to an economy shaped not solely by humans but in response to human needs.
That’s what we mean by a sentient economy — and SpoonOS is designed to support it.
It allows developers to build AI-powered applications that can autonomously manage assets, validate identities, and execute contracts.
What is an agentic operating system, and how does SpoonOS differ from traditional AI frameworks?
An agentic operating system is a platform for managing autonomous AI agents in decentralised environments. These systems must support decision-making, coordination, and collaboration between agents while also addressing privacy, security, and interoperability.
SpoonOS is built with these needs in mind. It includes a coordination layer using decentralised identity and zero-knowledge machine learning, privacy tools like zero-knowledge proofs and trusted execution environments, and built-in features for source verification and bias detection.
It also supports interoperability between chains, enabling agents to share information and operate at scale.
While it shares some similarities with traditional AI infrastructure, SpoonOS is blockchain-native, designed specifically for web3 use cases, and includes developer-friendly APIs and SDKs.
Its support for collective learning and decentralised execution makes it especially suited for building in the emerging sentient economy.
What types of projects or applications are you hoping to support through the SpoonOS ecosystem fund?
With the $2 million ecosystem fund, we’re looking to back developers in three key areas. The use cases I’m most pumped about are:
First, we want to support the development of AI agents designed for real-world use, particularly in DeFi or the creator economy. Second, we’re interested in infrastructure tools that help developers build or deploy their own agents, ranging from basic utilities to complex development frameworks.
We are also looking to partner with service providers — whether from web2 or web3 — to improve developer access to critical infrastructure like oracles, databases, and decentralised storage.
The goal is to make it easier for developers to create practical, scalable applications in web3.