A group of community members within the Neo ecosystem have launched Meteor, a new initiative aimed at developing and delivering a collective roadmap through a structured three-phase process. The initiative has gained support from Neo co-founder Erik Zhang, Neo Global Development, the core development team, and a significant number of Neo Council members.
For much of the past year, Neo has lacked a clear product direction due to a dispute between co-founders Da Hongfei and Erik Zhang. Previous proposals have addressed governance structure issues but have not produced a unified product thesis for the ecosystem to rally around.
Meteor is positioned as the solution to this gap.
What is Meteor
Meteor is described as “a Neo initiative to identify the strongest product direction for Neo’s next stage of growth.” It is a process, not a product announcement, with the goal of developing an evidence-backed, community-vetted product strategy and roadmap.
No specific product direction has been pre-selected or approved.
The three phases
Meteor is structured in three sequential phases:
- Phase 0 (currently ongoing): A research team nominated by the council conducts field research, evaluates candidate directions, and produces a ranked shortlist backed by evidence.
- Phase 1: A lean strategy workshop defines the business hypothesis, target customer, product definitions, and the first sellable entry point in the chosen direction.
- Phase 2: Technical and product planning creates an actionable roadmap for the ecosystem to align around.
Timelines for Phase 1 and Phase 2 have not been announced. The only confirmed deadline is the one-week window for council members to nominate the Phase 0 research team.
Decision-making process
Phase 0 involves a scoring process using a weighted decision matrix with categories such as market timing, customer pain, differentiation, and technical leverage. Council members vote on category weights, and candidate directions are scored against the matrix to produce a transparent ranked shortlist.
The results, rankings, and rationale will be made public.
Who is behind Meteor?
The initiative has backing from Erik Zhang, NGD, core developers, and a significant number of Neo Council members. However, this support does not pre-approve a specific product direction but adds credibility to the process.
Immediate next steps
Five near-term actions include council members nominating individuals for the research team, consulting constituents before voting, preparing to vote on strategic priorities, reviewing and nominating paralyzed ecosystem features, and engaging with community members to incorporate their priorities.
The full announcement can be found here.