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The Neo Council voted to reduce block time from 15 seconds to three seconds during a governance meeting on April 13, with 14 of 21 Council members present. The long-discussed parameter change is expected to take effect in early May. However, a proposed 100x reduction to the execution fee factor was deferred after a tied vote, with the Council opting to wait for Neo SPCC’s dynamic opcode pricing solution in the upcoming Gorgon hard fork.
The meeting marked the first concrete votes on network parameters since Tyler Adams, COZ co-founder, introduced governance proposal #7 in February. The proposal had stalled for two months amid disagreements over the fee reduction’s security implications prompting calls for a meeting.
3-second block time approved unanimously
All 15 Council members present voted to change MillisecondsPerBlock from 15,000 to 3,000, with a proportional reduction in GasPerBlock to maintain the same GAS generation rate. The change will be implemented via a single voting transaction invoking the native Policy contract.
Jimmy, R3E Network founder, and Shargon, Red4Sec founder, will create the proposal transaction using a new web app developed by Jimmy for proposal signing. Council members have until Monday, April 21 to provide signatures, with the transaction expected to be relayed approximately one week later.
Neo SPCC confirmed that three-second blocks have been tested on the Neo TestNet, which currently runs one-second blocks. R3E Network separately pressure-tested the C# node with 512 transactions per block at three-second intervals. The technical groundwork for the change – migrating MillisecondsPerBlock and MaxValidUntilBlockIncrement to the Policy contract – was completed in May 2025.
The block time reduction has been discussed since at least Centre Point #2 in Singapore in September 2025, where agreements were made but did not translate to on-chain action.
Execution fee factor vote ends in a tie
The proposed reduction of the ExecutionFeeFactor – a 100x decrease intended to make Neo competitive with other chains on transaction costs – split the Council evenly. Eight members voted for an immediate reduction, while eight voted to wait for the Gorgon hard fork’s dynamic opcode pricing. With 11 votes required for a majority, the proposal did not pass.
The deadlock centered on security. Roman Khimov, Neo SPCC lead developer, had argued in February discussions that a 100x fee reduction would allow a complete network lockup for approximately US $15. Anna Shaleva, Neo SPCC developer, presented the team’s dynamic opcode pricing model as an alternative that would make standard transactions such as Flamingo token swaps roughly 100 times cheaper while making malicious transactions exponentially more expensive. She estimated the feature would need two to three weeks to be reviewed and merged into the C# node, after which it would deploy with the Gorgon hard fork.
Adams, who authored the original proposal, argued for acting now rather than waiting: “We need to fill the network, then use economic levers to filter the utility from the noise.” Several Council members shifted their votes during discussion after hearing Neo SPCC’s presentation on the dynamic pricing model.
The dynamic opcode pricing implementation is complete in the neo-go client. The initial version does not include SYSCALL opcode pricing, which covers native contract calls and will require further evaluation. No deployment date has been set for the Gorgon hard fork.
Max transactions per block to be reduced
The Council voted 12 to three in favor of reducing MaxTransactionsPerBlock to 200 along with the faster block time. The current value is 512 transactions per block.
Unlike the block time and fee parameters, this change is a node configuration adjustment rather than a voting transaction, meaning all committee nodes must update their configuration files in coordination. Shaleva will coordinate the timing of updates across consensus and committee nodes.
Shargon advocated for the conservative approach, noting that the network rarely reaches 200 transactions per block and any sudden spike would likely indicate an attack. “When the network is more used with this three-second time, maybe we can revote and increase it when we need it,” he said. “But if we don’t need it, it’s better to have a lower value.”
The Council also discussed MaxValidUntilBlockIncrement but decided against changing it. Shargon explained that proposal transactions can reference future block numbers for signature collection, eliminating the time pressure concern that initially motivated the change.
Whitelisting process defined
While contract whitelisting will not be implemented as a broad temporary measure before the Gorgon hard fork, the Council established a process for Flamingo Finance to pursue whitelisting of specific contract methods. Flamingo, Neo’s largest DeFi platform, was not present at the meeting but had submitted a written statement supporting the governance proposal and requesting clarification on the whitelisting process.
The agreed process requires Flamingo to provide an inventory of methods requiring whitelisting to Red4Sec, which will conduct a security review focused on the safety of free execution. The Council would then vote on whitelisting specific methods. Any contract upgrade would automatically remove whitelist status.
Adams flagged that free execution creates a denial-of-service attack surface and noted the complexity involved: whitelisting is method-level rather than contract-level, and intermediate contracts called by whitelisted methods must also be whitelisted.
Attendance, accountability remain concerns
Seven Council seats were unrepresented at the meeting: NGD (holding three seats, two of which are consensus nodes), Switcheo, Binance, MakeNeoGreatAgain, and Flamingo. Only Flamingo provided advance notification of inability to attend and provided written notes stating its position on matters before the call.
Adams questioned whether enough voting power was present: “Over half the voting power within this governing body is not active. And it is the same faces every single time that show up.”
Dylan Grabowski, Neo News Today editor, pushed for accountability on follow-through. “This is the third time we’ve voted on stuff and walked away with people not doing anything.” he said. “So, I don’t think we should be congratulating ourselves at all.”
Next steps
Signatures for the three-second block time transaction are due by April 20, with the change expected to be applied a week later. The MaxTransactionsPerBlock reduction will be coordinated across committee nodes alongside the block time change. Neo SPCC’s dynamic opcode pricing PR to the C# node is expected within the month, with the Gorgon hard fork timeline to follow.
The full meeting can be watched at the below link:
