Neo has lacked a clear, agreed product direction for much of the past year. Now a group of community members has started Meteor, an initiative meant to produce a shared roadmap through a structured process. The announcement says the effort has support from Neo co-founder Erik Zhang, Neo Global Development, the core development team, and a number of Neo Council members.
Why Meteor exists
The gap in product direction deepened while co-founders Da Hongfei and Erik Zhang argued over how the project should be governed and structured. Earlier proposals dealt mainly with governance. None created a unified product thesis that the broader project could rally around. Meteor is meant to fill that gap.
The initiative document calls Meteor “a Neo initiative to identify the strongest product direction for Neo’s next stage of growth.” It is a process, not a product announcement. No specific product direction has been selected or pre-approved.
Three phases, public scoring
Meteor runs through three sequential phases. No timelines have been announced for the first two. The only confirmed deadline is a one-week window for council members to nominate the Phase 0 research team.
Phase 0 uses a weighted decision matrix to score candidate directions. Categories cover timing, customer pain, buyer clarity, strategic fit, differentiation, revenue plausibility, execution feasibility, and technical readiness. Council members decide the category weights through a time-bound vote. Each council seat gets one ballot. The voting and results are made public. Candidate directions are scored against the weighted matrix by council members. That creates a ranked shortlist. A Delphi-style review then lets people surface and resolve serious disagreements. Voters can revise their ballots before the round closes. Results, rankings, outlier analysis, and rationale are published.
Support and next steps
The announcement says Meteor is backed by four groups: Erik Zhang, Neo Global Development, the core development team, and a significant number of Neo Council members. The initiative document is careful about what that support means. It does not pre-approve any product direction. It gives the process enough credibility to matter.
The near-term plan includes several actions: finalize the Phase 0 research team, define the scoring criteria, start the council nomination window, and prepare for public voting. The full announcement was posted on the Neo Discord server.
What happens next depends on how well the process holds together. The open question is whether the community can agree on one roadmap after months of division. Meteor at least gives everyone a structure to try.
