The Neo Council voted to reduce the block time from 15 seconds to 3 seconds at its April 13 governance meeting attended by 14 of the 21 board members. The long-discussed parameter changes are expected to take effect in early May. However, the proposed 100x reduction in execution fee factor was deferred as a result of a tie vote, with the Council choosing to wait for Neo SPCC’s dynamic opcode pricing solution in the upcoming Gorgon hard fork.
This meeting marked the first concrete vote on network parameters since COZ co-founder Tyler Adams introduced Governance Proposal #7 in February. The proposal had been stalled for two months amid calls for a conference due to disagreements over the security implications of lowering fees.
3 second block time unanimously approved
All 15 council members present voted to reduce GasPerBlock proportionately, changing Milli SecondsPerBlock from 15,000 to 3,000, to maintain the same GAS generation rate. This change is implemented through a single voting transaction that calls the native policy contract.
Jimmy, founder of R3E Network, and Shargon, founder of Red4Sec, create proposal transactions using a new web app for proposal signing that Jimmy developed. Council members have until Monday, April 21 to submit their signatures, and the deal is expected to be handed down in about a week.
Neo SPCC confirmed that 3-second blocks were tested on Neo TestNet, which currently runs 1-second blocks. R3E Network independently pressure-tested C# nodes using 512 transactions per block at 3-second intervals. The technical basis of the change, namely migrating MillisecondsPerBlock and MaxValidUntilBlockIncrement to policy contracts, was completed in May 2025.
Reducing block times has been discussed at least since Centerpoint #2 in Singapore in September 2025, where consensus was reached but did not result in on-chain action.
Execution fee factor voting ends in a tie
The proposed reduction in ExecutionFeeFactor – a 100x reduction aimed at allowing Neo to compete with other chains on transaction costs – divided the council evenly. Eight members voted for immediate reduction and eight voted to wait for dynamic opcode pricing for the Gorgon hard fork. The proposal failed to pass with the 11 votes required for a majority.
Security was at the heart of the standoff. Roman Khimov, lead developer at Neo SPCC, claimed in a discussion in February that a 100x reduction in fees would allow full network lock-up for about $15 USD. Neo SPCC developer Anna Shaleva introduced the team’s dynamic opcode pricing model as an alternative that makes standard transactions like Flamingo token swaps about 100 times cheaper, while making malicious transactions exponentially more expensive. She estimated that it would take two to three weeks to review and merge the feature into C# nodes, and then it would be deployed in the Gorgon hard fork.
Adams, who authored the original proposal, argued that we should act now instead of waiting, saying, “We need to fill the network and then use economic means to filter the noise out of our utilities.” After hearing Neo SPCC’s presentation on the dynamic pricing model, several council members changed their votes during discussion.
The implementation of dynamic opcode pricing is completed in the neo-go client. The initial version does not include a SYSCALL opcode price that covers native contract calls and requires further evaluation. The deployment date for the Gorgon hard fork has not yet been determined.
Maximum number of transactions per block reduced
The council voted 12-3 to reduce MaxTransactionsPerBlock to 200 along with faster block times. The current value is 512 transactions per block.
Unlike the block time and fee parameters, this change is an adjustment to node configuration rather than voting transactions. This means that all committee nodes must work together to update the configuration files. Shaleva coordinates the timing of updates across consensus and committee nodes.
Shargon favored a conservative approach, noting that the network rarely reaches 200 transactions per block and that a sudden spike is likely an indication of an attack. “If we see more network usage in that three-second period, we may be able to change and increase the time if necessary,” he said. “But if you don’t need it, it’s better to lower the value.”
The council also discussed MaxValidUntilBlockIncrement but decided not to change it. Shargon explained that the ability to reference future block numbers for signature collection in proposed transactions eliminates the time pressure concerns that initially motivated the change.
Defining the whitelist process
Although contract whitelisting will not be implemented as a broad temporary measure prior to the Gorgon hard fork, the Council has 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 Red4Sec with a list of methods that require whitelisting, and Red4Sec will conduct a security review focused on free execution safety. The council will then vote on whether to whitelist a particular method. Upgrading your subscription automatically removes your whitelist status.
Adams warned that free execution creates a denial-of-service attack surface and pointed to its complexity. Whitelisting is at the method level, not the contract level, and intermediate contracts called by whitelisted methods also need to be whitelisted.
Concerns remain about attendance and accountability
Seven council seats were unrepresented at this meeting: NGD (holding 3 seats, 2 of which are consensus nodes), Switcheo, Binance, MakeNeoGreatAgain, and Flamingo. Only Flamingo provided advance notice of its inability to attend the meeting and provided a written memo setting out its position on the issue prior to the conference call.
Adams questioned whether there were enough voting rights, saying, “More than half of the voting rights within this governing body are not valid. And it’s the same faces that show up every time.”
Neo News Today editor Dylan Grabowski called for accountability for follow-through. “This is the third time we’ve voted on something and people ended up doing nothing,” he said. “So I don’t think we need to congratulate ourselves at all.”
next step
The 3-second block time transaction will be signed by April 20th, and the changes will be implemented one week later. MaxTransactionsPerBlock reductions are adjusted across committee nodes along with block time changes. Neo SPCC’s dynamic opcode pricing PR for C# nodes is expected later this month, with the Gorgon hard fork timeline to follow.
You can watch the entire conference using the link below.
