Gas

N3 assigns governance to indivisible NEO at 0xef4073a0f2b305a38ec4050e4d3d28bc40ea63f5 and payment to eight-decimal GAS at 0xd2a4cff31913016155e38e474a2c06d08be276cf. A GAS balance pays for resource use; it does not elect the N3 committee.

That division avoids spending a governance unit every time a contract runs. It also makes demand and control asymmetric: users buy GAS, while NEO voters choose the actors who can alter its issuance and fee schedule.

N3 launched as a new chain on 2 August 2021. Early migration began on 9 August at 1:1 and could not be reversed. The official scanner watched a Legacy migration address and distributed N3 assets; it was an operated process rather than a trustless in-protocol bridge. In September alone, 10,378,258 GAS moved to N3.

Neo Legacy (N2) stopped generating GAS at block 8,000,000 on 19 September, exactly when its supply reached 52 million—the amount minted for N3's opening balance. Unclaimed Legacy rewards remained claimable, but new accrual required N3 NEO.

In GasToken.cs, every transaction burns system fee plus network fee from its sender. After all transactions in a block, the code mints total network fees to the primary consensus node.

The two operations are deliberate accounting, not a contradiction. Network fees fund block production through a burn-and-remint transfer; system fees remain the net reduction. Total supply therefore follows block issuance minus system fees, with deferred NEO rewards minted when balances or votes change, not on a simple fixed curve.

N3 began at 5 GAS per roughly 15-second block. On 23 April 2026, a 13-of-21 Council transaction set issuance to 1 GAS and target block time to 3 seconds, preserving approximately the same creation rate per unit time.

Code permits committee-approved settings from 0 to 10 GAS per block. The same governance layer can change execution, storage, per-byte, oracle, candidate and deployment prices, thereby moving both GAS demand and the amount destroyed.

The protocol allocates 10% of issuance to all NEO, 80% to voters for elected candidates, and 10% to committee and consensus nodes. Voters backing a consensus node receive a larger weighting than voters for other elected committee members.

The passive 10% accrues by NEO holding time but is realized on a NEO transfer or vote change. Custodial exchanges decide whether to pass it through. Buying GAS alone does not buy the ballot or the issuance stream.

Neo X launched on 25 July 2024 as EVM chain 47763, using 18-decimal GAS for native fees and validator elections. N3 NEO does not cast that ballot. Extended GAS at 0x9a50…1A01 is a separate 1:1 ERC-20 wrapper around the Neo X native balance.

The bridge locks or releases assets, orders transfers by hash roots and waits for validator threshold attestations through one relayer. Security Guard can pause, Governor can resume and change parameters, and validators can approve upgrades. Those roles qualify the documentation’s separate claim that no trusted offchain party is required. A bridged balance therefore inherits controls beyond N3's native token contract.

The former Neo Council reorganized as Neo Foundation effective 1 April 2018, co-chaired by Da Hongfei and Erik Zhang. A June 2019 Foundation report then recorded 5,117,446.40 GAS received, 993,913.55 spent and 4,123,532.85 held. Those figures describe a dated treasury period before N3; they do not identify current wallets, votes or bridge influence.

GAS grants possession and fee utility. Reviewed records do not promise equity, dividends, redemption, Foundation reserve ownership, an N3 vote or continued services from Neo Foundation, NGD, committee members or Neo X validators.