Neo N3 three-second block time goes live on MainNet

Neo N3 is now producing blocks every three seconds after the Council’s governance transaction was executed on-chain, reducing block intervals by 80% from their previous 15-second pace. The change, tracked on Neo3Scan’s governance portal, was signed by 13 of 21 Council members, surpassing the 11-signature threshold required for validity. Jimmy Liao, founder of R3E Network, confirmed the activation and credited those who brought the change to fruition.

What changed

The executed transaction (0x50f6…36f1) invoked the native Policy contract to adjust two network parameters simultaneously. MillisecondsPerBlock was reduced from 15,000 to 3,000, cutting block intervals from 15 seconds to three seconds. GasPerBlock was lowered proportionally from 5 to 1, ensuring the network’s overall $GAS emission rate remains unchanged – the same amount of $GAS is generated per unit of time, just distributed across five times as many blocks.

Prior to this change, Neo N3 had operated with 15-second blocks since its MainNet launch. The technical foundation for the adjustment was laid in May 2025 with the Echidna hard fork and the release of NeoCLI v3.8.0, which introduced SetMillisecondsPerBlock and GetMillisecondsPerBlock methods to the Policy contract. This migrated block time management into the governance layer, allowing the Council to adjust the parameter through a multisig vote rather than requiring another hard fork.

R3E Network pressure-tested the C# node with 512 transactions per block at three-second intervals, and Neo SPCC confirmed extended testing on TestNet, where three-second blocks (and later one-second blocks) have been running for nearly a year.

Two-step governance process

The activation followed a two-step process. On April 13, the Neo Council voted unanimously in favor of the change during a governance meeting attended by 14 of 21 seats. That verbal approval set the direction, but executing the change on-chain required a separate step: each Council member had to individually provide their cryptographic signature to the proposal for it to be committed to the network.

Liao and Shargon, founder of Red4Sec, coordinated the sequential collection of signatures from Council members. Liao developed a web application integrated with the neo3scan.com governance portal to streamline the process. The 11-signature threshold was cleared and the transaction was relayed and executed on the network.

Who signed

Thirteen Council members provided their cryptographic signatures to the on-chain transaction:

– Neo SPCC
– Neo News Today
– Flamingo
– AxLabs
– R3E Network
– COZ
– NGD4
– NEXT / NeoLine
– NGD8
– Switcheo Labs
– HashKey Cloud
– Everstake
– Red4Sec

Related network adjustment

Separately, the Council voted 12 to 3 to reduce MaxTransactionsPerBlock from 512 to 200. Unlike the block time change, this is a node configuration adjustment rather than a voting transaction, requiring coordination across consensus and committee nodes. Anna Shaleva, Neo SPCC developer, is coordinating the timing of updates across nodes.

Long road to activation

The proposal to reduce Neo N3’s block time was originally made in 2023. The technical implementation followed in May 2025 with the Echidna hard fork, which added the necessary Policy contract methods to enable the change through governance rather than another hard fork. The topic was further discussed at Centre Point #2 in Singapore in September 2025, where Council members agreed it was a priority. In late January 2026, Tyler Adams, CEO of COZ, published a formal proposal on the Neo community governance portal seeking alignment on the three-second block time and other parameter changes. Only two groups beyond COZ engaged with the proposal. The lack of response led to a dedicated Council meeting on April 13 to force a decision, where the vote was ultimately held.

The 80% reduction in block time brings Neo’s confirmation speed significantly closer to competing layer-1 networks, improving responsiveness for dApps and end users across the ecosystem.

The governance proposal can be viewed at the link below: