R3E Network’s neo-rs achieves 100% Neo N3 protocol parity, ships hardened SDK, council signer

R3E Network’s Rust-based Neo N3 node implementation, neo-rs, has reached full protocol parity with the Neo N3 specification at v0.16.0. The milestone covers all 11 native contracts, all eight hardforks through Huyao, and all 41 system calls, verified with exact CPU pricing and permission gates. Alongside the node release, R3E published NeoRust v3.0.0, a correctness-focused SDK update with three breaking API changes, and Neo Signer RS v0.2.0, a supervised council signing service designed for hardware-isolated environments.

The releases, published between Aug. 28 and Sept. 4, advance R3E’s broader effort to build a complete Rust-based toolchain for Neo, spanning neo-rs for node infrastructure, NeoRust for application development, and dedicated signing infrastructure for council operations.

neo-rs v0.16.0: production-readiness milestone

The v0.16.0 release represents the first time neo-rs has passed its full test suite with zero failures across the complete Neo N3 protocol surface. NNT has previously covered the project as a Rust implementation of the Neo N3 blockchain node and an integral component of R3E’s initiative to introduce Rust to the Neo ecosystem.

Protocol alignment now extends across all 11 standard native contracts, ContractManagement, NeoToken, GasToken, PolicyContract, RoleManagement, OracleContract, Notary, TreasuryContract, LedgerContract, CryptoLib, and StdLib, with strict validation enforced across all eight Neo N3 hardforks from Aspidochelone through Huyao.

The release also formalizes dBFT 2.0 consensus handling, implementing Primary initial timer gating, monotonic ChangeView processing, off-view commit isolation, and three-set deduplication in Recovery messages. A fast-sync P2P end-to-end test suite has been added for network-level validation.

Notable fixes include Faun hardfork timestamp migration for PolicyContract.BlockAccount behavior, storage prefix search semantics aligned with RocksDB, and unified multi-signature contract parsing with Secp256r1 curve validation. A container image is available at ghcr.io/r3e-network/neo-rs:v0.16.0.

With this release, neo-rs joins neo-cli and neo-go as a production-qualified Neo N3 node implementation, contributing to client diversity for the network.

NeoRust v3.0.0: correctness, security hardening

The NeoRust SDK’s v3.0.0 release prioritizes correctness and security over new features, introducing three breaking API changes that reflect a maturation point for the project. NNT covered the SDK’s previous production-hardening update at v2.1.0 in July.

Among the most significant fixes, gas estimation accuracy has been corrected by roughly 1e8 through exact decimal-to-base-unit conversion, a discrepancy that could cause transactions to fail or overpay for execution. Balance queries no longer fail on standard nodes when an address holds third-party NEP-17 tokens, as the SDK now fetches token metadata separately. The preview_state_changes method now decodes real addresses and amounts from notification state rather than fabricating transfer previews, and wait_for_confirmation correctly returns an error on VM FAULT instead of treating it as success.

Security improvements include wallet and backup files created with 0600 permissions on Unix, restricting access to the file owner. HD wallet WIF intermediates are now zeroized after account derivation, and mnemonic entropy is scrubbed from memory on drop.

The three breaking changes affect DerivationPath::new_neo, which now returns a Result type instead of risking panics for indexes above 2^31; EventData, which gained a Disconnected variant for exhausted reconnect attempts; and EcosystemClient, which now uses human-decimal units on Neo X rather than raw Wei values.

Neo Signer RS v0.2.0: supervised council signing

Neo Signer RS v0.2.0 transforms R3E’s council signing tool into a supervised, restart-safe service with optional daily $GAS aggregation. The service is designed for deployment in hardware-isolated environments, supporting both Intel SGX and AWS Nitro Enclaves.

The release introduces dual independent RPC provider verification, requiring balance, height, VM result, and fee agreement from two separate Neo nodes before proceeding with economic operations. A disk-backed anti-equivocation journal prevents duplicate transactions, including across restarts, while KMS recipient attestation binds wallet unlock to a deployed Nitro Enclave Image File.

Jimmy Liao, R3E Network core developer, described the release as offering “fail-closed Neo N3 signing for SGX and AWS Nitro Enclaves: hardware-isolated keys, measured-EIF KMS attestation, durable anti-equivocation, and dual-RPC $GAS sweep checks.”

A notable fix corrects the Neo N3 transaction ID derivation, which was using double-SHA256 instead of the correct single-SHA256, causing broadcast confirmation lookup failures. The release also migrates from an unbounded in-memory journal to a 16 MiB-cache redb journal, with 869,417 legacy records validated during migration.

Consensus signing remains available even when economic signing is disabled, ensuring council participation is not disrupted by the $GAS aggregation feature.

Release notes for each project can be found at the links below:

https://github.com/r3e-network/neo-rs/releases/tag/v0.16.0
https://github.com/r3e-network/neo-rust-sdk/releases/tag/v3.0.0
https://github.com/r3e-network/secure-sign-service-rs/releases/tag/v0.2.0