Is ONT and NEO completely out of the game? Not exactly, but it's basically impossible to regain the glory of the past. Both projects are facing their own difficulties now, with their statuses far from ideal.

Let's start with ONT. The situation is indeed not very optimistic. Data best illustrates the problem: in May 2021, the on-chain locked-up amount was still $379 million. And now? It has plummeted to just $8.48 million, a drop of over 95%. Even more heartbreaking, over 95% of the token holder addresses are underwater, putting significant selling pressure. On-chain activity is also declining day by day, with less and less development activity.

However, there is still some movement. Last August, ONT rode the wave with Palantir, causing the token to surge by 50% in one day, marking a rare highlight. In November, they also reformed the ONG tokenomics, allocating 80% of the inflation to staking incentives, aiming to stabilize the funding pool. But these moves didn't change the fundamental situation—by December 10th last year, ONT's market cap was only $66.92 million, and it had already fallen out of the mainstream spotlight.

In comparison, NEO has a much stronger foundation. After all, it's an established public chain. Early last year, its market cap still maintained at $1.034 billion, with an ecosystem and recognition level noticeably more solid than ONT. The technical team also hasn't been idle: in May, they fixed compatibility bugs; in June, they launched cross-chain security solutions on the testnet; in October, they released the Neo 4 upgrade, focusing on transaction speed and fee optimization. Even more aggressively, they completely shut down the Neo Legacy network and fully committed to the Neo N3 architecture, greatly improving developer friendliness.

But here's the problem—these upgrades haven't brought NEO back to the industry’s top tier. The hype that should have cooled down still did, and the market is now more focused on new narratives and new public chains. The biggest difficulty for ONT and NEO now isn't technical capability but the scarcity of attention. In an era where attention is limited, old projects find it very hard to regain the spotlight. Staying alive? No problem. Turning things around? Difficult.