Neon EVM

Neon EVM is a tool that ran Ethereum apps on Solana, and it is shutting down. EVM stands for Ethereum Virtual Machine, the engine that runs Ethereum smart contracts. Neon EVM put that engine inside a Solana program. Teams could launch their Ethereum code on Solana, and users could reach it with a wallet such as MetaMask.

The official website now shows only a wind-down notice. The team stopped work and support on 1 October 2026. Users are asked to move their funds out before 31 December 2026. Neon EVM went live on Solana in July 2023, so it ran for a little over three years.

Is Neon EVM dead? The wind-down dates

Neon EVM is no longer built or supported. The notice on neonevm.org says the choice was made after a review of where the project stood. It gives two dates.

• 1 October 2026: work on the code stopped. No more updates or upgrades are planned, and user support ended.
• 31 December 2026: the date by which you should finish any withdrawal or move.

The notice gives no other reason. It adds that any parts of Neon EVM still live on Solana are not being watched, fixed, upgraded or supported. So treat anything you leave inside Neon EVM as being there at your own risk.

Other signs match the notice. The project's blog now redirects to it. The Neon EVM account on X posted nothing in the 60 days to 10 October 2026.

How to withdraw tokens from Neon EVM to Solana

You move tokens out of Neon EVM with NeonPass, the project's transfer tool. The wind-down notice links to the NeonPass withdrawal guide in the docs. You need three things: the Ethereum-style wallet that holds your tokens on Neon EVM, a Solana wallet to receive them, and enough balance to pay the gas fee.

The steps in the guide are short. Connect both wallets in NeonPass and set the direction to Neon to Solana. Pick the token and amount, then sign in both wallets. Fees are paid in NEON or in the token you are moving. Keep a little SOL in the Solana wallet too, because a first withdrawal has to create a new token account there.

The notice warns that Neon EVM will never ask for a private key or seed phrase. It also tells you to check that you are on neonevm.org. Shutdowns tend to draw fake "migration" sites, so reach NeonPass through the official docs.

What happens to the NEON token

The NEON token still exists on Solana, but its main job is going away. NEON paid for transactions on Neon EVM. It also carried votes in the Neon DAO, the group of holders who could vote on changes, per the project's token docs. The wind-down notice says the shutdown "does not itself remove or cancel the NEON SPL token on Solana".

The same notice makes no promise about what the token will be worth, what it can be used for, or where it can be traded. It says each exchange decides on its own whether to keep NEON listed, and for how long. If you hold NEON on an exchange, check that exchange's own notices for any cut-off dates.

NEON has a fixed supply of 1 billion tokens. A public sale on CoinList in June 2023 offered 50 million of them at $0.10 each, with no lock-up.

How Neon EVM worked on Solana

Neon EVM was one Solana program that could run Ethereum smart contracts. It was not its own chain, and it was not a layer 2. You sent a normal Ethereum transaction. A piece of software called the Neon Proxy wrapped it up as one or more Solana transactions. The Neon EVM program then ran the contract code on Solana.

The proxies were run by operators. An operator paid the Solana fees up front, and the user paid the operator back in NEON or another supported token. A big Ethereum transaction often could not fit in one Solana transaction. In that case the program ran it in steps over several blocks, per the architecture docs.

For builders, the draw was reuse. Code written for Ethereum, and tools such as MetaMask and Hardhat, worked with no rewrite in Rust, the main language for Solana programs.

Who Neon EVM was for

Neon EVM was built for Ethereum teams that wanted Solana's users and low fees without rebuilding their app. It suited a team with tested Ethereum code and no Rust engineers. It was a weaker fit for apps that needed the full speed of a native Solana program, since every call passed through an extra layer.

After the wind-down, Neon EVM is not a place to start a new project. The only people it still matters to are those with tokens or contracts on it who need to leave.

Neon EVM risks after the shutdown

The main risk is old code that nobody looks after while it still holds user funds. The team is not watching the program or the tools around it, and the notice says no upgrades are planned. If a bug or an outage shows up, there is no help desk to turn to.

The second risk is who controls the program. The architecture docs say Neon EVM is governed by a multisig, a shared account that needs several key holders to sign. Its members can update the code and change settings such as fees. That is a small group of people, and the code is not locked. We could not confirm the program's current upgrade authority on-chain for this profile.

Neon EVM was audited while it was live. Security firm Neodyme lists three Neon EVM audit reports, dated November 2021, June 2023 and April 2024. Each one covers the code as it was at that time. None covers a period with no upkeep.

The code is public on GitHub, but the licence bars copying or forking it without written consent. A community team could not simply pick it up and carry on.

Neon EVM alternatives for Ethereum developers

The wind-down notice names no replacement. Teams that used Neon EVM to reach Solana users have two broad paths.

The first is to rewrite the app as a native Solana program. That costs time and needs new skills, but it removes the extra layer. The second is to keep the app on a chain that runs Ethereum code and link to Solana through a bridge. That keeps the code as it is, but the app no longer lives on Solana.

Neon Labs team, funding and history

Neon EVM was built by a company called Neon Labs. It raised $40 million in 2021 from backers including Jump Capital and Solana Capital, The Block reported. Neon EVM went live on Solana on 17 July 2023. Marina Guryeva, then head of the Neon Foundation, marked the launch that day.

Ivan Bjelajac took over from Guryeva as chief executive of Neon Labs in October 2025, per a company press release. Two months later he spoke at Breakpoint, Solana's yearly conference. His talk was about ParaSol, a trading engine for perpetual futures, and not about running Ethereum apps. The wind-down notice does not mention ParaSol. It does not say what Neon Labs will do next.