COZ primarily operates through the community Discord and COZ GitHub, central places where contributors share progress, collaborate in public, and turn ideas into working ecosystem tools.

There is no formal process for joining COZ. Interested contributors have to do the work first, and submitted code must be licensed under the Apache 2.x License. Consistent contributors can become eligible to join the COZ organization and collaborate more directly across projects.

Organizational decision making is made collaboratively by the COZ Council, a multi-disciplinary body of platform and functional leads, and communicated by an appointed member holding the Speaker role.

COZ is not a regulatory body and takes no responsibility for the quality of third-party smart contracts deployed on affiliate platforms.

COZ staff members are excluded from weekly rewards.

This week, we are awarding 369 NEO distributed across the following ecosystem contributions:

Award Proof: Transaction

Proof of Working 2.16 highlights three practical pillars of ecosystem growth: non-custodial merchant payment infrastructure, developer release workflows, and secure token vesting mechanics.

These contributions remove concrete friction across distinct user touchpoints. Neo Payment Watcher gives merchants a simple, non-custodial path to accept NEP-17 token payments without node infrastructure overhead. Pusharoo accelerates smart contract development with integrated TestNet faucets and pre-deployment parameter validation. Meanwhile, NeoVest hardens on-chain lockup verification to protect token distribution integrity.

• Neo Payment Watcher (Salar):
  
  Neo Payment Watcher is an open-source, non-custodial payment monitoring service that enables merchants and backend applications to accept NEP-17 token payments on Neo N3 without managing customers' private keys or custodying user funds.
  
  Built on .NET 10, the service monitors the Neo N3 blockchain via standard JSON-RPC for incoming GAS, NEO, and whitelisted NEP-17 token transfers without requiring a self-hosted node. Payments are matched to orders using unique pricing offsets, and the service pushes HMAC-signed webhooks to merchant endpoints once payments are confirmed on-chain. The release includes 53 unit tests alongside reported MainNet replay and TestNet end-to-end testing.
  
  This matters because accepting cryptocurrency payments is often hindered by custody risks and node maintenance overhead. Providing reusable, non-custodial payment monitoring infrastructure simplifies payment acceptance for merchants building on Neo N3.
• Pusharoo — Neo N3 Contract Release Workspace (Vault Keeper):
  
  Pusharoo continues to evolve as a dedicated smart contract development and operations workspace for managing contract artifacts, deployments, upgrades, recovery, and on-chain interactions. This round introduces testing faucet integration, session persistence, and pre-deployment validation safeguards.
  
  The workspace adds an integrated TestNet GAS faucet featuring sponsored claims, direct claims, and cooldown controls to streamline test resource access. To reduce friction during iterative contract development, Pusharoo introduces reusable wallet authentication sessions to minimize repetitive signing prompts, alongside pre-deployment validation and editing of contract initialization parameters. The release also strengthens transaction verification, recovery checks, and deployment history navigation.
  
  This matters because developer friction in testing and deployment slows development velocity. Combining testing resources, persistent session auth, and pre-deployment verification safeguards developers against costly deployment mistakes.
• NeoVest Updates (fireche):
  
  NeoVest is an open-source token vesting platform designed to provide transparent, verifiable token lockups and distribution schedules directly on Neo N3. This round delivers essential security hardening, calculation fixes, and network validation.
  
  The updates strengthen vault smart contract validation to prevent unauthorized deposits from creating misleading token lock records. The front-end dashboard removes an untrusted redirect vulnerability, aligns vesting schedule calculations directly with on-chain records, and introduces active network validation to prevent accidental transaction signing on the wrong network while maintaining a hosted TestNet testing environment.
  
  This matters because token lockups and vesting schedules require uncompromised trust. Hardening contract verification and eliminating UI discrepancies ensures that displayed vesting data remains verifiable and accurate.

Together, these community-driven tools make developing, deploying, and transacting on Neo N3 safer and more accessible.

Sustainable ecosystem growth requires reliable developer tools and straightforward commerce rails. When developers have safer deployment workspaces and merchants have lightweight payment monitoring, building on-chain becomes significantly more practical.

From payment infrastructure to contract release operations, decentralized applications benefit when the underlying tooling is open, verifiable, and maintained by the community.

If you want to understand the broader purpose of the initiative, read Proof of Working Is Back or explore recent updates in Proof of Working 2.15.

If you are building useful Neo ecosystem tooling, improving documentation, maintaining SDKs, or helping make applications easier to use, bring the work into the open and share it with the community. Proof of Working exists to recognize public contributions that make the ecosystem stronger.