Long-standing domestic public blockchain NEO sees feud between two co-founders, with opaque finances as the core reason

By: blockbeats|2025/12/31 18:00:02
0
Share
copy

It's unexpected to see even the long-standing domestic public chain having such a day. What's even more lamentable is that the domestic top AI projects Manus, Kimi, and Minimax have had consecutive heavyweight news for two days in a row. Either they were acquired for tens of billions of dollars, or they received billions in financing. However, the long-standing public chain has surprisingly started to have a falling out.

Currently, it seems that the two co-founders of the NEO public chain established in 2014, Zhang Zhongwen (Erik Zhang) and Da Hongfei, have basically completely fallen out, and they are still continuously bickering on Weibo. Based on the statements of both parties and public information online, an attempt has been made to figure out what exactly happened between the two founders of this long-standing public chain.

Financial Black Box

In fact, Zhang Zhongwen had already left NEO a few years ago, which he also confirmed on his own Twitter, and then officially returned in September this year. The catalyst for this falling out was in November when, according to community sources and public records, Zhang Zhongwen, as the technical core, encountered obstacles when seeking to obtain a detailed financial report and fund flow of the Neo Foundation.

Long-standing domestic public blockchain NEO sees feud between two co-founders, with opaque finances as the core reason

Following this, Zhang Zhongwen accused the Neo Foundation of long-term opaque operation, with the asset situation resembling a "black box." He pointed out that Da Hongfei had long been in sole control of the Foundation's assets other than NEO/GAS tokens, and there was a lack of a comprehensive, auditable disclosure mechanism.

In today's back-and-forth between the two sides, we also discovered the reason why Zhang Zhongwen had left before. He said that Da Hongfei had approached him alone, saying that the two of them were inefficient in managing NEO, so he chose to temporarily step down from the management team in order to "increase efficiency." However, he found that Da Hongfei was using NEO's resources to develop an independent public chain project, EON. This also prompted his return and involvement in Foundation governance.

In a community discussion in November, Zhang Zhongwen had previously stated that NEO had relied on hackathons to create a "false prosperity" before, with no real users, and many hackathon projects disappeared after winning awards.

Escalation of Conflict

In December, Zhang Zhongwen publicly released a statement demanding that Da Hongfei fulfill his commitment to financial disclosure starting from December 9. Even more explosively, Zhang Zhongwen unilaterally announced that, according to a previous verbal agreement between the two, starting from January 1, 2026, Da Hongfei would no longer be involved in NEO MainNet affairs but would instead focus on the NeoX sidechain and the development and operation of the new project SpoonOS.

Da Hongfei promptly responded, stating that Zhang Zhongwen effectively controlled the vast majority of the funds in the NEO ecosystem (including core assets NEO and GAS tokens) and dominated the voting rights of consensus nodes. He also accused Zhang Zhongwen of delaying the transfer of funds to the Foundation's multisig address for years under various pretexts (such as waiting for the N3 migration to complete).

Dahongfei has committed to releasing the year-end financial report for 2025 in the first quarter of 2026 and will provide a preview of the data in advance.

-- Price

--

You may also like

Uniswap is trapped in an innovation dilemma

The various iterations of Uniswap are one of the sources of vitality in the DeFi market, but since 2023, Uniswap has not proposed any substantial innovations, instead adhering to traditional business explorations in application chains, Launchpads, etc., leading to a slump in token prices and market ...

What is the key to competition in crypto banking?

Digital banks, crypto cards, wallets, super apps, and DeFi protocols are all converging towards the same goal: to become the primary gateway for your savings, spending, earning, and transferring in the new era.

The flow of stablecoins and the spillover effects in the foreign exchange market

Research has found that an exogenous increase in net inflows of stablecoins significantly widens the price deviation between stablecoins and traditional foreign exchange, leads to depreciation of the local currency, and worsens the financing conditions for synthetic dollars (i.e., increases the doll...

After two years, Hong Kong's first batch of stablecoin licenses finally issued: HSBC, Standard Chartered make the cut

The regulated entity is set to launch a stablecoin in the first half of this year.

The person who helped TAO rise by 90% has now single-handedly crashed the price again today

As long as people are around, the story continues. But once they're gone, you may not even find a worthy opponent to play against.

3-Minute Guide to Participating in the SpaceX IPO on Bitget

Bitget IPO Prime brings a rare opportunity for global users to participate in world-class unicorn IPOs, allowing ordinary users to equally access the potential economic benefits of top-tier IPOs.

Popular coins

Latest Crypto News

Read more