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

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.
You may also like

Zuck is really out of touch! He actually acquired a dated Lobster-based social platform?

Key Market Information Discrepancy on March 11th - A Must-See! | Alpha Morning Report

How to Deal with Trump? Accept this "Art of the Deal Playbook"

AI Computing Power Arms Race Intensifies: This Startup Aims to Mine Bitcoin in Space

Claude Code launches the /btw feature, Musk X Money set to launch soon, what's the English community talking about today?

Polymarket Arbitrage Bible: The Real Edge is in the Math Infrastructure

What Is OpenClaw? How The AI Agent Could Automate Crypto Trading Through APIs
OpenClaw is a rapidly growing AI agent on GitHub that can automate tasks and even execute crypto trades through exchange APIs. Learn how OpenClaw works, how it connects to exchanges, and the risks traders should understand before using AI trading agents.

Morning News | Tencent is building an AI intelligent entity for WeChat; Meta announces acquisition of Moltbook; Nvidia plans to launch the AI agent open-source platform NemoClaw

NVIDIA's Jensen Huang's new article: The "Five-Layer Cake" of AI

In-depth Analysis of ERC-8183: The Answer to the Trust Issue of Ethereum-Powered AI Agents

Stock Tokenization Revolution: Market Dynamics, Product Architecture, and Regulatory Moat Panorama Report

The current Lobster Skill is just yesterday's Fruit Ninja, only meant to get you acquainted.

Key Market Intelligence on March 10th, how much did you miss out on?

IOSG: From Interest-Bearing Stablecoins to Crypto Credit Products

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's Latest Article: The "Five Layers of AI"

Daily Observation of Cryptocurrency Concept Stocks: Nasdaq Bets on Stocks on the Blockchain, Strategy Buys Another 17,994 BTC, ETH Treasury Stocks Enter Production Period

One-click onboarding to RootData, allowing project information to be accurately presented on over 200 platforms including Binance Wallet, Gate, TP, and more
