NEO's Governance Crisis: Inside the Battle Over Monopolizing Financial Control Between Co-founders

The cryptocurrency community faced a significant turning point at the year’s end when NEO’s two leading founders engaged in a public governance dispute that exposed fundamental tensions within the project’s financial structure. The confrontation, which erupted on December 31, 2025, centers on how project assets are managed and whether financial decisions remain transparent to the community.

The Assault on Exclusive Asset Control

Da Hongfei launched the first attack, directly challenging the decision-making power that has concentrated around Erik Zhang for years. His core accusation: Zhang maintains monopolizing control over the vast majority of NEO and GAS tokens, contradicting earlier commitments to transition these assets into a multisignature wallet system that would distribute governance power more broadly. According to Da Hongfei, this exclusive arrangement enables protocol decisions to be made unilaterally, undermining the decentralized principles NEO claims to embody. He alleged that years of silence on his part were calculated to preserve community confidence in the project, but the governance issues have now become untenable. Da Hongfei committed to publishing a comprehensive financial report in the first quarter of 2026, signaling his intention to pursue all available mechanisms to reclaim treasury control from what he views as an illegitimate concentration of power.

The Counter-narrative: Opacity and Institutional Risk

Zhang Zhengwen’s rebuttal shifted focus to an equally troubling dynamic—the financial opacity within Da Hongfei’s domain. Zhang argued that foundation assets beyond NEO and GAS have long been exclusively controlled by Da Hongfei, yet the community has never received auditable financial documentation from either Da Hongfei personally or any independent third party. This absence of accountability, Zhang contended, makes his insistence on retaining NEO and GAS control a necessary safeguard. By maintaining this position, Zhang maintained that he prevents these critical assets from being absorbed into what he characterized as Da Hongfei’s opaque operating structure, where financial decisions operate without external oversight or verification. Zhang’s reasoning frames his exclusive control as defensive—a bulwark against institutional risk rather than an expression of monopolizing ambitions.

The Transparency Crisis at NEO’s Heart

Both founders’ accusations point to a deeper governance failure: the absence of institutional structures that could prevent either party from wielding excessive financial authority. The public dispute reveals that NEO’s treasury management lacks the checks and balances that would distribute decision-making power and create verifiable accountability. Neither founder’s position directly addresses how the community might independently verify asset movements or participate meaningfully in financial governance. The upcoming Q1 2026 financial disclosures represent a critical test of whether NEO can transition from a project shadowed by founder disputes toward a more institutionally transparent model that commands stakeholder confidence.