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

By: blockbeats|2026/03/30 02:10:29
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.

You may also like

Morning News | Five major virtual asset platforms in South Korea have experienced 57 incidents of hacking and system failures in six years; Grayscale submits registration application for Canton ETF

Overview of Important Market Events on June 7th

Should we escape the peak? The principle of the tail-end market in the stock market

The truth behind the Rockefeller escape myth: the end of the bull market is not due to overheating emotions, but rather the exhaustion of new funds. Currently, market buying volume has been concentrated and released, so it is advised to be cautious of "tail-end market trends" and gradually take prof...

RootData: May 2026 Cryptocurrency Exchange Transparency Research Report

In May, the spot trading volume of cryptocurrency exchanges was $725.7 billion, a slight decrease of 2.2% compared to April, marking the fifth consecutive month of decline since January, reflecting the overall trend of the market's continued movement.

Founder of Baixing.com: My Experience with Claude Code in Fourteen Points

Treat Claude Code as a horse (or as a person), not as a car. A car turns under its own command, while a horse has its own ideas; we just need to set the goals and boundaries.

Yang Ge Gary: Agent Economics and AI Microeconomics

After the singularity explosion, the evolution clock of AI accelerated continuously, leading to the rapid formation of new civilizational generations in different regions around the world.

When reasoning becomes a scarce resource, who captures its value?

The company that ultimately wins will not be the one with the most GPUs, but the one that can tell you which GPUs are available where and at what price, and route each workload to where it can run at the lowest cost.

Popular coins

Latest Crypto News

Read more
iconiconiconiconiconiconicon
Customer Support:@weikecs
Business Cooperation:@weikecs
Quant Trading & MM:bd@weex.com
VIP Program:support@weex.com