I didn't expect that a well-established domestic public chain could reach such a day. What’s even more lamentable is that top domestic AI projects Manus, Kimi, and Minimax have had significant news for two consecutive days, either being acquired for billions of dollars or securing hundreds of millions in financing, while the old public chain has started infighting.
Currently, it seems that the two co-founders of the NEO public chain, established in 2014, Erik Zhang and Da Hongfei, have essentially completely fallen out, continuing to clash on X. Based on their statements and publicly available information online, we attempt to clarify what has happened between the two founders of this old public chain.
Financial Black Box
In fact, Erik Zhang left NEO a few years ago, which he confirmed on his own Twitter, and then officially returned in September this year. The catalyst for this infighting occurred in November, when community news and public information indicated that Erik Zhang, as the technical core, encountered obstacles while seeking detailed financial reports and fund flows from the Neo Foundation.
Subsequently, Erik Zhang accused the Neo Foundation of long-term operational opacity, claiming that the asset situation resembled a "black box." He pointed out that Da Hongfei has long singularly controlled the foundation's assets outside of the NEO/GAS tokens and lacks a complete, auditable disclosure mechanism.
In today’s mutual accusations, we also discovered the reason for Erik Zhang's previous departure. He stated that Da Hongfei had approached him alone, saying that their joint responsibility for NEO was inefficient, so he chose to temporarily step back from the management to "improve efficiency." However, he found that Da Hongfei was using NEO's resources to develop the independent public chain project EON. This prompted his return and involvement in the foundation's governance.
In a community exchange in November, Erik Zhang mentioned that NEO had previously relied on hackathons to create "false prosperity," lacking real users, and many hackathon projects disappeared after winning awards.
Escalation of Conflict
In December, Erik Zhang publicly issued a statement demanding that Da Hongfei fulfill his commitment to financial disclosure obligations starting from December 9. More explosively, Erik Zhang unilaterally announced that, according to their previous phone agreement, Da Hongfei would no longer participate in NEO mainnet affairs starting January 1, 2026, and would instead focus on the development and operation of the sidechain NeoX and the new project SpoonOS.
Da Hongfei quickly responded, stating that Erik Zhang actually controls the vast majority of the funds in the NEO ecosystem (including the core assets NEO and GAS tokens) and dominates the voting rights of consensus nodes. He also accused Erik Zhang of delaying the transfer of funds to the foundation's multisig address for years under various pretexts (such as waiting for the completion of the N3 migration).
Da Hongfei promised to release the financial report for the end of 2025 in the first quarter of 2026 and would share preliminary data in advance.
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