It's surprising to see that an established domestic public blockchain can reach such a point. Even more ironic is the fact that top-tier domestic AI projects like Manus, Kimi, and Minimax have had major news in two consecutive days—either being acquired for billions of dollars or securing hundreds of millions in funding. Meanwhile, the established public blockchain is now getting into a public dispute.
At present, it appears that the two co-founders of the NEO blockchain, which was established in 2014—Erik Zhang and Da Hongfei—have essentially completely split up, and they continue to publicly attack each other on X (formerly Twitter). Based on their statements and publicly available information online, we attempt to clarify what exactly happened between the two co-founders of this long-standing blockchain project.
Financial Black Box
In fact, Zhang Zhengwen had left NEO several years ago, which he himself confirmed on his Twitter account. He officially returned this September. The incident started in November, according to community information and public records, when Zhang Zhengwen, as a core technical member, encountered obstacles while seeking detailed financial reports and fund flow information from the Neo Foundation.
Zhang Zhengwen then accused the Neo Foundation of long-term operational opacity, with its asset status resembling a "black box." He pointed out that Da Hongfei has long maintained sole control over the foundation's assets outside of NEO/GAS tokens, and there is a lack of complete and auditable disclosure mechanisms.
In today's exchange between the two sides, we also discovered the reason behind Zhang Zhengwen's previous departure. He mentioned that Da Hongfei had approached him individually, stating that the two of them jointly managing NEO was inefficient. Therefore, in order to "improve efficiency," he chose to temporarily step down from the management team. However, he later discovered that Da Hongfei was using NEO's resources to develop an independent blockchain project called EON. This discovery prompted him to return and get involved in the foundation's governance.
During the November community discussion, Zhang Zhengwen mentioned that previously, NEO relied on hackathons to create a "false prosperity," lacking real users. Many hackathon projects disappeared after winning awards.
Intensification of contradictions
In December, Zhang Zhengwen publicly issued a statement demanding that Da Hongfei fulfill his commitment to disclose financial information, which he had promised on December 9. More explosively, Zhang Zhengwen unilaterally announced that, according to a prior telephone agreement between the two parties, starting from January 1, 2026, Da Hongfei would no longer be involved in the affairs of the NEO mainnet, but instead focus on the development and operation of the sidechain NeoX and the new project, SpoonOS.
Uncle Da also quickly responded, stating that Zhang Zhengwen actually controls the majority of funds in the NEO ecosystem (including core assets, the NEO and GAS tokens), and dominates the voting rights of the consensus nodes. He also accused Zhang Zhengwen of delaying the transfer of funds to the foundation's multisignature (Multisig) address for years under various pretexts (such as waiting for the completion of the N3 migration).
Dahongfei has committed to releasing the financial report for the end of 2025 in the first quarter of 2026 and will share preliminary data in advance.