The drama of project teams tearing each other apart during the bear market has returned. This time, Neo is serious—founder Da Hongfei and co-founder Erik Zhang's conflict has been fully exposed.

Recently, Erik Zhang published a statement accusing Da Hongfei of violating financial disclosure commitments. According to their agreement, starting from January 1, 2026, Da Hongfei should focus on NeoX and SpoonOS affairs and no longer manage the Neo mainnet. But the issue is, Erik publicly demanded that Da Hongfei must present a complete financial report to the community—including a list of all assets under the Neo Foundation and detailed expenditures. This request sounds reasonable, but it indicates that the community has long had concerns about the transparency of the foundation.

Da Hongfei's response offers a different perspective. He claims that Erik actually controls a large portion of Neo funds and can influence the voting rights of consensus nodes, effectively hijacking the entire protocol. More dramatically, Da Hongfei said he has repeatedly urged Erik to transfer personally held NEO and GAS tokens to the foundation’s multi-signature address—note that he still retains the keys himself. However, Erik has been delaying for various reasons and has not acted.

The core issue here is actually about checks and balances of power. Who controls the funds, who has decision-making authority, and whether information is transparent—these are the most sensitive topics in any DAO governance. From an outsider’s perspective, both sides have their reasons, but for the Neo ecosystem, this internal dispute is eroding community confidence.