One Individual Controls $200 Million in Project Crypto, Sparking Calls for Governance Reform

For years, the NEO project's treasury has been managed through an unconventional setup, with hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto assets controlled by personal wallets, lacking multi-signature protections and formal oversight. According to co-founder Da Hongfei, the individual in control of these assets is Erik Zhang, the project's other co-founder and core protocol architect. Da estimates that Zhang holds between $200 million and $250 million in NEO and GAS tokens, exceeding the project's current market capitalization of $197 million. The two co-founders have been publicly disputing since December, resulting in rival governance plans and an unsuccessful mediation effort in Hong Kong. Da's proposal, published on GitHub, calls for the Neo Foundation to be redomiciled in the Cayman Islands, replacing the current two-founder governance with an independent five-member board, and redistributing approximately 26 million NEO and 40 million GAS tokens to tokenholders. In contrast, Zhang's counter-proposal involves staying on the board and keeping the Foundation in Singapore. Zhang's proposal also calls for a formal investigation into historical asset management, including potential corruption and improper asset transfers. Da has dismissed these allegations, stating that there is no corruption or misuse of funds. The project's treasury holds approximately $460 million in assets, roughly double its market value, with the token having dropped 98% from its 2018 peak. The treasury is split between two halves, with the native NEO and GAS tokens under Zhang's single-signature control, and the non-token assets, including bitcoin, ether, and stablecoins, managed by NGD, the entity run by Da. Da has framed his proposal as a mutual disarmament, where both he and Zhang would sacrifice their individual control over assets. However, the success of this proposal depends on Zhang's cooperation, and it remains uncertain whether he will agree to transfer the single-signature token holdings to a multi-signature lock address.