One person holds the keys to $200 million of a project’s crypto. His co-founder says that has to end

Co-founders Da Hongfei and Erik Zhang have conflicting restructuring plans, Da wants independent governance and multi-sig protection; Zhang wants accountability investigations and to remain on the board.

What to know:

• NEO co-founder Erik Zhang holds $200-250 million in crypto assets in a personal wallet with no multi-signature security or formal oversight.
• Co-founders Da Hongfei and Erik Zhang have conflicting restructuring plans, Da wants independent governance and multi-sig protection; Zhang wants accountability investigations and to remain on the board.
• NEO's treasury holds ~$460 million in assets, roughly double the project's $197 million market value, while the token has dropped 98% from its 2018 peak.

For years, NEO's treasury was held in a setup that would be unusual for most financial institutions: hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto assets were controlled through personal wallets, with no multisig protections and little formal oversight.

That person, according to co-founder Da Hongfei, is Erik Zhang, NEO's other co-founder and the architect of its core protocol.

"Around 85% is controlled by Eric alone with single signature," Da said in an interview. "It had never been transferred to any individual or any multi-sig." The native NEO and GAS tokens Zhang holds are currently worth between $200 million and $250 million, Da estimated. That's more than NEO's current $197 million market capitalization.

Zhang, for his part, has accused Da of separate problems. The two founders have been airing those disputes in public since December.

The fight has since produced rival governance plans and an unsuccessful mediation effort in Hong Kong.

Da published his restructuring proposal on GitHub on April 9. It calls for redomiciling the Neo Foundation from Singapore to the Cayman Islands, replacing the current two-founder governance with an independent five-member board, barring both founders from that board for 24 months, and redistributing roughly 26 million NEO and 40 million GAS to tokenholders.

Zhang's counter-proposal called staying on the board keeping the Foundation in Singapore, not move it to the Cayman Islands.

Most pointedly, Zhang's proposal calls for a formal investigation into historical asset management, including provisions to address potential corruption, improper asset transfers, and concealment of public assets.

Da dismissed those provisions flatly. "I think it's a very blunt and empty accusation," he said. "There is no corruption, no misuse of funds."

For some observers, however, the numbers seem quite stark. NEO's treasury holds ~$460 million in assets, roughly double the project's $197 million market value, while the token has dropped 98% from its 2018 peak.

Mutual disarmament

NEO's FY2025 financial report, its first comprehensive disclosure since 2020, revealed over 1,100 BTC, more than $100 million in stablecoins and cash, and a portfolio of venture investments including an unliquidated stake in Binance.

Da broke the treasury into two halves. The first, the native NEO and GAS tokens, sits largely under Zhang's single-signature control. The second, bitcoin, ether, stablecoins, fund-of-fund investments, and bank balances, is managed by NGD, the entity Da runs.

Those non-token assets, once relatively modest, have grown to over $200 million, driven largely by the appreciation of its BTC and ETH holdings accumulated through early-stage investment returns.

The result is a treasury split almost evenly between two people who are no longer speaking productively, each holding leverage over the other, neither willing to move first.

Da framed his proposal as mutual disarmament.

"NGD will lose its control over most of the assets, including the BTC and stablecoins, which are over $200 million. And Eric will lose his personal control of the majority of the NEO tokens," he said.

"Basically, me and Eric need to sacrifice our individual control over assets. I think that's the fundamental change."

He said he's willing, but doesn't know if Zhang is.

Da's restructuring depends entirely on Zhang's cooperation for its most critical step of transferring the single-signature token holdings to a multisig lock address. In an April 10 AMA, Da committed to a one-to-three month timeline.

Asked what happens if Zhang refuses, Da was candid.

"If there's one person holding around half of a crypto native token and not willing to hand over to a multi-sig, constitutional governance, then what the community should do, I think the answer should come from the community itself.

CoinDesk reached out to Erik Zhang for comment and had not heard back by time of publication

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