One particular person holds the keys to $200 million of a mission’s crypto. His co-founder says that has to full
Internet investigation
Internet investigation Co-founders Da Hongfei and Erik Zhang possess conflicting restructuring plans, Da needs honest governance and multi-sig security; Zhang needs accountability investigations and to remain on the board.
For years, NEO’s treasury modified into once held in a setup that is inclined to be unparalleled for most monetary establishments: a full bunch of hundreds and hundreds of greenbacks in crypto resources had been managed thru personal wallets, without a multisig protections and cramped formal oversight.
That particular person, per co-founder Da Hongfei, is Erik Zhang, NEO’s varied co-founder and the architect of its core protocol.
“Around 85% is controlled by Eric alone with single signature,” Da mentioned 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 price between $200 million and $250 million, Da estimated. That’s more than NEO’s most modern $197 million market capitalization.
Zhang, for his phase, has accused Da of separate considerations. The 2 founders had been airing these disputes in public since December.
The fight has since produced rival governance plans and an unsuccessful mediation effort in Hong Kong.
Da revealed his restructuring proposal on GitHub on April 9. It calls for redomiciling the Neo Foundation from Singapore to the Cayman Islands, changing the most modern two-founder governance with an honest five-member board, barring each founders from that board for 24 months, and redistributing roughly 26 million NEO and 40 million GAS to tokenholders.
Zhang’s counter-proposal known as staying on the board maintaining the Foundation in Singapore, no longer transfer it to the Cayman Islands.
Most pointedly, Zhang’s proposal calls for a proper investigation into historical asset administration, including provisions to address doable corruption, nefarious asset transfers, and concealment of public resources.
Da disregarded these provisions flatly. “I think it’s a very blunt and empty accusation,” he mentioned. “There is no corruption, no misuse of funds.”
For some observers, on the other hand, the numbers seem rather stark. NEO’s treasury holds ~$460 million in resources, roughly double the mission’s $197 million market price, whereas the token has dropped 98% from its 2018 peak.
Internet investigation Mutual disarmament
NEO’s FY2025 monetary sage, its first complete disclosure since 2020, revealed over 1,100 BTC, more than $100 million in stablecoins and cash, and a portfolio of mission investments including an unliquidated stake in Binance.
Da broke the treasury into two halves. The most indispensable, the native NEO and GAS tokens, sits largely beneath Zhang’s single-signature shield watch over. The 2d, bitcoin, ether, stablecoins, fund-of-fund investments, and bank balances, is managed by NGD, the entity Da runs.
Those non-token resources, once fairly modest, possess grown to over $200 million, driven largely by the appreciation of its BTC and ETH holdings gathered thru early-stage investment returns.
The final result is a treasury slash up nearly evenly between two of us that don’t appear to be any longer speaking productively, each maintaining leverage over the loads of, neither willing to transfer 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 mentioned.
“Basically, me and Eric need to sacrifice our individual control over assets. I think that’s the fundamental change.”
He mentioned he is willing, but would now not know if Zhang is.
Da’s restructuring depends entirely on Zhang’s cooperation for its most extreme 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.
Requested what happens if Zhang refuses, Da modified into once 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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