Neo co-founder Da Hongfei has proposed a $461 million restructuring plan. He’s dismantling what he calls the platform’s “trust me” governance model. The formal proposal details everything.
The overhaul would relocate the Neo Foundation to the Cayman Islands. It would install a five-member board with an independent Supervisor. Both founders? Barred from serving on new governance bodies for 24 months. A dramatic reset for one of crypto’s earliest smart contract platforms.
The proposal follows Neo’s first financial disclosure since 2019. The reveal: approximately $461 million in assets. Hongfei’s plan aims to shift Neo away from informal, founder-centric decision-making. The new model: transparent, rule-based structures. Annual financial reports would be mandatory. Multi-signature wallets for major holdings would be publicly disclosed.
“Giveback II” sits at the center of the plan. It would return 49.5 million reserved NEO tokens to the community. Hongfei’s proposal lays it out clearly. The Neo Foundation and Neo Global Development currently control about 41 million NEO tokens. Most of it? Single-signature custody. That setup has drawn scrutiny. No onchain verifiability.
Hongfei cites Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin as a model for the transition. The approach: influence through research, not direct control. The restructuring would consolidate Neo Global Development investments back into the foundation. Large transfers would require onchain attestations.
Co-founder Erik Zhang opposes key elements of the plan. Zhang warns that reliance on offchain legal entities weakens onchain verifiability. Third-party attestations do the same. His take: it sidesteps past transparency issues. He’s made his position public.
The internal dispute reflects broader governance tensions across DeFi. Entrenched actors often dominate supposedly decentralized systems. For Neo, the stakes extend beyond governance reform. The platform missed DeFi’s boom years. It faced shrinking demand from China. Repeated upgrade delays eroded its market position.
Hongfei frames the restructuring as part of a larger strategy. He’s repositioning Neo X as an “agent-first” blockchain. The target: autonomous AI-driven onchain activity. The proposal describes the next 12 to 24 months as decisive. Neo must complete restructuring. It must restore trust in treasury management. It must attract “agent-native” projects to regain relevance.
Success could establish Neo as a reference case. An aging chain transitioning away from founder control. Failure would reinforce skepticism. Can cosmetic governance resets truly dislodge personality-driven structures? Probably not.
Hongfei himself will test the durability of any shift. Will he eventually seek a board seat? That question determines everything. Is Neo’s overhaul genuine decentralization? Or just a reshuffling of power?
