😂New Year — the first "hot topic": the public internal confrontation of NEO founders, or are truly decentralized projects "degenerating"?

Even at the start of the new year, the first major news in the crypto world already causes concern.
Around NEO, there are two founders — Dahongfei and Zhengwen Zhang (Erik Zhang) — who have officially come to the forefront due to issues regarding fund asset control and transparency in governance.
This is not just "human conflicts," but a typical internal power struggle within a decentralized project.
First, let's briefly recall what NEO is.
NEO was previously called the "Chinese Ethereum," and it is one of the oldest blockchain platform projects that uses a dual-token model:
NEO — for governance and ownership rights, GAS — for paying network fees.
In the early history of blockchains, NEO held very high positions.
But this conflict is happening precisely at its key governance level.
The main dispute is — who controls the assets, who is responsible for management.
Zhengwen Zhang stated in an interview with PANews that he will return to the main NEO network and participate fully in governance again to "protect the fundamental rights of NEO/GAS owners."
At the same time, he disclosed the current governance structure and NEO assets.
According to the disclosed information, most of the NEO and GAS assets belong to the Neo Foundation, and they are verifiable on the blockchain, distributed among 21 initial node addresses and one multi-signature wallet, which theoretically allows the global community to conduct real-time audits.
However, a problem arose during a previous change in leadership.
During Dahongfei's demand for Zhengwen Zhang to step down from fund management, about 8 million NEO/GAS were transferred to several multi-signature addresses designated by Dahongfei.
This operation became the main subject of mutual accusations of "concentrating financial power" and "lack of transparency."
This dispute is no longer just about NEO.
It again highlights an old problem:
when a project calls itself "degenerate," but key management and control over funds are still concentrated in the hands of a few founders — where is true decentralization then?
On-chain transparency does not mean governance transparency.
Multi-signature decisions also do not guarantee the distribution of power.
The struggle between founders is perhaps the most genuine power structure in public blockchains.
The first New Year "hot topic" may not be tasty, but it has many lessons.
It reminds everyone:
in the world of decentralization, technology is just the foundation,
the true fate of a project depends on the struggle of people, power, and rules.
How the NEO story will end — is still unknown,
but this conflict among founders has already become another classic example.
The first day of the new year,
the ideal of decentralization is once again returning to reality for rethinking.