Flamingo Finance has published an open letter alleging that Neo Global Development and the Neo Foundation failed to deliver promised assets and operational support during the platform’s most challenging stretches to date. The Flamingo maintainers argue that Neo’s flagship DeFi dApp has been left structurally dependent on two entities that have refused to act on calls for help. The article catalogs grievances the team says it raised internally through late 2025 before escalating the dispute publicly.
The dependency Flamingo describes
Flamingo states that it does not hold the keys to its own smart contracts, and that contract-upgrade authority rests with NGD and the NF. That arrangement follows NGD’s earlier handoff of operational responsibility to the MyMingo team in 2021, which did not receive control over the contracts but has been maintaining the platform ever since.
According to the post, once the public dispute between Neo co-founders Erik Zhang and Da Hongfei escalated at the end of 2025, the response rate from NGD and the NF changed. Flamingo noted, “Expected support became inconsistent. Breaking changes were introduced. Execution slowed or stopped.”
The letter situates its grievances against a set of 2025 events that Flamingo says compounded the pressure on the platform: Binance’s April assignment of a Monitoring Tag to FLM, FLM’s delisting from Binance spot trading on Nov. 12, the final shutdown of Neo Legacy MainNet on Oct. 31, and the public conflict between Zhang and Da that became visible in late December.
The FLM crisis response Flamingo rejected
Regarding the Binance Monitoring Tag, Flamingo states that one response proposed by NGD was to mint a large amount of new FLM and allocate it to market makers.
The Flamingo team refused the proposal because it would harm the broader FLM token holders and community. They said, “Flamingo made clear it was prepared to walk away rather than accept a path that diluted the very community it was supposed to protect.”
Instead, according to the letter, Flamingo injected private capital into the platform: approximately 103,000 $USDT and 20 million FLM (valued at roughly US $300,000 at the time). The post does not identify the source of the private capital.
Flamingo also disclosed a platform loan of approximately 813,000 FUSD outstanding, collateralized by roughly $138,000 in FLM, $80,000 in NEO, and $180,000 in $GAS. FUSD is the platform’s native overcollateralized stablecoin backed by various NEP-17 assets such as bNEO, $GAS, and FLM, among others.
Alleged unfulfilled commitments
The core of the letter is a set of three disbursements Flamingo says it expected to receive from NGD and the NF but that, according to the post, never arrived:
- Approximately 100,000 $USDT is tied to what Flamingo describes as the bridge hack fallout
- Neo Legacy-related assets described as approximately 20 $BTC and approximately 600,000 $USDT, said to have been discussed as support for the platform
- Approximately 100,000 $USDT representing proceeds from the NF’s sale of ONT and WING received as Poly Network compensation
Flamingo characterizes each as discussed or as part of its understanding, rather than as signed commitments. On the Neo Legacy assets, the open letter states, “Neo Legacy is now shut down. The assets never came to Flamingo. The community has no transparent explanation.”
The references to Poly Network fallout trace to the August 2024 exploit, the third Poly Network attack Flamingo navigated. In September 2024, NGD relaunched the cross-chain bridge and took on maintenance responsibility.
Bridge control and operational issues
Flamingo says the bridge’s ongoing operational issues stem from the same dependency problem. The letter identifies wrapped ETH, $BTC, $USDT, USDC, BNB, and CAKE on Neo N3 as the affected assets and states that bridge liquidity isn’t consistently maintained within the contracts, requiring manual intervention.
When NGD or the NF doesn’t top up the contracts that hold the aforementioned underlying assets, users end up trapped with wrapped assets they cannot redeem. Flamingo goes on to say that these issues pertaining to un-backed wrapped assets occur weekly, or even more often.
The letter also flags that bNEO, Neo’s smart contract-based staking protocol, is expected to stop producing $GAS unless contract upgrades are implemented, which Flamingo says are outside its control. Flamingo reliance on $GAS income from bNEO means this further exposes platform health.
The road ahead
Flamingo closes the letter by reiterating the dependency framing and issuing a direct call to action from NGD and the NF, the parties with the power to effect change. The post states, “Flamingo does not hold the keys, does not control the contracts, and does not have unilateral power to make changes.”
Flamingo concludes, “Unless NGD and NF act, hope will not be enough. Contracts will not update themselves, support will not appear on its own, and users will continue to bear the cost of inaction.”
The full post can be read at the link below:
https://flamingofinance.medium.com/the-questions-the-flamingo-community-deserves-answered-ddcecc317d3d
