Flamingo Finance has published an open letter claiming that Neo Global Development and the Neo Foundation have failed to deliver promised assets and operational support during the platform’s most challenging periods to date. Flamingo’s owners claim that Neo’s flagship DeFi dApp has remained structurally dependent on two entities that have refused to heed calls for help. The article takes stock of grievances the team says it aired internally until late 2025, before the dispute escalated publicly.
The dependency that Flamingo describes
Flamingo states that it does not hold the keys to its own smart contracts, and that the authority to upgrade contracts rests with NGD and the NF. This arrangement follows NGD’s previous transfer of operational responsibility to the MyMingo team in 2021, which was not given control over the contracts but has since maintained the platform.
According to the post, the response rate of NGD and the NF changed when the public dispute between Neo co-founders Erik Zhang and Da Hongfei escalated in late 2025. Flamingo noted: “Expected support became inconsistent. Breakthrough changes were introduced. Implementation was slowed or stopped.”
The letter situates its grievances against a series of events from 2025 that Flamingo believes have increased pressure on the platform: Binance’s April assignment of a Monitoring Tag to FLM, the removal of FLM from spot trading on Binance on November 12, the permanent closure of Neo Legacy MainNet on October 31, and the public conflict between Zhang and Da that became visible in late December.
The FLM crisis response that 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 them to market makers.
The Flamingo team rejected the proposal because it would harm the broader FLM token holders and community. They said: ‘Flamingo made it clear that it was willing to walk away rather than accept a path that diluted the very community it was designed to protect.’
Instead, according to the letter, Flamingo injected private capital into the platform: approximately 103,000 $USDT and 20 million FLM (estimated at the time at approximately $300,000). The post does not identify the source of the private capital.
Flamingo also announced a platform loan of approximately 813,000 outstanding FUSD, backed by approximately $138,000 of FLM, $80,000 of NEO and $180,000 of $GAS. FUSD is the platform’s native overcollateralized stablecoin, backed by several NEP-17 assets such as bNEO, $GASand FLM, among others.
Alleged unfulfilled obligations
The core of the letter is a series of three payouts that Flamingo says it expects to receive from NGD and the NF, but which, according to the postal service, never arrived:
- About 100,000 $USDT is connected to what Flamingo describes as the consequences of a bridge hack
- Neo Legacy related assets described as approximately 20 $BTC and about 600,000 $USDTreportedly discussed as support for the platform
- About 100,000 $USDT which represents the proceeds from the sale of ONT and WING by the NF, received as compensation to Poly Network
Flamingo characterizes each as discussed or as part thereof concept, rather than as signed commitments. Regarding Neo Legacy’s assets, the open letter states: “Neo Legacy is now closed. The assets never made it to Flamingo. The community has no transparent explanation.”
The references to Poly Network’s consequences trace back to the August 2024 exploit, the third Poly Network attack that Flamingo navigated. In September 2024, NGD relaunched the cross-chain bridge and assumed maintenance responsibility.
Bridge control and operational issues
Flamingo says the bridge’s ongoing operational problems stem from the same dependency problem. The letter identifies wrapped ETH, $BTC, $USDTUSDC, BNB and CAKE on Neo N3 as the affected assets and states that bridge liquidity is not maintained consistently across the contracts, requiring manual intervention.
When NGD or the NF does not replenish the contracts containing the aforementioned underlying assets, users will be stuck with wrapped assets that they cannot redeem. Flamingo goes on to say that these issues with unsecured wrapped assets occur on a weekly or even more frequent basis.
The letter also indicates that bNEO, Neo’s smart contract-based staking protocol, is expected to cease production $GAS unless contract upgrades are implemented, which Flamingo says are beyond its control. Flamingo dependence on $GAS revenue from bNEO means this further exposes the health of the platform.
The way forward
Flamingo concludes the letter with a repetition of the dependency framework and a direct call to action from the NGD and the NF, the parties with the power to bring about change. The post states: “Flamingo does not hold the keys, has no control over the contracts and has no unilateral power to make changes.”
Flamingo concludes: “Unless NGD and NF take action, hope will not be enough. Contracts will not update themselves, support will not appear on its own, and users will continue to bear the costs of inaction.”
The full message can be read via the link below:
https://flamingofinance.medium.com/the-questions-the-flamingo-community-deserves-answer-ddcecc317d3d