Neo was founded by the extremely popular, and highly renowned, Dong Hongfei, in its earlier moniker Antshares. The team of Neo is essentially the Neo council and even though, Antshares was initially a digital assets project, it turned its focus onto smart contracts after re-branding to Neo. Although Neo is a decentralized project, the Neo council holds a lot of power when it comes to the project and controls all decisions that would affect it, including what dApps can be built on it.