{"id":28129,"date":"2025-05-22T15:01:51","date_gmt":"2025-05-22T15:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=28129"},"modified":"2025-05-22T15:01:51","modified_gmt":"2025-05-22T15:01:51","slug":"600-million-cardano-smear-was-eth-backed-stunt-says-hoskinson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=28129","title":{"rendered":"$600 Million Cardano Smear Was ETH-Backed Stunt, Says Hoskinson"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The public conflict between Charles Hoskinson and non-fungible-token artist Masato Alexander who alleged that the Cardano founder quietly redirected 318 million ADA<\/a>\u2014worth roughly $619 million at the time\u2014from legacy presale wallets into Cardano\u2019s reserves during the 2021 Allegra hard fork, is further escalating. The Cardano founder has fired back with a string of messages on X that recast the affair as a calculated publicity grab for an Ethereum-based venture.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the defamation was just about increasing his visibility to fund-raise for an Ethereum project??? You seriously can\u2019t make this shit up,\u201d Hoskinson wrote<\/a> late Wednesday via X, attaching a screenshot of a private chat in which Alexander said he was \u201ctrying to lock in some funding for Akua and get some runway.\u201d<\/p>\n

The screenshot triggered an immediate rebuttal from Alexander\u2014\u201cdo you really wanna be sharing DMs charles? put these on the pile\u201d\u2014and opened a window onto a second, previously unseen exchange. In that conversation Phil Harman, chief executive of Anastasia Labs and a long-time Cardano developer, asked Alexander whether a Cardano version of Akua might be possible. Harman later bristled at having the discussion made public: \u201cWhat is the purpose of releasing these DMs of me trying to give you constructive advice about your dApp? \u2026 Sharing this as a gotcha is embarrassing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Akua\u2014the project for which Alexander is seeking financing\u2014is described in a 28 February 2025 white paper as \u201ca novel approach to prediction markets focused on natural-disaster risk management,\u201d starting with earthquakes and expanding to other phenomena. The protocol architecture is designed for EVM compatibility, a detail that Cardano community engineer Lucas (@rvcas) seized upon when he argued that Alexander\u2019s accusations were a marketing ploy: \u201cMonad is trying to drop an ETH dapp and this is his way of getting attention from that crowd \u2026 He is financially motivated and probably has no genuine interest from an integrity perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoskinson echoed that assessment, calling the episode a smear orchestrated to court Ethereum investors. He has also threatened legal action<\/a> and commissioned an independent audit of the disputed treasury transactions, an exercise he says will show that more than 99.8% of the original vouchers were redeemed and that the residual balance\u2014about 18-24 million ADA\u2014was ultimately donated to Intersect, the new member-based governance body.<\/p>\n

Why The Cardano Token Vouchers Were Swept<\/h2>\n

In a longer X post<\/a> on Wednesday, Hoskinson revisited the mechanics of the 2021 voucher sweep, arguing that Japanese retail buyers\u2014many elderly\u2014had struggled with the original redemption process. \u201cThere was a commercial liability for completing the redemption \u2026 If the buyer couldn\u2019t reasonably use that method, there was a moral obligation to change the redemption mechanism,\u201d he wrote, adding that two of the three genesis key-holders had to sign the hard-fork upgrade that removed the unredeemed addresses.<\/p>\n

Hoskinson maintains that no ADA was \u201cstolen,\u201d calling the narrative \u201cabsurd, goal-post-moving doublespeak\u201d and condemning media headlines that suggested otherwise. Alexander, by contrast, likens the voucher sweep to a unilateral rewrite of history that deprived early investors of their coins, arguing that only about $7 million of the swept funds have surfaced at Intersect.<\/p>\n

As reported by Bitcoinist<\/a> on Wednesday, the ADA voucher audit redemption audit by global law firm McDermott Will & Emery (MW&E) and the audit heavyweight BDO will give a definitive answer when finished. A publication date is not yet known.<\/p>\n

At press time, ADA traded at $0.7889.<\/p>\n

\"Cardano<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The public conflict between Charles Hoskinson and non-fungible-token artist Masato Alexander who alleged that the Cardano founder quietly redirected 318 million ADA\u2014worth roughly $619 million at the time\u2014from legacy presale wallets into Cardano\u2019s reserves during the 2021 Allegra hard fork, is further escalating. The Cardano founder has fired back with a string of messages on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,4,5],"class_list":["post-28129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-crypto","tag-doge","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}