In a deeply private thread posted to X on Sunday, Cardano creator Charles Hoskinson stated the previous weeks’ accusations over the dealing with of unclaimed initial-coin-offering (ICO) funds had revealed “who [his] friends truly are” and left him decided to curtail his once-ubiquitous social-media presence.
“The one advantage in a crisis or an event that tests people is that you rapidly get to see who your friends truly are and who’s fair-weather,” he wrote, including that the absence of public help from some long-time associates “dims the light quite a bit and makes me want to dramatically alter how I engage.” He indicated that, as soon as an unbiased audit of the token-sale historical past is revealed, his X account will probably be managed by a media group and his long-running “ask-me-anything” classes will probably be reformatted.
“I’ll still be at events and take the time for pictures and handshakes,” Hoskinson concluded, “but it’s different now. This one has deeply hurt me and it’s not going to heal anytime soon.”
The Dispute Over Unclaimed Cardano Tokens
Between September 2015 and January 2017 Cardano raised roughly $62 million by promoting 25.9 billion ADA vouchers—most of them in Japan—by means of Tokyo-based Attain Company. Consumers later redeemed the vouchers contained in the Daedalus pockets when the community launched. Attain ran the sale for the undertaking’s founding entities (IOHK, now IOG; the Cardano Basis; and EMURGO) underneath full KYC/AML checks, a construction highlighted in modern investor supplies and later analysis from Messari.
The present controversy revolves round an estimated 318–350 million ADA—about 0.2 p.c of the ICO allocation—that remained unclaimed years after launch. On 7 Could, NFT artist Masato Alexander alleged that Hoskinson had “effectively ERASED” the unique UTXOs in the course of the 2021 Allegra hard-fork improve and swept the tokens into Cardano’s reserves, later staking most of them and directing solely a fraction to Intersect, the ecosystem’s new governance physique.
Hoskinson has rejected these claims as “lies,” insisting that 99.8 p.c of the sale tokens had been ultimately redeemed by their rightful homeowners and that the remaining stability was moved—first right into a custodial account and in the end to Intersect—solely after Attain’s chapter left no occasion capable of course of late redemptions safely. “These funds were not stolen,” he wrote, warning Alexander and others that repetition of the accusation would set off litigation. “If you continue to imply that IO stole funds, I will sue you. This is my last warning.”
In a separate put up on 13 Could he defined that as a result of the legacy on-chain redemption mechanism was insecure as soon as Attain closed, the group “swept” the unredeemed vouchers off-chain, re-verifying claimants by means of native counsel and alternate companions. “The sweep reset the process and ensured all the remaining unredeemed buyers had an opportunity to go through compliance again,” Hoskinson wrote, characterising the measure as a consumer-protection step quite than a seizure.
Based on Hoskinson, an “externally audited report” masking each tranche of the voucher sale, every redemption transaction and the following transfers of unclaimed ADA is now in its remaining levels. The doc is to be distributed to IOG, the Cardano Basis, EMURGO and Intersect earlier than being launched publicly. Till that assessment is revealed, he stated, Cardano’s improvement firm will make no additional substantive remark and can give attention to potential authorized treatments in opposition to what he calls “defamation.”
At press time, ADA traded at $0.7199.

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