Following the controversial accusations, the outcomes of the third-party forensic overview of the Cardano (ADA) voucher redemption program have been made public. Cardano’s founder, Charles Hoskinson, says he’s now “ready for the apologies to come back rolling in.”
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Cardano Accusations Have ‘No Foundation’
On Wednesday, the Cardano neighborhood celebrated after the third-party forensic overview of the ADA voucher redemption program was revealed. The investigative report, carried out by legislation agency McDermott Will & Schulte and the audit agency BDO, decided that the allegations towards Enter Output World (IOG) don’t have any basis.
“After overview of tens of hundreds of paperwork, a forensic on-chain and conventional forensic evaluation, and eighteen formal interviews of present staff, former staff, Voucher Holders, service suppliers, neighborhood members, and different third events, the Investigation decided that every of the allegations associated to the Subjects of Investigation shouldn’t have any foundation,” the report reads.
Public accusations included 5 essential allegations, together with that insiders stole or misused ADA that ought to have been allotted to voucher holders and that there have been improper sale ways associated to the voucher program.
The claims additionally accused Cardano blockchain upgrades of being designed to make voucher redemption tough, and deleted voucher holders’ “personal keys” or belongings. Lastly, the allegation that Cardano insiders had no authorized proper to ship unredeemed ADA to CDH and resolve the way to spend it.
The controversy emerged in Could, when Non-Fungible Token (NFT) artist Masato Alexander alleged that Charles Hoskinson had “unilaterally used his genesis keys to REWRITE the Cardano ledger” in the course of the Allegra exhausting fork in 2021 to take management of 318-350 million ADA, about 0.2 p.c of the Preliminary Coin Providing (ICO) allocation that remained unclaimed years after launch.
Hoskinson denied Alexander’s claims, arguing that 99.8% of the vouchers offered have been redeemed by their authentic consumers, whereas the remaining 0.2% have been “returned to the TGE and donated to Intersect by means of the identical course of that funded the Cardano Basis.”
The Evaluate Findings
Based mostly on the Investigation, McDermott Will & Schulte and BDO discovered that the sources of the general public allegations towards IOG and Charles Hoskinson didn’t originate from unredeemed voucher holders, they usually “didn’t establish proof indicating that Enter Output or Sawyers turned away any potential Voucher Holder who possessed a sound Voucher.”
Moreover, they concluded that affordable guardrails have been applied to stop misleading advertising and marketing and gross sales ways, noting that this system was not designed to use the aged.
The audit additionally revealed that 97.3% of all of the vouchers, or 98.8% of the ADA allotted, have been redeemed on-chain in the course of the Byron period, and “substantial efforts have been undertaken to trigger Voucher Holders to redeem on-chain” on the time.
As of August 15, 2025, 99.2% of Vouchers consisting of 99.7% of all ada offered pursuant to the Voucher Program have been redeemed by means of the on-chain redemptions and Submit-Sweep Redemption Challenge.
In the meantime, the overview highlighted that the voucher certificates contained redemption codes as a substitute of “personal keys,” refuting the accusation that these keys have been later deleted. It additionally concluded that Cardano insiders didn’t misappropriate the staking rewards from the unredeemed ADA.
Time To Transfer On, Says Hoskinson
Hoskinson went on X House to share the audit consequence, studying the announcement of IOG’s Chief Authorized Officer & Chief Coverage Officer, Joel Telpner, and the manager abstract of the 128-page doc.
Cardano’s founder mentioned that it’s been a “deeply irritating” course of, noting that “It’s one factor to assault my intelligence, my bodily look, my enterprise acumen, my integrity. It’s one other factor to accuse me of against the law.”
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“That is over. And for the individuals who stirred this pot: do the precise factor, and simply apologize. Have some frequent fucking decency as a human being. Apologize. Let’s simply all transfer on, say you have been mistaken. Have sufficient integrity to do this,” he requested.
Hoskinson shared his hope that most individuals will understand that the accusations have been taken “too far,” concluding that “Hopefully, we are able to now simply put this nightmare behind us.”
Featured Picture from Unsplash.com, Chart from TradingView.com