Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson and Cardano Foundation CEO Frederik Gregaard have publicly disagreed over the Foundation's accountability and its handling of Veridian, a digital identity company spun out in October.
The dispute emerged after Gregaard published a post highlighting Cardano's recent developments, including a multi-client node era, ADA futures trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) beginning February 9, and CIP-0113, a token standard that embeds transfer rules in native assets. Gregaard also cited partnerships with Petrobras and UCLA.
Hoskinson responded by pointing out that Midnight, a privacy-focused partner chain built by his firm Input Output Global, was not mentioned despite being what he called the largest project on Cardano. He criticized the Foundation's accountability structures, stating that accountability requires "a board made up of the community to hold you accountable as a community organization with community money."
Hoskinson's criticism focused on Veridian, the digital identity company the Foundation created and then spun out as a for-profit entity. He questioned the ownership structure, asking who owns the shares in the newly independent company.
According to Gregaard's post, 850,000 Veridian shares are tokenized as ledger-based securities under Swiss law. Public uncertainty about Veridian's shareholding could complicate Cardano's pitch to regulated issuers of tokenized equities, where clear ownership records are central to the value proposition.
The clash comes as ADA briefly fell below $0.15, marking its lowest level since June. Cardano's on-chain metrics showed $50.74 million in decentralized finance deposits and $1.65 million in daily decentralized exchange volume as of November 11.
