Charles Hoskinson Fires Back at Masato Alexander's Allegations of ADA Misappropriation

The public conflict between Charles Hoskinson and non-fungible-token artist Masato Alexander who alleged that the Cardano founder

The public conflict between Charles Hoskinson and non-fungible-token artist Masato Alexander is escalating further, following a series of messages from the Cardano founder on X that recast the affair as a calculated publicity grab for an Ethereum-based venture.

After a montage video by Alexander showed a private chat in which the NFT artist appeared to be trying to "lock in some funding for Akua and get some runway," Hoskinson said: "So the defamation was just about increasing his visibility to fund-raise for an Ethereum project? You seriously can't make this shit up."

The screenshot triggered an immediate rebuttal from Alexander—"do you really wanna be sharing DMs charles? put these on the pile"—and 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: "What is the purpose of releasing these DMs of me trying to give you constructive advice about your dApp? ... Sharing this as a gotcha is embarrassing."

Akua—the project for which Alexander is seeking financing—is described in a 28 February 2025 white paper as "a novel approach to prediction markets focused on natural-disaster risk management," 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's accusations were a marketing ploy: "Monad is trying to drop an ETH dapp and this is his way of getting attention from that crowd ... He is financially motivated and probably has no genuine interest from an integrity perspective."

Hoskinson, in a later X post, said the episode was a smear orchestrated by Monad to court Ethereum investors. He has also threatened legal action 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—about 18-24 million ADA—was ultimately donated to Intersect, the new member-based governance body.

In a longer X post on Wednesday, Hoskinson revisited the mechanics of the 2021 voucher sweep, arguing that Japanese retail buyers—many elderly—had struggled with the original redemption process. "There was a commercial liability for completing the redemption ... If the buyer couldn't reasonably use that method, there was a moral obligation to change the redemption mechanism," he said, adding that two of the three genesis key-holders had to sign the hard-fork upgrade that removed the unredeemed addresses.

"No ADA was stolen, as the narrative goes, is simply an absurd, goal-post-moving doublespeak statement that the media has picked up on," said Hoskinson.

Alexander, by contrast, likens the voucher sweep to a unilateral rewrite of history that deprived early investors of their coins. In a Wednesday post, he said that only about $7 million of the swept funds have surfaced at Intersect.

As reported by Bitcoinist, the ADA token voucher and treasury transactions are also being audited by global law firm McDermott Will & Emery (MW&E) and the audit heavyweight BDO. Their report, when finished, will give a definitive answer. A publication date is not yet known.

At press time, ADA traded at $0.7889.