Cardano Foundation Fires Back After Hoskinson’s Explosive Criticism

The Cardano Foundation has issued a public clarification of its remit and recent decisions, answering a wave of community questions that followed Charles Hoskinson’s latest broadside against the organization. In a new forum post published on August 26, the Foundation outlines what it says are its day-to-day responsibilities for the network’s plumbing, its governance posture as a decentralized representative, and the legal provenance of its board—without naming Hoskinson or directly addressing his specific accusations.

Cardano Foundation Takes A Stand

At the heart of the Foundation’s message is the claim that its most consequential work is largely invisible to end users but foundational to exchanges and custodians. “The Cardano Foundation plays a critical ongoing role in the maintenance of key components used by exchanges and custody providers,” the post states.

The Cardano Foundation refers to services such as GraphQL (originally built by IOG on top of DB-Sync), a high-performance Java implementation of Rosetta backed by Yaci Store, the reference cardano-wallet, and the Token Registry and its API, which now supports both CIP-26 and CIP-68 metadata and has been embedded into GraphQL “for performance improvements.”

The Foundation adds that it “hosts a Token Registry API accessible to the public,” and says its Core Integrations, Engineering, and Exchange Relationships teams have worked with market venues “since 2021” to reduce friction and cost for ADA and native-token onboarding.

On the flashpoint of who should pay for new listings and token integrations, the Foundation says it will not fund bespoke Cardano Native Token integrations because doing so would “pick winners”—and, by extension, “losers”—across the ecosystem. That, the organization argues, exceeds its mandate and would distort a “diverse and complex ecosystem.”

The statement also underscores the Foundation’s role in on-chain governance since the launch of constitutional governance this year. It identifies itself as both an Intersect Constitutional Committee (ICC) member and a DRep, claiming a live stake “of nearly ₳233 million” across “331 delegators.” Acknowledging concerns about concentration, it says that “₳140 million” from its genesis ADA has been delegated to seven community-builder and developer DReps.

It points to educational resources, a DRep voting tool, governance flowcharts, and co-coordination of hard-fork processes as evidence of practical support aimed at “enabling the community to engage easily and meaningfully in on-chain decision making.”

Perhaps most notably, the Foundation revisits the 2021 overhaul of its board—a recurring theme in Hoskinson’s critiques. According to the post, after a “somewhat dysfunctional” period, Switzerland’s foundation supervisor fulfilled its statutory duty by bringing in an external law firm in January 2021 “to guide the Cardano Foundation into calmer waters.”

A head-hunting firm interviewed outgoing board members and IOG leadership, after which the new board president was elected unanimously, “including by the IOG board representative,” followed by two additional unanimous appointments (with one abstention) and the outgoing board’s voluntary group resignation; a fourth member was later appointed. The Foundation says it remains committed to “adoption, education and operational resilience” delivered “in an accountable and transparent manner.”

The Backstory

The timing is no accident. On August 22, Hoskinson used a surprise AMA to escalate his long-simmering dispute with the Foundation, centering on Midnight’s NIGHT token distribution and the Foundation’s claimed entitlement. Defending the decision to ring-fence the airdrop, he said, “We built it. It’s my money. We can do whatever the hell we want to do,” framing the restriction as a risk-control measure consistent with the airdrop’s terms and its intent to avoid “undue burden and harm to the network.”

In the same breath, he accused the Foundation of squandering opportunities and failing to support the ecosystem effectively. Notably, the clash has deeper roots. Late last year, Hoskinson urged relocating the Foundation away from Switzerland to a jurisdiction that would enable community election of board members, arguing that the Swiss supervisory framework—while lawful—constrains accountability to token holders.

He has also alleged heavy-handed intervention by the Foundation in constitutional drafting and broader governance, claims the Foundation has periodically rebutted with process narratives and disclosures. If the Foundation intended to calm the waters, early forum replies show the community pressing for more.

One user asked whether board elections could change current members and whether “the Swiss still have authority.” Another called for a roadmap toward community-driven board elections, arguing that the current composition “does not represent the community or its ambitions” and urging the dissolution and re-election of the board.

At press time, ADA traded at $0.86.