Cardano Kicks Off Independent Audit Of ADA Redemption

A third-party forensic review of the long-running Cardano (ADA) voucher redemption programme is finally in motion after Input Output Global (IOG) confirmed that the global law firm McDermott Will & Emery (MW&E) and the audit heavyweight BDO have been retained to “audit and prepare a public report of the ADA redemption,” according to IOG’s chief legal and policy officer Joel Telpner.

The engagement seeks to neutralise weeks of controversy over allegations that hundreds of millions of unclaimed ADA were quietly diverted during a 2021 ledger event and to provide a definitive historical ledger of every presale token, its status and its current location.

Cardano Engages Firms To Audit Unclaimed ADA Vouchers

Emurgo, one of the three founding entities of Cardano, welcomed the move and urged the community to “await the independent audit results,” insisting that only a tiny fraction of presale vouchers remain outstanding after a seven-year search that even involved door-to-door visits in Japan.

In his post on X, Telpner wrote that MW&E, “a global law firm with more than 1,400 lawyers and 24 locations,” and BDO, “a global accounting and audit firm with worldwide locations,” would begin work immediately and have been instructed to deliver the report “as soon as humanly possible.” MW&E’s fintech and blockchain group has been ranked in Chambers FinTech for two consecutive years, reflecting deep regulatory and transactional expertise in digital assets.

BDO, for its part, advertises a dedicated digital-asset forensics practice that combines on-chain analytics with open-source intelligence to trace complex token flows. Telpner added that a specialist blockchain analytics firm will be added to the engagement once conflicts checks are complete.

Emurgo’s thread, posted less than 24 hours before Telpner’s announcement, stressed that “the vast majority of the pre-sale ADA vouchers have been successfully redeemed” and that the remaining unredeemed slice became technically unspendable after the Shelley hard fork, necessitating an on-chain move to preserve redemption rights. The company acknowledged community frustration but warned that some criticisms had crossed into “excessive, unwarranted FUD” that ignores the full context of the painstaking redemption effort.

The Cardano Foundation, which was not directly involved in post-2021 voucher operations, issued its own statement on May 19 noting that “the effort to locate and support remaining voucher holders has been led by the IO team over the past four years” and welcoming the coming audit.

Pressure for a comprehensive report intensified after NFT artist Masato Alexander published a thread on May 7 accusing IOG founder Charles Hoskinson of using “genesis keys” during the Allegra hard fork to reassign about 318 million ADA—worth roughly US $619 million at the time—from unredeemed presale wallets to treasury accounts via a Move Instantaneous Rewards (MIR) transaction in October 2021.

Hoskinson called the charge “false and misleading,” asserting that “IOG never gave itself 350 million unclaimed ADA. This is a lie,” and said the unredeemed remainder—less than 0.2 per cent of the crowdsale—was ultimately donated to Intersect, Cardano’s governance body. He also threatened legal action against those repeating the allegations.

No target publication date has been set; Telpner conceded that “as of today I honestly don’t know” when the final report will be ready, but stressed that both firms have been asked to “complete the audit and prepare and make the report available as soon as humanly possible.”

At press time, ADA traded at $0.727.