Troubles in Cardano paradise? A recent announcement from Charles Hoskinson, Chief Executive Officer at Input Output HK, made clear that the Cardano Foundation is no longer a partner of Cardano’s project development and business arms. 

Charles Hoskinson announced via a live stream on Youtube yesterday that the Cardano Foundation has been removed from the Cardano project. Rumors about ‘civil war’ within Cardano had already popped-up on varies online channels over the past few weeks. 

Therefore, in the video, Hoskinson provides a thorough explanation of the decision to sideline the Cardano Foundation from the Cardano project, citing the Foundation’s “lack of performance” as a major reason for the decision. 

The decision has also been explained in an open letter on the IOHK website.

The reason behind the removal of the Cardano Foundation

Instigated as a three-block federation, Cardano originally divided the project into separate legal entities of governance. The federation consisted out of the Cardano Foundation, IOHK, and Emurgo. 

In this setup, IOHK handled the technical development of the project, Emurgo was responsible for the development, support, and incubate commercial ventures of Cardano and the Cardano Foundation had been responsible for community relations. This has now come to and end. 

Hoskinson’s decision to change the current arrangement has been made with the backing of Emurgo’s CEO, Ken Kodama.

In the YouTube video, Hoskinson talked about various issues over the past months which eventually caused the removal of the Cardano Foundation. Amongst the issues, the Foundation’s alleged lack of financial transparency, material misrepresentations and wrongful statements. In the video, Hoskinson highlighted the signing of the MOU agreement with Ethiopia’s Ministry of Science and Technology as an example of the breakdown of trust.

According to Hoskinson:

“Unexpectedly, the Foundation decided to back out the week before and claimed in an email to IOHK’s communications director that it – without any basis or underlying agreement – was to be the single guardian of the Cardano brand and protocols.”

As a result, Emurgo and IOHK, who have been adamant there can be no single guardian, have decided to hire their own dedicated community managers for the Cardano ecosystem, effectively sidelining the Foundation.

Initial reaction from the Cardano Reddit group appears to generally support the removal of the Foundation from the trilateral governance equation. 

See the recording of the live stream:

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