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 maintains that no ADA was “stolen,” calling the narrative “absurd, goal-post-moving doublespeak” and condemning media headlines that suggested otherwise. Alexander, by contrast, likens the voucher sweep to a unilateral rewrite of history that deprived early investors of their coins, arguing that only about $7 million of the swept funds have surfaced at Intersect.
At press time, ADA traded at $0.7889.
