Cardano Foundation's X Account Hacked: False Token Launch and SEC Lawsuit Claims

The X account of the Cardano Foundation was compromised on Sunday by an unidentified party, resulting in false announcements, including the launch of a Cardano-branded token on Solana and a fabricated disclosure of an SEC lawsuit against the organization.

Initially, the compromised account posted a thread falsely introducing a Solana-based token named $ADASOL, described as "Cardano, reimagined for Solana’s speed and innovation." The scam was unusually sophisticated, featuring a 13-post thread that linked to legitimate resources such as the Cardano Foundation's official website and a recent podcast episode supposedly discussing the token.

The fake token generated over $500,000 in trading volume, according to DexScreener, before traders realized it was part of a scam.

The fraudulent thread was deleted within an hour, only to be replaced by another false post. This new post falsely claimed the Cardano Foundation had been served with an SEC lawsuit on Sunday. "In light of this unexpected legal action, we have made the difficult decision to immediately cease all support towards the $ADA token to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements," the notice read.

The post, which had replies disabled, amassed over 256,000 views on X at the time of reporting, with many users warning via quote-tweets that the account had been compromised.

When a Cardano enthusiast inquired about the legitimacy of the notice, a team lead at the Cardano Foundation responded, "Confirmed, we’re on it." The Cardano Community X account later clarified, "The Cardano Foundation X account @Cardano_CF has been compromised. Please ignore any posts from the account at this time while we address this."

In an official statement, the Cardano Foundation confirmed its team is "actively working to restore security" and assured that updates would be posted on its LinkedIn page. "This breach of our X account does not indicate any other platforms or systems are compromised," the statement emphasized.