• Cardano’s co-founder IOG is transitioning to a venture studio model, streamlining its core business and spinning out subsidiaries like Midnight, Lace, and Prism.
• Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson responded to the SEC’s allegations that ADA is a security, stating that the financing was conducted in Japan, and ADA was not sold.

In the latest development, Cardnao’s parent group Input Output Global (IOG) has moved to a venture studio model. This comes as part of the company’s restructuring into a smaller core business model.

Speaking on the development, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson stated:

IOG has been restructuring into a venture studio where its core is smaller and it has many spin-offs. As we move into this new business model, we’ve consolidated and eliminated groups that are redundant or not relevant to the new model.

Under the Venture Studio Model, IOG will be spinning out companies such as Midnight, Lace, and Prism. Here Prism will work as an identity framework, Lace will function as a wallet division, while Midnight will function for data privacy matters.

According to Hoskinson, the approach involves hiring or relocating individuals to the subsidiaries while also restructuring the company to facilitate the spin-off of new entities. “Longer term I expect 3-5 companies per year to be spun out,” Hoskinson said. “Under this model, things like strategy and commercial aren’t monolithic, they are pushed to the spinouts under the CEOs.”

The Cardano chief also slammed crypto publication CoinDesk, which mentioned that the IOG group is planning for layoffs. He also said that Cardano already started moving to the venture studio model some 18 months ago.

Hoskinson Responds to SEC’s Allegations

Last week, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Binance, while naming Cardano’s native crypto ADA as a security. Hoskinson lashed out at the SEC stating that “The facts might be inconvenient to the SEC but are facts”. He added;

The financing was done in Japan, no ada was sold, only vouchers, marketing was in Japanese, priced in Yen and Bitcoin, no one from the United States participated. Ada launched in 2017 as an airdrop two years after the voucher sale.

Back then, Cardano was one of the largest ICOs that happened in the Asian continent. Later, ADA quickly rose to new heights in becoming one of the top cryptocurrencies by market cap. In response to the SEC’s allegations, IOG stated that the ADA token does not qualify as a security according to U.S. securities laws.

They argued that their focus has been on enhancing and expanding the capabilities of the Cardano blockchain, similar to how a software developer improves a product. They emphasized that this does not involve selling security.

On the other hand, Hoskinson is also looking to mend ties with the XRP community. Last year in 2022, Hoskinson criticized the XRP community for being toxic and also petty. The Cardano chief added that he never “encountered a community so willing to viciously attack a person who has not attacked them.”

However, now that Cardano and Ripple have a common enemy the SEC, they are looking to get on the common grounds. Hoskinson called for peace in one of his recent tweets.