Cardano Foundation spins out Veridian and tokenizes its shares

The Cardano Foundation spun out its Veridian identity project as a separate company on 8 October 2026 and tokenized most of its 1 million shares, the first time a business has issued its own equity directly on Cardano.

Frederik Gregaard, the Foundation's chief executive and now Veridian's chair, told CoinDesk the company had tokenized most of its shares. 'People have talked about tokenized equity for years, and now there's an operating company on Cardano doing it,' he said.

A spinout with tokenized stock

Veridian began inside the Foundation as a digital identity project, building tools for verifiable credentials. It now stands alone, a separate company based in Switzerland. Thomas A. Mayfield runs it. He previously led decentralized trust and identity work at the Foundation, according to CoinDesk, and Foundation executives keep seats on the new board. Gregaard said Veridian can serve its market better on its own, and that AI agents will need verifiable identity too.

None of the shares are on sale to the public. Veridian has 1 million shares in total, and most have now been tokenized, Gregaard said. The company plans to seek strategic investors in 2027.

Tokenizing company stock sits inside a wider push to move bonds, funds and property on-chain, an effort known as tokenized real-world assets. Most of that work so far has run on Ethereum and other networks rather than Cardano.

How CIP-0113 works

Veridian's shares run on CIP-0113, a token standard the Foundation put live on Cardano's main network on 7 October at the TOKEN2049 conference. Ordinary Cardano tokens move freely between wallets. That is a problem for securities, where an issuer may need to vet a buyer or block a transfer. CIP-0113 adds those controls.

Issuers can build in know-your-customer and anti-money-laundering checks, sanctions screening and transfer limits. They can also freeze or seize tokens where the rules demand it. The Cardano ledger enforces each rule when a token moves, is created or is destroyed, and none of this needs a network hard fork.

One wrinkle comes from how Cardano stores assets. A single output can hold ADA plus several tokens at once, so a limit on one asset could trap the others sitting with it. CIP-0113 includes a method its authors call unfracking, which lets a holder reshuffle their own holdings without changing who owns what.

Development and security audits on the standard began in 2023, and the proposal was merged into Cardano's improvement-proposals repository on 29 September 2026. On that repository the document still carries the status 'Proposed'. In Switzerland, the Capital Markets and Technology Association said CIP-0113 tokens line up with its framework for issuing equity on-chain.

What is settled and what is not

This launch is a proof of concept more than a market. Veridian is the Foundation's own creation, and the Foundation is tokenizing its own equity in it. No investor has bought in. The public cannot trade the shares, and the standard they rely on still sits at proposal status. The Foundation has not named a price for the shares or said how much of Veridian it now owns. So far, just one issuer.

Other firms have already put stock on a blockchain. Robinhood's stock tokens track shares and exchange-traded funds, though under different rules and in different markets. Veridian's case is narrower, its own equity, held close.

ADA, Cardano's token, traded near $0.24 at about 12:40 UTC on 9 October 2026, down roughly 4 percent on the day, according to CoinGecko. That slide tracked a broad selloff in bitcoin and other coins, not the Veridian news.

What to watch next

Three signals will show whether this is more than a demo. Watch whether outside issuers use CIP-0113 for regulated products such as stablecoins, funds or bonds. Watch whether Veridian lands the strategic investors it wants in 2027. And watch whether the standard moves past 'Proposed' to settled status.