Empowa Discloses Unauthorized Transfers From Cardano Project Wallets

Empowa, a housing-finance project using Cardano infrastructure to support rent-to-own homes in emerging markets, disclosed two linked incidents involving three project-controlled wallets.

The transfers affected a treasury wallet and two legacy token-allocation wallets. Empowa attributed the activity to access through keys created when the project was founded in 2022, rather than a failure of its housing platform or a Cardano protocol.

Empowa Links Two Incidents Across Three Wallets

According to Empowa’s incident report, 143,710 in treasury funds left one wallet through 18 transfers between November 2025 and June 2026.

The same wallet credentials were also used to register for Midnight’s Glacier Drop without the team’s knowledge. On February 20, the resulting allocation of 48,219 Midnight tokens was redeemed. Around 36,164 were transferred onward, while approximately 12,054 remained locked under the airdrop’s vesting conditions.

A second incident involved the legacy addresses associated with $empowa.public and $empowa.ispo. Between June and August, about 4.24 million undistributed Empowa tokens were removed from those wallets.

Empowa said the affected keys originated from its founding period. The treasury seed phrase had not been transferred to the current team, and the wallet was believed to be inaccessible. The report does not identify the operator or accuse any individual.

Funds Moved Through Cardano DeFi

On-chain activity cited by Empowa connects the incidents through a common hub wallet and coordinated transaction patterns.

Approximately 120,060 in treasury funds reached that hub. About 100,000 was deposited as collateral on Liqwid, after which USDCx was borrowed. Later transactions converted assets into stablecoins and used burns consistent with bridge redemptions.

The first phase of the token sales involved roughly 850,000 Empowa tokens traded through Minswap and VyFi. The proceeds were converted into USDCx, with 4,810 USDCx sent to the same hub used in the treasury flow.

Empowa also identified a fee-paying wallet that funded a new seller address with 95.33 in Cardano funds eight minutes after an initial transfer of 500,000 Empowa tokens. That fee wallet had previously supported 2,635 community token claims, linking the legacy claiming infrastructure to the later sales.

The remaining balances were swept from the affected addresses on August 28. Further sales were routed through DexHunter and Minswap V2, although about three million Empowa tokens remained unsold when the report was published.

Housing Operations Remain Intact as Investigation Continues

Empowa said no other project wallets were affected. Team, housing, innovation, operating and private-sale allocations had moved to new custody arrangements in 2024 and remain intact.

The company’s housing projects and EmpowaPay, its system for recording and managing housing payments, were also unaffected. Community claim records remain available.

Empowa separately rejected a connection to the SecondFi incident, citing differences in timing, wallet structure and transaction behavior.

Professional blockchain investigators are now monitoring the linked addresses, the remaining project tokens and the Midnight allocation still locked in its vesting contract. Empowa said it would seek identifying information through legal channels if funds reach centralized exchanges.

The next traceable event may come from that locked allocation: moving it after the thaw window opened on September 6 requires another signature from the same compromised credentials.