Empowa said it detected unauthorized transfers from three project-controlled addresses, including its Cardano treasury and wallets holding undistributed EMP, resulting in losses of 143,710 ADA, 48,219 NIGHT and 4,240,000 EMP over a period that began on Nov. 26, 2025.

According to Empowa, the first part of the incident affected its treasury address on Cardano. The project said 143,710 ADA and 48,219 NIGHT were withdrawn without authorization between November 2025 and June 2026. It added that suspicious activity began on Nov. 26, 2025.

Empowa said most of the stolen ADA passed through an intermediary address before 100,000 ADA was deposited into the Liqwid lending protocol. The project did not disclose in the statement how the unauthorized access occurred or whether the affected wallets were compromised through internal, operational or external means.

A second set of transfers involved wallets holding undistributed EMP. Empowa said 4,240,000 EMP was moved between June and August 2026, and that around 850,000 EMP was later sold for ADA on Minswap and VyFi. The project has not disclosed the full destination of the remaining EMP or whether additional offloading has taken place.

Empowa said it is investigating the incident with blockchain analytics specialists and is tracking wallets linked to the withdrawals. It also said it intends to request client data through formal legal channels. The project separately denied any connection between its case and the attack on SecondFi, saying the suspicious activity in Empowa’s wallets began before that incident.

Why It Matters

The incident adds to security pressure within the Cardano ecosystem because it involves both treasury assets and undistributed project tokens, not just user-facing balances. That combination can affect a project’s operational runway, token distribution plans and counterparties’ willingness to engage until custody and control issues are clarified.

It also shows how quickly stolen funds can move across on-chain venues inside a single ecosystem. Once assets are routed through lending protocols and decentralized exchanges, recovery efforts depend more heavily on wallet tracing, platform cooperation and legal follow-through than on any single on-chain transaction record.