Frederik Gregaard, CEO of the Cardano Foundation, explains on stage at the Web Summit how blockchain, digital identity and agentic AI could make financial data verifiable, reducing the risk of fraud such as the Wirecard case.
Why do we keep trusting company financial statements when even auditors can be deceived? And what if it were possible to verify financial transactions in real time, without having to wait for an annual audit or rely exclusively on signed documents?
This is one of the questions at the center of the reflections of Frederik Gregaard, CEO of the Cardano Foundation , who sees in the combination of blockchain, digital identity and artificial intelligence a possible evolution of financial control systems.
The goal is ambitious: moving from a model based on trust in institutions to an architecture in which information can be directly verified, including by authorized external parties.
A perspective that becomes particularly relevant when we think back to one of the largest financial scandals of recent years: the Wirecard case, the German digital payments company that collapsed in 2020 after the discovery of a shortfall of 1.9 billion euros .
The Wirecard case: 1.9 billion euros that never existed
The Wirecard case is one of the most significant examples of the limits of traditional auditing systems.
For years, the company had claimed to have large cash reserves deposited in trustee accounts in Asia. In June 2020, however, Wirecard admitted that the 1.9 billion euros shown in its financial statements probably did not exist.
The problem was not only the complexity of the financial operations, but also the ability to concretely verify the information provided to the auditing firm.
During the investigation it emerged that the documents used to certify the existence of the bank deposits were not authentic. Some Philippine banks denied having any relationship with Wirecard and confirmed that the certificates presented were false.
According to Gregaard, the weak point was precisely the verification process: it was not enough to receive a document that appeared to come from a bank. It was necessary to be able to directly verify that the bank had actually issued the certificate and that the funds were really present.
The case demonstrates that even a system built around auditors, certifications and independent controls can fail when the initial information is not verified at the source.
The question therefore becomes: how can we build a system in which falsifying financial information is much more difficult?
Blockchain and company financial statements: Cardano’s proposal
According to the CEO of the Cardano Foundation, the answer is not simply to move company financial statements onto a blockchain.
The change must concern the entire architecture through which financial data is produced, certified and verified.
A public blockchain can in fact record information in a transparent and immutable way, allowing authorized parties to check operations and reconstruct their history.
This means, for example, being able to verify the transactions of an organization without necessarily having to physically access its offices or request additional documentation each time.
Gregaard cites the Cardano Foundation itself as an example: an investor could consult the organization’s financial information, including Treasury positions and personnel expenses, through verifiable data and attestations from third parties.
The concept is particularly important: it is not about automatically making all confidential information public, but about allowing those who have the necessary authorizations to verify its authenticity.
The blockchain thus becomes an infrastructure for transparency and traceability, while digital identity systems make it possible to determine who produced a piece of information, who certified it and who is authorized to consult it.
From the Lehman Brothers case comes the standard for identifying companies
Another interesting part of Gregaard’s reflection concerns the failure of Lehman Brothers in 2008.
The crisis highlighted a structural problem in financial markets: large institutions operated through numerous legal entities, subsidiaries and contractual relationships that were not always uniformly identifiable.
Reconstructing financial exposures and understanding which parties were involved in individual transactions became extremely complicated.
From this need arose the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) project, a unique identification code for legal entities that participate in financial markets.
The system was developed as part of initiatives promoted by the Financial Stability Board at the request of the G20 in 2012. The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF), based in Switzerland , was established in 2014 to support its implementation.
The LEI makes it possible to accurately identify the counterparties to a financial transaction and to link information from different sources.
For Gregaard, this is a concrete example of how a crisis can accelerate the evolution of financial infrastructures. The next step is to integrate these standards with blockchain technologies and interoperable digital identity systems.
An important aspect is that the LEI does not necessarily require the use of a blockchain: it is a standard that can also be integrated with traditional infrastructures. Blockchain can, however, add new possibilities for verification and traceability.
Agentic AI and blockchain: the future of financial audits
The combination of blockchain and agentic artificial intelligence could make corporate controls even more efficient.
AI agents are systems capable of autonomously performing certain activities, analyzing information and flagging anomalies based on defined rules and objectives.
Applied to accounting, they could continuously monitor an organization’s transactions, detect unusual behavior and alert managers when potential irregularities emerge.
Today, in fact, many auditing processes are based on periodic checks and sampling: auditors select certain transactions to verify, without necessarily reviewing every single one.
With an adequate digital infrastructure, however, it would be possible to analyze a much larger number of operations, potentially the entire accounting flow.
The advantage would not only be greater speed, but also the ability to detect anomalies before they become problems that are difficult to fix.
For this model to work, however, AI agents must also be able to verify the identity of the parties they interact with. An autonomous system must know whether it is receiving information from a bank, from a company, or from a genuinely authorized party.
This is where verifiable digital identity comes into play: the blockchain can record proofs and make operations verifiable, while digital credentials make it possible to establish the reliability of the identities involved.
The real problem of blockchain is trust in data
There is, however, an issue that Gregaard does not underestimate: blockchain alone does not eliminate fraud.
A transaction recorded on a blockchain can be verified and cannot be arbitrarily modified, but this does not mean that the information entered was correct from the start.
If someone records a false piece of data, the technology can guarantee that the data will not be altered later, but not necessarily that it was true at the time of registration.
This is the problem commonly associated with the reliability of data coming from the outside world, often defined as the oracle problem.
For this reason, digital identity and third‑party attestations become fundamental elements.
It is not enough to know that a piece of information has been recorded: it must also be possible to demonstrate who produced it, which authority certified it and through which process it was verified.
The issue becomes even more important in a context where fraud can be organized by people inside the very same institutions.
Even a technologically advanced organization must therefore address the problem of individual responsibility, controls and governance.
Cardano focuses on verifiable transparency
Gregaard’s vision fits into the Cardano Foundation’s strategy of promoting blockchain as an infrastructure that can also be used outside the world of cryptocurrencies.
A concrete example is Reeve, the solution presented by the Foundation for accounting and financial reporting.
Reeve makes it possible to record accounting events and financial information on the blockchain, creating a transparent and immutable ledger that facilitates the traceability of operations and the verification of data.
The platform aims to make information more accessible to stakeholders, while maintaining the ability to integrate with the ERP systems already used by companies.
Alongside Reeve, the Cardano Foundation is also developing solutions dedicated to digital identity, such as Veridian and its related verifiable identity ecosystem.
The goal is to build an infrastructure in which data, identities and transactions can interact with each other, without necessarily depending on a single central intermediary.
This aspect is particularly important for the future of digital finance: a blockchain without reliable identification systems may have limited usefulness in corporate and institutional applications.
From trust to verification: the challenge for the future of finance
Gregaard’s message is clear: the future of financial transparency will not depend solely on the spread of cryptocurrencies, but on the ability of blockchain technology to solve concrete problems of traditional economic systems.
The combination of distributed ledgers, verifiable digital identity and artificial intelligence could transform the way companies, investors and auditors interact with financial information.
However, a fundamental challenge remains: technology must be accompanied by shared standards, independent checks, clear accountability and effective governance systems.
Blockchain cannot prevent a person from lying, but it can make it harder to hide the traces of a transaction and easier to verify who is responsible for it.
