Cardano Founder Blasts Ghost Chain Critics: ‘Cavalry Is Coming’

Broadcasting “from tough and rugged Wyoming” late on September 14, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson delivered a forceful rebuttal to what he referred to as years of dismissive “ghost chain” narratives, arguing that the business has “moved the goalposts” away from decentralization and towards VC-favored velocity and token economics.

“It sucks to go to cryptocurrency Reddit and it doesn’t matter what you say or do, you’re criticized and demeaned and attacked,” he mentioned, after studying a neighborhood put up lamenting the “overwhelming unfavourable sentiment outdoors of our neighborhood.” Hoskinson’s message: Cardano will keep on with its authentic transient—resilience, censorship resistance, and self-governance—and the payoff is close to. “Keep the religion and don’t hand over hope. The cavalry is coming. We are transferring precisely as we have to,” he mentioned.

Hoskinson Blasts Cardano Critics And ‘VC Chains’

The livestream’s central theme was a conflict of first ideas. Hoskinson traced early crypto’s mission to “disintermediation and decentralization,” saying the sector has since rewarded throughput and speculative manias—NFTs, GameFi, memecoins, and now RWAs—over credible neutrality. “The goalpost moved from disintermediation and decentralization to, nicely, let’s construct high-performance methods and we don’t significantly care if these methods are resilient or decentralized,” he argued.

In his telling, Cardano’s refusal to compromise on these design targets explains each the community’s slower, research-driven cadence and its perceived under-appreciation in Web3 circles: “We’ve beat that drum and we’ve constructed protocol after protocol doing issues the precise means. Not the attractive means, not the VC-friendly means.”

Hoskinson framed the mission’s previous decade as an train in constructing sturdy primitives: the prolonged UTXO mannequin for deterministic sensible contracts; “liquid non-custodial staking”; the Ouroboros household of protocols; the Hard Fork Combinator for “telescoping” upgrades; end-to-end on-chain governance and treasury; and newer ideas akin to isomorphic state channels, a partner-chains paradigm, and “Bitcoin DeFi” to align with what he referred to as a principles-first ecosystem. “Every 12 months, Cardano continues to get extra decentralized, extra resilient,” he mentioned. “We’re capable of take the most effective of all of the concepts within the area, however by no means as soon as have we compromised on who we’re.”

On scalability, Hoskinson mentioned Cardano is “on the daybreak” of its subsequent section. He said that “Leios is now in a SIP,” describing it as “the final stage earlier than implementation” and “the inspiration of a scalability agenda that’s limitless,” language he linked to a co-evolution with Hydra and advances in zero-knowledge cryptography. Taken collectively, he mentioned, these efforts goal at “infinite scale simply in time to soak up the wants of the financial, political and social methods overseas and at dwelling.” He pointed to Hydra’s maturation—from a “toy” to demonstrations together with a “merchandising machine” and checks he described as “1,000,000 transactions a second”—as a key pillar of the community’s L2 posture.

The founder set out a go-to-market plan that intentionally seems to be past crypto natives. “Less than 5% of the world is within the cryptocurrency area,” he mentioned. “So why will we significantly care a couple of minority of a minority when there’s a giant broad world on the market?”

He urged “physicalizing Cardano,” citing Hydra-backed point-of-sale and ATM integrations, and burdened “rational privateness for all” by Midnight. He additionally solid Cardano as “the most effective place to launch a brand new blockchain,” linking that declare to the partner-chains initiative and what he referred to as the “greatest AVS expertise within the area.” Bitcoin stays the important ally on this technique, he mentioned: “We should accomplice with ecosystems which might be ideas first like Bitcoin… And we’re doing this with Bitcoin DeFi.”

Cavalry Coming?

Geographically, Hoskinson highlighted Argentina and Africa. He mentioned Input Output maintains the “largest cryptocurrency workplace” in Buenos Aires and hosts biweekly occasions, including that Cardano “continues to develop all through Latin America.” In Africa, he mentioned the long-trailed id push is “nearly able to roll out,” with 2026 focused to “activate the power to carry financial id to the thousands and thousands finally billions who don’t have it.” Throughout, he contrasted these efforts with what he characterised as short-lived hype cycles: “To be actually a visionary, it’s a must to settle for that it’s a must to go alone generally into the wilderness… And we’ve carried out that for 10 years.”

Governance milestones fashioned one other through-line. Hoskinson declared the mission’s “Voltaire” period “mission completed,” citing a community-elected constitutional committee, “lots of of DReps,” a ratified on-chain structure, and an annual funds. “We’re already speaking concerning the subsequent structure and an unimaginable suite of governance instruments,” he mentioned, arguing that this collective equipment lets the ecosystem “communicate with one voice,” ratify upgrades, and “converge to a funds” with out compromising liveness or security. “We are the one chain within the historical past of the cryptocurrency business to do that,” he asserted.

The tackle included uncommon self-critique. Hoskinson mentioned he wished Cardano had “moved quicker in sure areas,” made “barely totally different choices concerning the ordering of the roadmap,” and staffed partnerships extra aggressively. He nonetheless credited the privacy-focused Midnight initiative with “greater than 100 partnerships,” positioning it as a industrial bridge that “will carry lots of extra, if not hundreds.”

He additionally revisited longstanding allegations from rival communities, saying he’s “nonetheless inundated” with claims he “stole $600 million,” and added {that a} “128-page” forensic audit “gave full exoneration,” a consequence he mentioned obtained little consideration from crypto media. “The asymmetries of data sting lengthy, exhausting, and sadly take years or a long time to undo,” he mentioned.

Hoskinson closed by returning to neighborhood morale, urging Cardano’s governance members to “neglect the previous and… look to the longer term,” redirecting power towards entrepreneurs who can “carry within the numerous thousands and thousands to tens of thousands and thousands to lots of of thousands and thousands of customers.” The core wager, he mentioned, is unchanged: that decentralization, credible governance, and research-led engineering will in the end outlast each hype cycle.

“The subsequent 24 to 36 months, Cardano might be able the place it’s the quickest, most safe, and albeit talking, greatest platform… to construct something at scale for anybody,” Hoskinson concluded, including: “Cardano’s greatest days are forward of it. I’ll all the time imagine that. And that’s as a result of Cardano has the most effective folks.”

At press time, ADA traded at $0.89.