Cardano Founder Fires Back At Critics, Outlines 2026 Revival Plan

Charles Hoskinson used his newest dwell AMA on November 1 to situation a point-by-point rebuttal to claims that Cardano is affected by low adoption, skinny liquidity, poor interoperability and advertising inertia—whereas laying out a 2026 progress blueprint anchored within the Midnight partner-chain, cross-ecosystem bridges, an events-driven advertising push, and clearer accountability for KPIs.

Hoskinson framed the broadcast as a response to an “adversarial” neighborhood publish itemizing seven alleged flaws “holding again Cardano adoption,” together with the shortage of USDC/USDT, “critically low” liquidity/TVL, “extreme community congestion,” “minimal on-chain adoption,” restricted advertising attain, poor interoperability/bridges, and skinny tier-one trade assist for Cardano native tokens. He rejected the framing as “not honest,” arguing that it ignores each community realities and pipeline developments, and that it collapses the excellence between Cardano’s base-layer participation and DeFi utilization.

“It comes up fairly a bit,” he mentioned on the stablecoin debate. “There is that this perception […] that if someway, someway Tether or Circle got here to Cardano, then magically all of our DeFi issues can be solved […] I do agree that there’s not sufficient stablecoins issued, however bear in mind we have now USDM, we have now USDA. They don’t dip. They’re asset-backed […] and we will mint them on a regular basis. I’ve personally minted them myself.”

On TVL and adoption metrics, he contrasted DeFi snapshots with broader on-chain engagement: “It is totally legitimate that there’s about $680 million in TVL on Cardano. But […] we have now 1.3 million individuals taking part in both governance or staking […] greater than 15 billion ADA […] We don’t get to rely that in our TVL. Ethereum does […] however we don’t.”

The core problem, he argued, shouldn’t be person shortage however conversion: “Cardano customers aren’t utilizing Cardano DeFi […] If our personal individuals consumed, our TVL can be $5 to $10 billion minimal as an alternative of $680 million.”

Midnight As Key Adoption Driver For Cardano

A big portion of the AMA elevated Midnight—the privacy-preserving accomplice chain—because the mechanism to unlock the “interoperability and bridges” critique and to catalyze trade protection for Cardano native tokens.

“I’ve spent the final six years constructing Midnight. We’re on the point of launch […] [It] resolves just about all these considerations,” he mentioned, including that the token can be a Cardano-native asset with “tier one trade listings,” “over a 100 partnerships,” and connectivity to “eight ecosystems, seven blockchains—Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, Binance Smart Chain, XRP, Avalanche, and clearly Cardano.”

He positioned Midnight as a sensible bridge layer for cross-chain capital and as a driver of DeFi participation on Cardano: “People are going to need to create yield with their [Midnight tokens], and they also’re going to make the most of Cardano DeFi.”

He additionally previewed distribution mechanics and scale claims across the Midnight drop: “Midnight is shaping as much as be the largest drop in the history of the industry […] There are already thousands and thousands of addresses […] about 200,000 taking part within the glacier drops […] I imagine Kraken and […] Gate [are participating] […] once you sum up all these individuals, it’s going to be most likely over one million, which makes it bigger than Arbitrum.”

On stablecoins particularly, he forecast decision by way of Midnight’s negotiation leverage and a trust-minimized “recursive snark bridge” between Midnight and Cardano: “As for the stablecoin facet of issues, that’s going to get completely resolved in 2026 […] If it’s on Midnight, we’ll have a trustless recursive bridge […] Native issuance on Midnight into Cardano.”

Cardano Scaling

Hoskinson dismissed the “extreme community congestion” critique as inconsistent with present utilization. “Our blocks are a couple of third to half full more often than not or much less […] do we actually have a throughput downside?”

He pushed again on options that Cardano’s scaling stack was unreleased: “Hydra is engaged on mainnet proper now […] If you participated within the Glacier drop, you have been utilizing Hydra […] Hydra has reached version 1.0. There are quite a few individuals on Cardano mainnet utilizing Hydra proper now on a per-application foundation.” As proof of effectivity, he cited loading “33.6 million eligible addresses” right into a Hydra head for the drop “at a complete operation value” of lower than 5 figures.

On the info availability/throughput observe he calls Leios, Hoskinson mentioned “the SIP is completed” and that “linear Leios is being deliberate for launched subsequent 12 months,” with a public month-to-month R&D cadence and an upcoming progress web site. He linked these efforts to partner-chain finality work and recursive SNARKs, arguing Cardano is scaling “with values”—sustaining decentralization and resilience whereas including throughput.

Marketing And Governance

While rejecting claims of “negligible advertising attain,” Hoskinson conceded underperformance and mentioned he would personally drive an event-centric push in 2026: “Even although it’s not my job, I’m going to make a few of it my job […] we’re going to have 4 main occasions per 12 months […] convey the highest 25 to prime 50 dApp/DeFi initiatives on Cardano to these occasions to reinforce the Cardano sales space, the IO sales space.” He pointed to Token2049 as a mannequin—“we took over that whole occasion […] even the Wi-Fi codes”—and known as for a sustained marketing campaign round Cardano’s “USPs.”

He repeatedly harassed the absence of a single entity accountable for progress. “There is no person at the moment accountable […] for the expansion of Cardano. If it’s nobody’s downside, everybody’s downside is nobody’s downside.” The treatment, in his view, is a 2026 framework of delegated authority with specific KPIs throughout MAUs, transaction quantity, TVL, energetic dApps, developer counts, integrations and blockchain-to-blockchain partnerships.

In this context he contrasted the Midnight Foundation’s “hungry” execution—“they announce offers each week”—with frustration on the Cardano Foundation’s silence on Midnight partnerships and listings: “Zero tweets saying Midnight is an enormous factor […] It’s irritating to me as a result of how will we win if we destroy ourselves?”

Pipeline: Africa, Bitcoin DeFi, Partnerships

Hoskinson mentioned IO is getting ready Cardano-native DeFi functions for 2026 and emphasised that the “actual” Africa microfinance product by no means stopped.

“We by no means gave it up. We by no means stopped. Go to Twitter. People simply lie till it turns into actuality of their minds. They say we abandon Africa. John O’Conor remains to be right here. It’s an enormous group. We’ve been lending cash like loopy, my cash, and we’re opening it up for micro finance, banking the unbanked, the financial identification facet of it. And that’s coming in 2026. I believe that’s going to be the biggest contributor to Cardano’s TVL when that service activates,” Hoskinson mentioned.

He additionally tied it to the Bitcoin defi initiative. “Bitcoin and ADA could be lent, transformed right into a stablecoin, after which lent out […] Our perception is that’ll create billions of {dollars} of TVL for the community and convey plenty of Bitcoin into the community.”

He additionally referenced conversations and integrations with Near—“you guys noticed the Near intents coming via”—and floated blockchain-to-blockchain outreach to Tezos and Algorand together with an oblique path to Chainlink by way of Near given “a direct dialog has been lower than fruitful because of the worth […] mid eight figures.”

On developer expertise, he argued the narrative is outdated: “They say it’s Haskell solely […] They don’t even discuss Aiken […] Every programming language designer […] says it takes about three to seven years […] we’re proper there.” He flagged Plutus v4 “subsequent 12 months,” StarStream “including contract composition,” and a lane for rollups supported by recursive SNARK primitives, alongside L2 efforts “like Midgard and Gummy.” The strategic thread, he mentioned, is continuity: “We wager massive on decentralization […] resilience […] interoperability with Bitcoin […] accomplice chains. Now it’s about adoption.”

Hoskinson closed by pledging persevering with supply on accomplice chains—“I need to launch one yearly”—core analysis translated into manufacturing, and relentless advocacy, whereas asking the neighborhood to match that with utilization and unified messaging. “We can complain about it or we will clear up the issue. Together we are going to succeed.”

At press time, ADA traded at $0.577.