Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, says he is closing out a decade-long journey by sticking to what he does best: laying it all on the table. As the blockchain ecosystem enters what he calls the Age of Voltaire, Charles has made one thing clear: nothing—no one—is going to derail his plan to hand Cardano’s future to its community. “For those who know me well, this statement is nothing new,” Charles said , addressing both his supporters and critics. “I’ve spent ten years of my life on Cardano. Many mistakes were made, but I never crossed lines for a cash grab from the community or deviated from the original roadmap.” He’s digging in his heels for 2025, a year that will decide if Cardano can fully transition to a decentralized governance model. The final steps involve getting the blockchain’s budget and constitution approved—no small feat in a space where critics and competitors are quick to pounce. Charles has no plans to give up. “My last duty is to remove any roadblock for this transition. There is no way in hell anyone or anything is going to derail that process.” A decade of updates: How Cardano got here The platform has been grinding through years of updates, building out a blockchain that can scale, handle smart contracts, and—if you ask Charles—compete with the big dogs like Bitcoin and Ethereum. In 2024, the project reached some major milestones. First, there’s Plutus, Cardano’s smart contract platform. Plutus V2 launched in September 2022 with features like inline datum and reference inputs, but 2024 was the real game-changer. By August, Plutus V3 hit the scene, giving developers even more tools to build decentralized applications (DApps). As of press time, Cardano had about 105,500 smart contracts deployed. Compare that to just 8,083 at the start of the year, and it’s clear the upgrades worked. Then there’s Midnight, a new protocol aimed at making privacy a reality for Cardano users. Announced in late 2024, it’s designed to use zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) to unlock around $20 trillion in crypto assets currently out of reach due to regulatory barriers. Midnight is also about giving developers and users tools to keep their data secure. If it works, it could be one of Cardano’s biggest selling points. The Chang hard fork also landed in 2024, rocking Cardano’s governance model. This update let the community take the wheel, introducing Delegate Representatives (DReps) to handle voting on proposals. And let’s not forget Hydra, the layer-2 scaling solution. It’s been in development all year, promising to make Cardano faster and less congested. Hydra allows the network to process transactions simultaneously across multiple layers, which is very important as more DApps join the ecosystem. Charles faces critics and a changing market While Cardano has been busy updating its tech, Charles has had to fend off a steady stream of criticism. Some of it comes from outside the community—critics love to call Cardano overvalued, especially compared to its actual usage. A Forbes article even labeled ADA, Cardano’s native token, a “zombie crypto,” pointing to its $40 billion market cap despite relatively few functional applications. The internal drama hasn’t let up either. In November, a user on X (formerly Twitter) called Charles “the cancer of Cardano,” a comment that quickly went viral. While many in the community defended him, a poll later revealed that 43% of respondents were dissatisfied with his leadership. That’s a pretty big chunk of the user base. And then there’s the market itself. ADA’s price has been all over the place. It dropped to $0.34 after an $18 million token unlock flooded the market, but it managed to climb back up to $0.85 by the end of December. Meanwhile, Cardano’s total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance (DeFi) fell from $700 million to $478 million over the course of the year. From Zero to Web3 Pro: Your 90-Day Career Launch Plan
