Hi, this is Charles Oskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado. Happy Labor Day, everybody. It's September 1st, 2025. I want to make a quick video to discuss something that I want to ensure does not get misinterpreted.
I had an AMA the other day, and during that session, I talked about client diversity. Now, there are people on Twitter building alternative clients who are misrepresenting some of my statements. I want to clarify my official position so that there is no deviation from it. You can be mad at the CF, and that's fine, but don't bring client diversity into this because people believe it. I never said that client diversity isn't crucial. Ethereum knows it, Solana knows it, and everyone knows it. It's not just a fancy feature; it's the foundation of decentralization. You can argue that it doesn't bring users, but there's a limit to what developers can build without having the option to customize their nodes. That's a true statement, and developers not being able to surpass this limit directly translates to users not being able to use Cardano.
Some like to claim that somehow StarStream is a product of Dingo or benefits from it. Babel fees directly benefit from Doolos. It's true that they use these types of things. So let me go on the record about this. I'm not anti-client diversity. There has always been a plan for client diversity from the very beginning. We live in a world of facts, not feelings. So, what's the evidence for that? The evidence is the formal specifications. A formal specification is not a client; it's a code-independent, implementation-independent blueprint for what Cardano is. This is how to build it. The whole point of having formal specifications is for client diversity. If you don't have a formal specification, then the code is the spec. In other words, the Haskell node would be the specification.
The single most important thing in client diversification is an understandable and complete set of blueprints for Cardano. We can even have blueprints in multiple languages. You don't have to write a specification in a formal language; you can write them in TLA, AGDA, Coq, Lean, or even Markdown if you want to. However, it does have to have some form of rigor and limited ambiguity, or if there is ambiguity, it has to be clearly identified and left up to the developer. The point is to avoid network partitions and ensure interoperability. That's why you do these things.
The original plan I had for client diversity back in the day, when there was just Intersect and everyone was still operating together, was to have a technical steering committee and a product steering committee at Intersect. We would turn over all of the source code from IO to the GitHub repositories of Intersect and have a diverse group of people on the technical steering committee and product steering committee from the community who are building products and projects. The Blink Labs, TX Pipes, and others would be involved. The idea was to start diversification by having many more people around the technology of the SIP process, the specifications, and the actual code of the Haskell node, which has 100% of the install base.
Once the blueprints were solid and agreed upon in whatever languages were chosen, we would look at two different things simultaneously. The first would be similar to what IBM did with the Fabric project, where you have a 1.x version of the Cardano node. At the same time, we would start an initiative for a Cardano 2.x, and they would run in parallel. We would keep making updates to Cardano while building a beta version, and at some point, they would meet in functionality. This is actually what we're doing for the Lace wallet right now. Lace wallet has different versions, and Lace wallet version 2.x is under construction. They are set to intersect and achieve feature parity in November, give or take. Lace 2.0 will introduce new features, enabling both mobile and desktop.
The idea behind Cardano 2 is that the people involved in designing that new infrastructure would be sourced from the technical steering and product steering committees. This does not have to be in the same language as Cardano. In fact, we planned to write it in Rust and make it a microservice architecture. It could be a polyglot node, meaning it would support multiple languages.
By having both of these, the first thing we could do is guarantee that the specification is correct because it would remove all ambiguity from the formal specification and create a clear blueprint. Once you have a good spec and have gotten two independent implementations to work with each other, it becomes immeasurably easier to add a third, fourth, or fifth implementation. A lot of the difficulty comes from achieving feature parity and verifying that things are correct.
What ended up happening instead of following this plan was the creation of another organization called Pragma, which became a conglomeration of builders who started creating their own nodes. Link had Dingo, and Harmonic is working on one, but all of these nodes are not actively contributing to the specifications we've written. How do you avoid things like network partitions and ensure peer interoperability? It's much harder when the teams don't work together. At the very least, the development teams have to coordinate. Unfortunately, there was no funding from the foundation for coordination, and no funding was provided by any actor for that purpose.
Input Output paid for bringing people together in a node diversity workshop, and we have an economic relationship with some of the builders on the Pragma side, like Sunday and TX Pipe. What we've done is hire people to work with us, and we're trying to ensure we have a complete set of specifications. We're also working to make sure that all the nodes can interact with each other. In fact, Input Output is using some of the diverse nodes in its product stack. For example, with Block Frost, they are currently integrating Doolos, which is a data node, into the full node design for a Mithril full node being built as a desktop replacement for Datalis.
We value the work that other builders do. We believe in client diversity and think it's necessary. Our frustration has been that typically, you follow the one-to-two process. In the beginning with Ethereum, we did that. Gavin Wood had the C++ client, and Jeff Wilkie had the Go client, which allowed us to independently verify the specification. There were two major specifications: the Ethereum yellow paper and the EVM test suite published by the Ethereum Foundation. We even used that test suite for our Scala client for Mantis back in the day.
We believe in client diversity; it's important. There are ways to do it that are non-adversarial and don't create friction, and there are ways that create high coordination costs and a lot of rework. Politics worked in a particular direction and created a certain situation. You don't complain about it; you fix it. But don't let anyone say that we think it's a bad idea to have competing clients and multiple clients. From the very beginning, we planned for it with specifications because we wanted it done in a responsible, secure way.
In fact, I wanted to start Cardano 2 in 2020. We had the initial five-year contracts from 2015 to 2020 and wanted to begin working on the next version. We chose Haskell as the first version because it was the easiest way to adhere to a rigid specification. However, we always planned to be more than one language. We had a Rust group and a Scala group and built a Rust version of Cardano, which ran the incentivized test net and the old versions of Catalyst. That was called Project Yorcander. On the Scala side, we were experimenting with using Scala as a potential permanent node to bring Cardano into the Java ecosystem.
What happened was we got bogged down with feature delivery, and everything took longer than expected. We didn't plan as well as we could have, and we shipped everything from Shelley to smart contracts in a 24-month period. We had to deal with all the consequences of those two significant developments, followed by the governance issues, and now we're finally digesting all of that. We're on to the last major milestone, which is Basho. We've already conceptualized it with the SIPs and Hydra, and we know how to implement them.
Once you have that entire paradigm set, you can create a final set of specifications and start building lots of client diversity from all the lessons learned. Some people wanted to run ahead of the pack, and that's fine, but they have to ensure that their clients can communicate with our clients because 100% of the network is still running on the Haskell node. If they don't do that, they create a partition and compromise any semblance of interoperability, leading to security problems.
Another thing we wanted to work on is the idea of a certified client. A certified client would be a mark of security and quality, where if you have a specification, an auditor can verify that your node or client follows that specification and is thus certified. People often ask what the official client of Cardano is, and my answer is that there is none. However, I would like certified clients where evidence is created to show that those clients follow the specification. This was another reason for wanting a process like this because the first thing to get certified would be the Cardano 2.x.
When financing things in the budget, we can say we're going to pay for features, baseline features of the system, and certification. It doesn't make sense to pay for a feature set if it doesn't work with Cardano. It also doesn't make sense to create new features if they aren't secure or if there's no guarantee that they follow the specification. You need all three for a client to be correct.
The hope was that when people ask for Catalyst funding, they would get funded for all three things. We don't have a certification program built yet. I've been trying to build it and working diligently on it. This is one of the reasons we've asked more than a dozen times to join Pragma. So far, we haven't been able to because that would be the thing we would push for. We care about interoperability and want to live in a multi-client environment. We think it's good for decentralization and helps find errors in the specification.
To achieve this, we need to do it responsibly. If everyone is part of the same technical and product steering committee, everyone has a right to be heard. If you have fragmented committees, there's limited communication behind the day-to-day decisions being made. This translates to more money, slower delivery times, and a higher probability of flaws or security issues. If people don't coordinate and communicate, those problems arise. There's also a stronger temptation to speed up feature delivery to show up or gain adoption. If you're faster to market, you can ship more things and acquire more customers, but if you don't certify, it comes at the cost of quality.
We've seen this in many other ecosystems, which is why I wanted to go from one to two to n. I wanted to start with one independent group of people all in one place with a member-based organization. Originally, the Cardano Foundation was supposed to be that organization. They would have controlled the technical steering committee, the product steering committee, and the source code. It would be irresponsible to turn over that code to the trademark holder, the SIP holder, or an unaccountable board because if they make arbitrary decisions, you have no recourse.
In a member-based organization, you have a community-elected board. It's just common sense and good governance, which is why even big companies, like Fortune 500 companies, tend to use the Linux Foundation, the Apache Foundation, and others to facilitate these types of things. Intersect was created as a fallback, but it took time because many people who could have been formative and useful in the governance of Intersect went and created a different member-based organization. This hindered Intersect's ability to navigate and grow into a truly independent, vibrant organization. It didn't kill us, but it slowed us down.
Now, Intersect is vibrant with great membership, and wonderful things are happening. The majority of the board will be community-elected before the end of the year. We're starting to see independence and growth in the technical steering committee and product steering committee, and Pragma and Intersect are working well together. It took about a year for that coordination to happen, and I believe the people at Pragma are operating in good faith. They have differences of opinion and prior frustrations, some of which were encouraged by the CF to be fully expressed through their code and projects.
It's important for people to understand that Input Output has no desire to see Cardano continue as a monoculture behind Haskell. Our desire has always been for a multi-client environment. I started my career that way with Ethereum in 2014 with the C++ client and the Go client. We tried to do it right with a formal specification. Some things happened that slowed down our ability to go multi-client. We had three different language teams: a Scala team, a Rust team, and a Haskell team. We tried hard to coordinate and balance all the different demands from commercial, feature delivery, research, protocol development, and the politics and bureaucracy between different organizations.
The first organization that had an opportunity to create a member-based organization was the CF. They chose the Linux Foundation. The deal they negotiated after hiring Durk was that Input Output would not be allowed to join the open-source project. We have this documented in minutes from a call with the CF board. I personally could not join or participate, and by extension, Input Output could not join or participate in the technical steering committee for the future of Cardano. This was the deal they negotiated after a year of effort, which meant we had to go back to the drawing board. Emergo and Input Output took it on and created Intersect, and we repeatedly asked the CF to join.
The CF had concerns about Intersect being a hybrid organization with funds in the Cayman Islands and operations in Wyoming. I tried to explain that Joe Biden was trying to kill the cryptocurrency industry and that it might not be wise to leave all of Intersect's funds in the United States given the geopolitical environment. They claimed there was no path to joining Intersect while they had a Cayman connection from Switzerland. They had the gall to say this. So, they chose not to join the governing board. They are now members of Intersect, but it took time for them to get there.
This denied full participation in the technical steering and product steering committees, which slowed down the plan for getting the blueprints and clients where they needed to be for responsible node diversity. However, IO is using a TX Pipe product for Lace, and Block Frost is as well, which is an IO company. We continue to host node diversity workshops and have a great working relationship with all of the Pragma members. We continue to build with them and believe they are good actors acting in good faith.
I felt it was important to contextualize how we got here and ensure my statements do not get misrepresented, as they continually do. It is not easy being at the epicenter of an ecosystem. There are millions of people and a lot of back and forth. We're just trying to get it done. We have the SIP for Mithril, and we need to get the Pragma members to contribute to that SIP. I want their names on it because they will have to build it along with us. If you want to build another node, that's great, but you're not along for just 20% of the ride; you're along for the entire ride, whether it rains, snows, or is sunny.
It's crucial that they are part of that SIP. They are acting in good faith and working with us, and I believe that will be the outcome of the process. They not only have to write the SIP with us since we published the first draft, but they also have to build it. I do not believe the alternative nodes are resourced enough to build Mithril in 2026. That's my opinion, based on running a software company for more than ten years and having made many mistakes regarding missed deadlines and under-resourced endeavors.
If I'm right, that means they will not be able to launch their alternative nodes in 2026 if we can get Mithril fully coded and integrated into the Haskell node unless the network wants to wait for them. This means we will not get Mithril in 2026. The remedy would be additional funding for them if their intention is to commercially launch these nodes and get them into production, or to delay Mithril.
So when you come to me and say, "Charles is delaying Mithril," let me be very clear: we are currently resourcing a 24/7 follow-the-sun development model. This means we will have developers on multiple continents in staggered shifts, working during the day, night, and weekends to write Haskell code for the Haskell node for Mithril. This is our single most urgent program. You will see this reflected in the GitHub commits and the timestamps associated with them and the velocity of the coding.
Any person in the engineering division who said we don't want to do it or don't think it's possible has either been reassigned or terminated. New people are being brought in whose sole purpose is to ensure we get Mithril in. It has been delayed too long, and we need it in the protocol. You've seen certain firms being terminated and new, more agile firms being brought in. It was not easy; it was a tough decision. Some of these people were friends of mine, but this is business and this is an ecosystem.
I cannot control alternative nodes. When we admit them for the sake of diversity, something has to give. If they're under-resourced and do not have the appropriate people, we cannot reasonably believe they will be able to deploy complex features quickly if we're being intellectually honest. The remedy is either for them to sit out, meaning they continue working but don't install and adopt those nodes, increase their resources, or for all of us to delay.
This raises the question: why are we doing 24/7 development if, at the end of the day, we finish and it sits on a shelf for a year? What do we tell the ecosystem as a whole? Just don't build on Cardano during 2026; an update isn't coming? If we had a technical steering committee where all the relevant people are in one place, we could have a philosophical, economic, and strategic conversation. By having them separated, we can't, and we can only occasionally make coordinating decisions.
This is another reason why what has happened has been competitively harmful to the Cardano ecosystem. It doesn't improve decentralization because those things, even though they're being built, have no market share and adoption. Eventually, they will as their feature sets turn on, but it's very unlikely they will gain a majority or even a strong minority of the install base in 2026. We'll see; maybe they will, maybe they won't.
It also creates an adversarial environment where people have to justify installing their node by attacking the Haskell developers, who are among the most talented and longest-serving in our ecosystem. You have to compare and contrast, and the innovations of the Haskell node have to be diminished or downplayed for these other nodes to gain market share. Otherwise, why would you switch to a new thing unless it solves a very particular problem?
It's better to work together and coordinate so that we don't inadvertently become adversarial and say things that are hurtful and harmful, driving people out. It's a lot
As we build towards Laos, we need to have an adult conversation about the next generation of Cardano's network stack. This includes a pub-sub architecture that allows all partner chains, DApps, stake pool operators, and multi-IG and other utilities to communicate with each other, including event brokering and the data availability side of the system. This is a significant research endeavor, and I believe there are many great ideas emerging from the alternative client environment. They are reimplementing the mini-protocol design, which is exceedingly difficult to do in other languages, and this presents one of the barriers to other clients coming on board.
The hope with Laos is that we can engage in mature discussions about upgrading and modernizing our network infrastructure to include more diversity—not necessarily to the modularity of live P2P, but at least something that serves the needs of all clients in the ecosystem. This is why it is essential to hold diversity workshops regularly, and for the technical product steering committees of both IO and the Cardano Foundation to communicate consistently. This way, we can plan these initiatives, prototype them rapidly, get them into SIPs, and jointly agree on their implementation. We will continue to push for that and strive to improve the overall roadmap.
All things considered, it’s remarkable that we are where we are. I believe everyone has done a great job, and it’s exciting that people have decided to take our work, make it their own, build their own ecosystems, and create custom nodes. This is a vital and necessary step forward for the ecosystem as a whole. I want to see their labor bear fruit, and the way to achieve that is through cooperation. By shining a spotlight on what makes their work special, I think we are moving in the right direction. We’re not quite where we need to be, but we are definitely progressing. This will be a focus for the rest of this year and next year.
I hope that Laos can become the great unifier, bringing everyone together on this new paradigm and integrating all these pieces. There are no right or wrong answers; every ecosystem is unique, and we are pioneers pushing forward to get things done. However, I’ve noticed that we’ve become a bit too enamored with drama and adversarial behavior. I have significant disagreements with the Cardano Foundation because I experience the consequences of their decisions. It makes it harder for me to do my job and, in my view, harder for Cardano to succeed. We are denied community resources that could really help us.
We’ve moved on, but I still mention it because sometimes we get dragged back into the swamp. This is an example of one of those wedge issues. We need to work and push forward, but we’ve become addicted to the idea that people must throw hand grenades at each other. The audit report is a great example of this. We work on the auditor's timeline, not our own. If you tell auditors to come in and do something, they will agree, but they need unrestricted access to your documents and people. They provide a rough estimate of when they think it will be done, and if it takes extra time, it takes extra time. I can’t do anything about that.
We’ve already created the website where all the disclosures will be published, so we’re just waiting for that final green light. It’s not a month away, but it will take some time. Who knows, maybe this week. Ultimately, it’s up to them. However, this gets translated into a bad faith interpretation that we are delaying unilaterally because we are hiding something or have forgotten about it. This is absolute bad faith. If we adopt the mindset that everything is bad faith, we will die as an ecosystem because we will create a toxic environment. No one will want to build in Cardano or be part of this community.
Back in 2021, the community was overwhelmingly positive. People were filled with love and joy and were excited to move forward. I won’t lie; the last two years have been the hardest of my life. I’ve faced relentless criticism every single day. You say that Cardano is an underperforming asset; we’re up 140% from one year ago, while Bitcoin is up 80%. We’ve outperformed them and are among the best-performing assets over the past year. In the entire history of the project, we raised 108,000 Bitcoin to build Cardano, which is about 13 billion at today’s value. Cardano has outperformed Bitcoin’s price from its inception by more than 200%. These are facts.
Yet, we’re not allowed to acknowledge these successes. Instead, it’s just drama and negativity, and things we should celebrate, like client diversity, are turned into yet another conflict when everyone has every incentive to work together. Why? What’s the value? For our part, there are certainly things we can do better. Yes, we are a bit bitter at the input-output side. It’s been a long, tough, and thankless road, and it’s hard to see the fruits of our labor after ten years being called a “ghost chain.” It’s challenging to negotiate with people who have large ecosystems and are asking for mid-eight-figure numbers for integration. You have to negotiate and sometimes spend months or years figuring out a way to build an appropriate deal because if you accept one of those prices, it becomes the price for everyone else.
We don’t pay that price; we pay the actual real price. You have to do it for the sake of all the builders because every single CNT holder and everyone else down the line would then have to pay that price. It’s frustrating when organizations that you thought would be responsible for that fail to do so, and you end up having to do it yourself. It’s not personal for me; it’s about the ecosystem as a whole. I meet people from the entire Cardano ecosystem because I attend all the events. Everywhere I go, I meet someone who knows about ADA, has held ADA, or has talked to someone who knows about ADA.
When we aren’t fast enough or misstep, or when someone makes a poor political decision that damages the ecosystem, the fallout isn’t that my lifestyle is hurt or my company is damaged. It’s the people I meet who get hurt. It’s the small project on Cardano with two to three people who are living from catalyst fund to catalyst fund, desperately trying to secure venture capital funding or new customers. They are the ones who suffer, and I hear their stories and see their faces. This drama, these politics, and this unnecessary chaos translate into harm for them, and it frustrates me deeply because many of those people have become my friends and treasured allies who have supported us for years. They mean the world to me.
They’ve signed up for the vision of changing the economic, political, and social systems of the world. Why shouldn’t we wake up every day and fight hard for them? If I do too much, I’m a tyrant and dictator; if I do too little, I’ve rug-pulled the ecosystem and left. What’s the Goldilocks zone? When you try to create neutral parties to establish that zone, it’s difficult to even get them funded. It was a long road to create Intersect, an organization designed to give you a voice. Many people claimed its only purpose was to give me complete control. I would never have burned the genesis keys if I just wanted to stay in control.
There can always be an excuse; dictators always have an excuse. If you’re genuinely committed to resigning your commission, you create structures that function with or without you in the room. That’s what we did. Yes, it requires a lot of hard work, and there have been unending lies about it. They were funded with over 300 million ADA, which was recently spread by Marcus from the Cardano Foundation, who knew very well they were not. The audit report will clarify the exact numbers because that will be included in it. This is just another example of how drama and chaos damage the integrity, growth, and ability to navigate organizations.
Unfortunately, many of our best community members have either taken a break, left, or are demoralized. A good friend of mine from Norway left after two years of working on governance due to all the drama. This is my plea to the ecosystem as a whole: IO is not going to stop fighting for what is right. We will continue to point out that the foundation’s board is unelected and unaccountable until they change. If they put a community member on the board or create a process where you have a say in what they do, how they do it, and when they do it, then the dialogue will change.
But that is the red line we will never cross. That doesn’t mean we’re at war with the rest of the ecosystem and community; it means we’re fighting for the ecosystem and the community. We want you to have a voice. That’s your money; it is not the private property of the Swiss government or their proxies. We want that money to be at your discretion via your elected representatives. That was the original intent from the very beginning. Otherwise, it would have just gone to IO or Emergo if it were private property of a private company. What’s the point of a governing foundation?
I fight for that because I believe I’m fighting for you. I think I have the only voice in the ecosystem strong enough to point that out and advocate for you. As for the rest of the people, I will hold you accountable. There’s only one red line I have: you can attack my educational credentials, my physical appearance, my intelligence, and even say I’m a sociopath or a pathological liar. You can attack me in every dimension, but if you say I have committed a crime or engaged in criminal conduct, I do care. That’s the red line.
The audit report is incredibly important because that’s when people cross the line. As odious and horrible as Laura Shin’s book was, it didn’t cross that line. I read every allegation and asked, “Is any one of those a crime?” No, it just says I’m a terrible human being. She didn’t accuse me of a crime; if she had, I would have sued her. Others did with the ADA voucher program; that’s my red line. If you’re on the other side of it and think I’m a criminal and publicly express that, then I’m going to have to be at war with you.
If you’re attacking my personality, conduct, behavior, company, or business acumen, I don’t care. Say whatever you want. In many cases, a lot of people who said those things, I’m working with them. We built a vending machine with one of them. I’ve developed a pretty thick skin these days; you have to in an ecosystem like this. I think that’s a fair set of red lines: when I feel money belongs to the community and it’s not in their hands, we should fight to change that. The other is when people accuse me of criminal conduct; I can’t stand for it.
Outside of that, anything goes. Overall, I’d like to believe we’ve been good partners to many people who have worked with us throughout the years, especially the last two. There will be many testimonials, whether from the SNEK community, the Hosky community, or Michael Yagi’s work with Anamoka. We’ve had nothing but positive experiences with these people, even if they criticized us. A great example would be to look at the constitutional convention recordings and see Adam Dean shouting about his delegate. We later worked with him at Rare Evil because we don’t take differences of opinion personally.
You’re allowed to have a difference of opinion. You’re allowed to think we screwed up or misstepped. The next day, everything resets because we look at it and say, “If you have a good idea for the ecosystem, come on in. Let’s talk about it and build it.” It’s not personal; it’s business and protocol development. That’s how it should be. We work with many people, including other ecosystems that have contributed to some of the slander.
Look at the midnight airdrop, which was offered to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, and especially XRP. Look at the history there, and now we’re friends. I was just with Brad Garlinghouse at a round table with the Federal Reserve at the Salt Conference in Jackson, and we got along really well. We said, “Hey, we need to talk more.” That’s maturity.
So, that’s where we stand as an organization. We have integrity, principles, and a backbone, and we’re not afraid to use them. We’re not afraid to state our opinion, but we also have a big heart. We want Cardano to succeed; we want it to be the most adopted, most used, and most relevant cryptocurrency project in the world. Full stop. There’s no asterisk or caveat. We believe Cardano, because of the partner chains model and what we’re doing with Midnight, can absorb all the utility of the ecosystem and provide the blockchain service layer we discussed in the development of Ethereum back in 2014.
I wish we could move faster at times, and I wish the coordination costs weren’t so high. I wish the industry would mature a bit more than it currently has. But for the most part, we wake up every day and push for that. I’m still here, still fighting. I meet a lot of old-timers who say, “Charles, why are you still here? You should retire and let someone else do it.” I respond, “Because I haven’t finished what I started. I want to decentralize the world and change it.” We haven’t done it yet; no project has.
No one has won. There’s no Ethereum one; everyone can pack up and go home. It’s rounds. Sometimes you win, like we did in 2021, and sometimes you lose, like we did in 2022 and 2023. I’d argue we won in 2024; we’re the most decentralized cryptocurrency on the planet. You win some, you lose some, but we’re still in the game. We’re still in the top 10, and we have a lot of great people. There’s a long road ahead of us, and there’s much to do.
There’s the post-quantum revolution, the lattice folding revolution, the interoperability revolution, the AI revolution, the agentic web, and the agentic commercial web, where trillions of dollars in transactions will happen every month. There are all kinds of things coming, and I want to be in the game. I want to be right there, fighting hard every single year. Some years we’re stronger, some years we’re weaker, but we don’t give up ground. We keep our community, our innovations, and we don’t lose ground.
The gains are still there: 24/7 uptime for years, the brand name, the identity, the community, and the ecosystem. We just need to be a bit nicer and eliminate the drama. We need to cut out the toxicity and move beyond it. We have to get back to positivity, to the good story of progress, and recognize that we are still in the game. We didn’t lose. We have great technology, and we’re where we need to be; we just need to move a little faster.
We have the roots to move faster, and we need to celebrate our wins. A completely community-elected constitutional committee, the closure of the first budget, the actual withdrawal of the treasury, a fully legitimized catalyst, and the ratification of the first Cardano constitution are all massive wins. We have a scalability program that maintains our integrity and principles while allowing us to be just as fast as others who don’t have it.
The partner chains program allows us to radically diverge from the original design of Cardano while integrating all those innovations and bringing in new users. Half of the midnight airdrop so far has been redeemed by non-holders, who are now Cardano users because that’s where they get their night token. These are wins that we need to celebrate, internalize, and feel good about. If we’re not allowed to celebrate those wins and only focus on the negative, we will poison the ecosystem and create a self-fulfilling prophecy where Cardano is dead. It will drive out all the people.
I’m still here, and I want to be here. I want to fight with you, shoulder to shoulder. I want to work with the builders and realize the vision and potential we had in the whiteboard video. Let’s create an environment worth everyone’s time, one that doesn’t cause you to age ten years for every year and give you cancer. If you drive out all your OGs, you get what you get.
I know some of you listening will say, “What about Ada Whale?” That was the greatest example of toxicity. We had a difference of opinion. He’s entitled to his opinion, but it’s not his set of facts. He was saying things that were factually wrong, and I pointed it out. You can sell $100 million worth of ADA in a short period without harming the market, and we saw that every single day. It’s just factually true.
So we disagreed. He could have just said, “Well, I disagree with you,” and that would have been the end of it. Instead, he became a dramatic figure, left the ecosystem, and decided to vote against everything IO, claiming, “We are the enemy.” When he realized that was losing, he left his DREP as well, taking his toys and going home. That’s not Charles Hoskinson driving out Ada Whale. I’m allowed to disagree, especially on a topic I’m an expert in.
It’s like a math problem; I’ve already looked it up in the back of the book. I’m allowed to have my opinion, and we can agree to disagree as adults and move on. There’s no reason we can’t agree on the next thing and be friends. But if your reaction is to play the victim and claim persecution, and it’s so toxic that you have to leave the ecosystem and lash out with your governance power, then you’re the problem.
If you can’t see that, you don’t know the difference between legitimate victimization and playing the victim. The people who do that are part of the problem in the ecosystem. They create drama, drive people out, and form cults of personality around them. Remember when we had the Ape Society or Board Apes? They claimed to provide immense value to the ecosystem, but whenever they were called out, they played the victim and said, “Look at all we’ve done; how dare you attack us?” Eventually, they abandoned us and went to Base, and their project is now dead.
Fortunately, that void was filled by a much better project, SNEK. They actually do the right things. SNEK Nation doesn’t make their problems your problems, and they don’t play the victim. They are collaborative and supportive. When I made a tongue-in-cheek comment about one of the founders, they took it well and even made a t-shirt about it. That’s good faith.
When I criticized their proposal, saying we shouldn’t pay for their listing, they
That's why I got so angry about the ADA redemption stuff. The headlines read "Cardano theft $600 million." There's no accountability for what they've done. Now, millions of people will remember that headline, no matter what evidence is presented, and forever think that was the case. It has damaged the ecosystem, the brand, and everything else as a whole. It makes me so angry because it hurts all of you. I just have to not let it make me angry. That's the growth thing, and I need to step back from it.
Do I have an ego? Yes. Do you think that entrepreneurs don't have egos? How egotistical is it to wake up one day as a college dropout and think to yourself that you're going to go rebuild the world financial system with no money, no connections, nothing? The only thing that makes that a sane idea in your mind is pure, undiluted narcissism. That's it. Any semblance of humility or self-doubt will creep in, and you'll fail because it's too hard. Otherwise, you'll get off the train the minute you achieve a little bit of success. You'll cash in your chips and go home. Every great entrepreneur has a lot of ego. The humility comes as you walk the road, face many failures, and people remind you again and again that you're not God and you're not the world's best thing.
You see the great humbling of all entrepreneurs. By the time they reach their 40s and 50s, if they're still alive and still in the game, they're radically different people from where they started. There's been a great humbling, especially over the last four years, where I've experienced the highest highs—ADA reaching a hundred billion dollars and nearly flipping Ethereum—to the lowest lows, with ADA at 25 cents and everyone criticizing it while the U.S. government tries to undermine us. We've witnessed it all, and I've had to deal with everything from deaths to the loss of great people and everything in between.
Does that mean I'm a humble person? No, I'm still confident and still have a lot of ego. It's a lifelong affliction of every entrepreneur. Get used to it. It's why people admire me. I'm crazy enough to think I can do what I do, and they accept me for who I am. I have an ego, yet I'm humble enough to admit it. I'm productive, and at the end of the day, the goals are for you. I want to make the world a better place. There's no reason to keep doing this unless that is the end goal. I just want people to be happy and healthy, and I want the world to be safe and productive for everyone in it. That's what we do.
That's why I have a clinic and spent $200 million on it. It wasn't to make any money; we're never going to make money on that. Healthcare is built from the ground up to benefit corrupt, twisted people and rob the goodwill of everyone else. Don't believe me? Ask any nurse about the horror stories they've seen, or any physician over 50 about the horror stories they've encountered. Healthcare gets rid of the good people and rewards the bad. It's a losing proposition to enter that field. My family's been in it for 70 years—from my grandfather to my dad to my brother. I'm there because I think I can do some good.
Every day we run into problems. They can be simple, stupid problems, like the local hospital refusing to credential our people. One doctor we have is imminently qualified but has been waiting for credentials for a year because they know we're a competitor, and they want to do everything in their power to curtail us. Does that hurt me financially? No, because I already wrote it off. I don't care if I make any money. It hurts the community because that physician can't have continuity of care when they go from my clinic to the hospital. But that's your reward when you enter a system that benefits the corrupt and evil while trying to change things.
It's the same in crypto. Why do you think the U.S. government weaponized and tried to burn our industry to the ground? Was it because of all the great things we're doing for the incumbents or because they were terrified we were going to replace them? But here's what people don't get. When I was at the Monroe Institute just a few days ago, I lived in Spartan communal accommodations, shared bathrooms, and a little dormitory bunk. Nobody knew who I was except for one guy whose son was an ADA holder. I wasn't Charles Hoskinson; I was just Charles. I would be happy if I woke up tomorrow and lost it all—everything. I'm not here to protect what I have. It's nice that I have it, but you don't get to keep it. Eventually, you lose it. It's called death.
So, I'm here to do work, to change things, to make things happen. All the people in the legacy system only have what they possess. They live in a constant state of fear of waking up one day and having nothing. That's the difference. There are a lot of people like me, and that's why we're going to win. We need to keep it positive. You have to realize that nobody in the Cardano ecosystem who is operating in good faith is the enemy. We are all frustrated. It's been a very frustrating few years. It's been hard. There have been a lot of missteps. We just need to calm down and get to the other side.
We have to adopt the mentality that all these things are just things. What really matters is what we leave behind. With this protocol, over the next 10, 20, 30, or 40 years, what is our collective legacy? Do we build something that has a legitimate shot to run the entire world, or do we build something that goes into some abstract history book, chapter 17, paragraph 14? "Cardano also ran. It was an interesting thing." Oh well, maybe one guy cares about it who wrote his master's thesis on it because he was looking for something to do and liked the name.
What do we want to be when we grow up? You have to ask yourself, what is the outcome, and what behavior produces that outcome? You can never get rid of your core. If you have a lot of ego in your core, you have a lot of ego in your core. Stop trying to mess around with it. If you're judging me, judge yourself honestly. Are you perfect? Do you wake up every day at 4:00 in the morning, go for a two-hour run, and never tell a lie or make a mistake? No, you don't. Put your potato chip bag away. I'm fat too, right? Stop judging people and focus on the good things because, at the end of the day, that's all that you remember.
Food for thought. To wrap it all up, Cardano is going to win. We just need an attitude adjustment. I hope this shows you that we're acting in good faith and pushing forward. The ecosystem as a whole is open to it. The difference between us and everybody else is that we have our fights in public. They have them behind closed doors. Don't for a second believe there aren't fights in other ecosystems; they're just good at PR, so they hide it. Because we have our conflicts out in the open, we have nothing to hide. That means we have integrity, nothing swept under the rug, and we can resolve long-standing problems.
I have two red lines: never accuse me of a crime, and if you take money from somebody and repurpose it, that really bothers me. Honestly speaking, I'm never going to tolerate it. I'm never going to back down on it. We'll keep fighting it, and I'll work with anybody who's going to be productive. Pretty simple. Cheers.
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