Hoskinson Faces Criticism Over Cardano Roadmap Promises

Cardano (ADA) founder Charles Hoskinson ignited debate on Wednesday. The head of Input Output Global (IOG) claimed that Cardano had been completed, adding that he has been working on the project without any financial compensation since 2020.

By completing Cardano, Hoskinson meant that the network had fulfilled the original contractual obligations set out for IOG upon Cardano’s launch in 2015.

Hoskinson’s remarks stem from the expiration of IOG’s original contract that started with the Genesis Block Distribution in 2015.

 “Cardano has been completed. The original contract expired in 2020. I’ve been working for free because I care about Cardano since 2020,” Hoskinson stated.

Further, he explained that scaling as per the original roadmap is done, adding that it has transcended into a moving target. According to Hoskinson, the IOG is currently working on advanced scaling solutions, such as Leios and Hydra.

However, these projects may be “at risk” without guaranteed funding. According to Hoskinson, failure to receive funding could lead to their departure for other opportunities. The statement raised eyebrows, drawing sharp criticism from longtime community members.

“I mean this respectfully: How was the contract completed if scaling wasn’t fully delivered as per the roadmap?” one user challenged.

The original roadmap, which Hoskinson claims concluded in 2020, promised scalability to rival top blockchains. Hydra, in particular, aims to enable parallel transaction processing.

This could elevate Cardano’s throughput to rival Solana’s theoretical 65,000 transactions per second (TPS), a stark contrast to its current TPS.

However, community members argue Cardano still falls short of its third-generation blockchain vision for mass adoption.

“Basho, Leois, and Hydra were all talked about and they haven’t been implemented on mainnet. So how has Cardano been fully completed as of the original roadmap? Those things are clearly missing,” another user added.

Meanwhile, this controversy extends to broader concerns about Cardano’s governance and funding model. Hoskinson articulated that IOG would not work at a loss or for free.

He also challenged the community’s push for decentralized decision-making, particularly the idea of “competitive bids” for development work. According to Hoskinson, this disadvantages Western developers in high-cost regions.

He believes advocating for such a model could compel the IOG to either lay off staff or establish development centers in lower-cost areas like India or Eastern Europe.

“…I’m also not going to lay off hundreds of employees and replace them with low-cost developers to compete with low-cost bids like most companies do. We are not a time and material firm. We build cryptocurrencies,” he stated.

Hoskinson previously criticized the Cardano Foundation‘s governance structure. As BeInCrypto reported, he argued that it sidelines the ADA community and advocated for a membership-based organization (MBO) transition.

Other previous disputes have included budget allocation debates and differing views on the recently introduced Cardano constitution.

While the foundation has expressed a willingness to support the new constitution, it has signaled caution regarding budget approvals, citing a need for further review.

As of this writing, Cardano’s ADA token was trading for $0.68, down by nearly 2% in the last 24 hours.