The comments started a fiery debate between him and Canton Foundation CEO Yuval Rooz on social media, and here’s how things went down.
Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano (ADA) and CEO of Input Output (IO), took it on X to criticize the hype surrounding the Canton Network (CC). He sarcastically called out how the platform, powered by a consortium of legacy finance, is trying to catch up to what XRP and Midnight (NIGHT) have already accomplished, which is “100x beyond their ambitions.” Additionally, he stated that the network doesn’t truly understand what makes Web3 unique and meaningful.
Yuval Rooz, founder and CEO of Digital Asset and Canton Foundation, responded to Hoskinson’s comments. He asked him what his Web3 chain really achieved, other than extracting money from retail investors. Moreover, he challenged the Cardano founder to provide data on decentralized exchange (DEX) and decentralized finance (DeFi) volumes to support his arguments.
Hoskinson fired back, highlighting that Cardano introduced the world’s first liquid, non-custodial, and provably secure staking protocol. It was the first to market with an EUTXO (Extended Unspent Transaction Output) model, which also adds smart contracts to UTXOs.
Furthermore, Hoskinson claimed that Cardano is the industry’s most-cited security model for analyzing blockchains in over 250 research papers, including the influential academic paper “The Bitcoin Backbone Protocol: Analysis and Applications.” Likewise, he pointed out that it has the largest on-chain governance system production with an on-chain constitution managing 1.5 billion ADA. He emphasized that no major smart contract hacks occurred on its network and that it was the first to market with Haskell and Agda, as well as the most decentralized crypto, as measured by the Edinburgh Decentralisation Index (EDI).
On the other hand, Hoskinson admitted that Cardano’s DeFi performance needs to improve. Nonetheless, he is confident that it will get a significant boost next year as major integrations plug in, plus more Bitcoin (BTC) and XRP assets flow into the network, particularly through the Midnight chain.
Hoskinson noted that Rooz’s group has become too comfortable publicly attacking Cardano despite doing a lot in the financial sector. He reminded him that the network offered an open-source, patent-free, and banker-free ecosystem, thereby translating blockchain’s original vision of decentralization, democratization, and financial freedom for all into action.
The exchange continued with Hoskinson even bringing up how several members of Canton’s consortium had a hand in the global financial crisis in 2008, only for Rooz to answer that he was with Citadel and DRW at the time and that they never scammed retail investors. However, the Cardano founder didn’t let it end there, telling the Canton founder that the same group he worked with is currently behind all the digital asset treasury (DAT) companies marketing their so-called “infinity money glitch” this year.
Rooz eventually tried to end the conversation by saying that his group wasn’t saying anything about Cardano until Hoskinson made his “lazy comment.” He shut him down, telling him to “go back to staying alive.”
The exchange between the two industry heavyweights drew mixed reactions from the crypto community, as both received backing from their respective supporters. Nevertheless, those in the neutral area noted that both Cardano and Canton made significant contributions to the Web3 sector.
The pacifists said they had nothing to gain from attacking one another. They explained that the blockchain sector is still relatively small compared to the legacy finance industry. So, instead of dragging each other down, they’re better off launching collaborations.
