Charles Hoskinson, the 34-year-old co-founder of Ethereum and founder of Cardano, is one of those rare crypto leaders actively working to help the cryptocurrency community.
In this article, we wanted to examine him, his work on Cardano, and how he constantly shares his opinions with the public, all to bring crypto closer to the masses.
Who Is Charles Hoskinson?Charles Hoskinson is an entrepreneur and founder of Cardano, one of the world’s top 10 cryptocurrency platforms. He is also the co-founder of Input Output Global (IOHK), a company in the blockchain engineering space that creates high-assurance blockchain-based infrastructure solutions.
Moreover, Charles is one of the five Ethereum founders who joined Vitalik Buterin’s team in 2013. He acted as the company’s CEO until 2014, when Buterin decided to remove him as the two held opposing views of what Ethereum should be. Buterin wanted to keep the project a nonprofit, while Hoskinson thought it should move into the commercial waters.
Charles Hoskinson went on to create IOHK with a former Ethereum colleague, and the company eventually developed Cardano, one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrencies.
Besides leading IOHK and Cardano, he is now mainly working on educating the masses about cryptocurrency and its benefits. He is a big proponent of decentralization and wants to help cryptographic tools become more accessible to everyday people.
Benefits of Cardano (ADA)Charles Hoskinson created Cardano with the goal of it being a platform for innovators, changemakers, and visionaries. Cardano is a proof-of-stake blockchain platform that aims to help the masses and make society more transparent, secure, and fair, all in line with what Hoskinson believes.
The name Cardano comes from a 16th-century polymath called Gerolamo Cardano. The name of the native Cardano cryptocurrency, ADA, comes from 19th-century mathematician Ada Lovelace, one of the first computer programmers.
The Cardano platform is one of the few blockchains that use the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism that requires much less energy than Bitcoin’s proof-of-work. It also prides itself on supporting technologies that go through a rigorous process of peer-review research, a view Hoskinson, a mathematician, also highly values. This makes Cardano stable and durable — a necessary trait for cryptocurrencies.
Cardano is also highly versatile, quite evident from the fact that it now supports the creation of NFTs and smart contracts.
Hoskinson in the Crypto CommunityCharles Hoskinson is known for his efforts to help the crypto community improve, teaching beginners the benefits of blockchain and crypto and a lot more.
His defense of decentralization as a concept and his ADA cryptocurrency is evident. He recently spoke against Michael Saylor, the MicroStrategy CEO, who stated that ADA is a security, unlike Bitcoin, which is a commodity.
Hoskinson argued that Cardano is not just more decentralized than Bitcoin, but it also has a lot more uses than BTC in the real world. He asserted that ADA is wholly decentralized and that people don’t use the token for pure speculation, as is often the case with BTC.
Besides defending proof-of-stake and his cryptocurrency, he defends blockchain use in the real world. He recently testified to Congress to adequately explain blockchain and its benefits to the world.
Moreover, he explained the importance of updated regulatory frameworks that would further improve blockchain technology’s place in the eyes of the law.
Hoskinson didn’t just defend his own project but other startups and how their blockchain-based technologies improve the audibility and transparency of entire industries.
These are certainly good examples of what crypto leaders should do for the community. Thankfully, he is not the only one. Many other companies and individuals work on educating the masses about the benefits of blockchain and crypto.
A good example is Blueshift, a portfolio-based asset management protocol powered by Cardano. Blueshift is not just based on Hoskinson’s platform, but it’s a company that shares his views on the importance of educating beginners. The company constantly strives to improve people’s knowledge of crypto as it knows how vital blockchain technology is and how it needs to be more accessible to regular users.
What’s more, the founder of Blueshift, Igor Mikhalev, met and worked with Hoskonsin, which eventually led him to base his protocol on Cardano. It shows how Hoskinson’s work can significantly impact others and inspire them to create new technological solutions.
Bottom LineCharles Hoskinson is undoubtedly a fascinating individual in the crypto community. His work, most notably the Cardano platform, has helped many, but his efforts to educate the masses about crypto, blockchain, and decentralization, should not go unnoticed.
We need people and organizations like that. Through them, cryptocurrency will continue to improve its place in the world, and further enter the mainstream where it can do the most good.