Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, popular for his interactions with the community via his series of AMA sessions, delivered his keynote speech at the Binance Blockchain Week that has ended today.Hoskinson covered several matters during the Monday event, including moving outside the comfort zone of Bitcoin and what decentralization means going ahead.
The Cardano founder kicked off his speech by observing that day by day, the role of crypto is becoming more apparent, pointing to recent events.He noted that at its core, blockchain tech is critical in bringing trust, equality, fairness, and reciprocity, but as the space changes, tough realities are now being defined.
Moving away, away from the comfort of Bitcoin
Hoskinson noted that as the industry evolves and moves away from the comfort and homogeneity of Bitcoin, several ideas begin to emerge.
For instance, now that authorities are looking to establish regulatory frameworks around the space, issues that haven’t been explored in the past are coming up – there are questions about de-autonomizing the sector, say looking into the reversibility of transactions, and whether crypto funds can be frozen.
On the matter of decentralization, the IO Global CEO challenged the audience, arguing that despite the evolution of the larger blockchain industry, there still isn’t an ‘actual’ definition or understanding of some basic phenomena such as decentralization and throughput.
He underscored the necessity for a conversation on these matters, concluding that true decentralization would require all heads put together to collectively define the what and whatnots for this up-and-coming webspace.
The Cardano founder also maintained that an ambition to make profits off this niche would defy the unique fundamentals of blockchain tech.
Not to make the same mistakes as those who came before
Noting that this multi-trillion-dollar industry is here to stay, he cautioned that the builders must not make the same mistakes others have made in the past.In particular, Hoskinson pointed to the dawn of the internet age during which Web2 bred giant companies like Google and Amazon that now have massive control over users.
The American mathematician observed that the blockchain space is now at a similar crossroads as protocols become even better placed to serve users in their billions.Hoskinson pledged with the builders to choose integrity and decentralization, without which the near future would see blockchain tech become centralized in nature, whereby the few control the many – “highly centralized consensus algorithms that could be reset at any time.”
The Vasil hard fork
On his beloved Cardano blockchain, Hoskinson talked of the Vasil hard fork that should ideally enhance the overall network performance come June.
He explained that Vasil would likely be an “overloaded release,” considering that most of the updates planned for February were pushed to when it comes.
Hoskinson said that Vasil would massively enhance throughput and deliver, to builders, the ability to develop Cardano smart contracts that don’t demand high throughput.
Cardano gains EVM compatibility, somehow
More good news for the Cardano community as the first sidechain was launched on Monday, having been under development since mid-last year.
The Milkomeda Foundation unveiled Milkomeda C1, an Ethereum virtual machine-compatible sidechain that would allow Ethereum dApps to deploy on Cardano.Users can now easily move assets across EVM-compatible chains and the Cardano network, with wrapped ADA (wADA) usable to pay transaction fees.
In a tweet, Hoskinson lauded this moment as a “great development for Cardano.”
Even more developments are yet to come, as Milkomeda aims to bring interoperability between Cardano and other layer one chains such as Solana to help the network grow further.
In explaining the new functionality, CTO of dcSpark (a major contributor to the new product) Sebastien Guillemot said in a blog post published last August that the adoption would introduce novel wrapped smart contracts.
These smart contracts would make the L1 a powerful coordination layer where Cardano users would reside when executing smart contracts on an EVM sidechain without necessarily moving to the sidechain.
They would enhance the user experience as the end users would complete cross-chain transactions without leaving Cardano’s mainnet while not needing to know what exactly is happening in the background.
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