The Cardano founder argues that Ethereum’s fundamental design flaws and centralization will ultimately cause its collapse.
Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, stated on Wednesday that Ethereum, the blockchain he co-founded, will likely become obsolete in the next 10 to 15 years.
Ethereum holds a market capitalization exceeding $212 billion, firmly establishing its position as the second-largest cryptocurrency behind Bitcoin. As of this writing, its native token, ETH, is trading near $1,760. In comparison, Cardano’s ADA token is valued at roughly $0.73, with a market cap slightly below $27 billion, based on data from CoinGecko.
In a YouTube video, Hoskinson asserts that Ethereum has made three significant mistakes that will cause it to become obsolete within the next decade. He compares Ethereum’s path to that of Myspace and Blackberry, labeling it a “victim of its own success.”
Challenges Facing Ethereum
“First and foremost, they have the wrong accounting model, the wrong virtual machine, and the wrong consensus model,” Hoskinson explains.
Hoskinson argues that each of these choices amounted to “self-inflicted wounds,” which had already been warned against by experts. He further stated, “To address these problems, they decided to implement strange slashing mechanisms and Layer 2 (L2) solutions, and now they are facing the repercussions of those decisions.”
The third problem, he claims, is Ethereum’s absence of a strong on-chain governance system.
“What needs to happen is a parallel track with solving all three things,” he said. “First off, you have to solve the technological problem – the current protocol they have for proof-of-stake is wrong, and they need to wean themselves off of that protocol gradually.”
Hoskinson highlighted Sui’s object model as a model worth following. Unlike blockchains that depend on accounts with key-value stores, Sui’s model focuses on objects as the core units of storage, according to its documentation.
Unsurprisingly, Hoskinson praised Cardano’s approach, stating, “We carefully designed a Layer 2 ecosystem for Cardano that’s not parasitic but symbiotic—that’s what Midnight is achieving with Cardano… We have the right accounting model, the right consensus model, and the right virtual machine model.”
RISC-V
Hoskinson wrapped up his critique by backing Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s suggestion to transition to the RISC-V architecture, a model that Cardano has already adopted.
Hoskinson remarked, “Switching to RISC-V is, in my view, a solid move. It’s a very sensible choice on Vitalik’s part.” However, he added, “The accounting model also requires an overhaul.”
As proposed by Buterin, RISC-V would serve as a replacement for the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which currently functions as the execution environment for Ethereum smart contracts.
Buterin stated that adopting RISC-V would “significantly enhance the efficiency of the Ethereum execution layer, addressing one of the main scaling bottlenecks, while also simplifying the execution layer.”
