Cardano Creator Criticizes Ethereum as a Dictatorship

Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano (ADA), is known for his outspoken nature. In a recent interview, Hoskinson didn’t hold back as he criticized Ethereum (ETH), comparing its governance structure to a “dictatorship.” According to him, Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, wields too much power over the direction of the network, which is supposed to be decentralized.

Hoskinson believes that Cardano avoids this pitfall through its Voltaire-era governance model, which empowers the community to make decisions and prevents power from being concentrated in one person’s hands. He sees Cardano as a balanced alternative to the extremes of Bitcoin’s anarchy and Ethereum’s dictatorship.

During the interview with Cointelegraph at Token2049 in Singapore, Hoskinson further explained his comments. He emphasized that Ethereum’s entire vision revolves around Vitalik Buterin, and without him, the network’s momentum could suffer. Hoskinson questioned what Ethereum’s future would look like without Buterin’s influence and how quickly they could progress without him.

Hoskinson also blamed Buterin for Ethereum’s strategic shift. Originally, Ethereum was supposed to scale through sharding, but Buterin led the network towards rollups and layer-2 solutions instead. While this approach has allowed for short-term scalability, it has faced criticism from detractors. Critics have raised concerns about the rise of “extractive L2s” and a decline in activity and fee revenue on Ethereum’s base layer.

Hoskinson questioned the origin of the move towards layer 2s and rollups, suggesting that it was driven by Buterin rather than a decentralized community. In his view, this reinforces the idea that Ethereum’s future is too heavily influenced by one person’s vision.