Ethereum is a ‘Dictatorship’: Cardano’s Charles Hoskinson

Charles Hoskinson, the founder of the public blockchain platform Cardano has recently, openly attacked Ethereum for having way too much “dictatorship”. He made these claims while stressing that its Co-founder Vitalik Buterin is exerting much influence in the development of Ether’s decentralized network. 

Hoskinson attacked both Bitcoin and Ether alike. In a recent interview with a popular crypto media house, he spoke about the “anarchy of Bitcoin or the dictatorship of Ethereum.” He also said that Ethereum’s decentralized network is too “much” dependent on Vitalik in terms of direction and strategy.

Solving the Governance Trilemma

Cardano’s founder was in Singapore, when he spoke about managing and developing the decentralized networks of cryptocurrencies. He said that blockchain networks can either keep things simple with the help of predefined protocols (like Bitcoin) or choose to have a “king” to decide what’s next.

Hoskinson also discussed how the governance model of his organization simplifies the “trilemma” of governance. He disclosed having designated specific people to manage the integrity, effectiveness, and efficiency across the organizational procedures. Hoskinson also stated how having “Intersect”, a member-based organization simplifies complex governance decisions and helps to come to a collective decision with the help of voting.

Discussing the Ethereum ‘Dictatorship’

Explaining his controversial remark, Hoskinson said that the entire “vision” of Ethereum’s development begins and ends at its 30-year-old co-founder Vitalik Buterin. He therefore thinks that Ethereum can be compared with a “dictatorship.”

He further explained that, unlike a democratized organization like Cardano, the Ether team looks up to him for the “roadmap”, “inspiration”, and guidance. Vitalik runs the organization, he stated. Hoskinson also highlighted the heavy dependence of Ethereum on its co-founder. He said that if Vitalik is removed from the equation of ETH, it will get hard for the network to function smoothly.

Hoskinson also stated that it was Vitalik Buterin, who was solely responsible for making vital alterations in the ETH network. Vitalik altered the roadmap of Ethereum from the earlier base-chain’s sharding-based optimization to layer-2 networks and rollups. He further added that the ETH co-founder wrote blogs about it and discussed it in the interviews. He was simply advocating it. It wasn’t a random engineer embracing the ideas of “layer 2s” and “rollups”, he said.

Power not ‘Unilateral’

Cardano’s founder went further saying that although Vitalik’s vision heavily affects and influences Ethereum, he does not have the “unilateral” power in the ETH decentralized network. He explained that the Ether blockchain network used multiple sources to come to conclusions.

Critical decisions on the cryptocurrency are taken at the meetings held for the core developer team. He also highlighted how stakeholder input and the ETH community also played a role in these decisions. Hoskinson further added that the Ethereum Foundation is also a strong contender in the path of decision-making across the network.

About Charles Hoskinson

The founder of Cardano has also been one of the eight core members of the Ethereum founding team. He was fired from the organization for his clash of vision with Vitalik in 2014, at a meeting in Switzerland.

He has shaped Cardano since 2015 and has played a role similar to what he did at ETH. Hoskinson was recently attending a crypto event named TOKEN2049 organized in Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands between September 18 and 19 this year, where he gave a fiery interview to a popular crypto media organization, attacking ETH and its co-founder Vitalik Buterin.