In a keynote titled “After Voltaire: The Next Evolution of Cardano,” Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, unveiled an ambitious roadmap that could see the blockchain ecosystem running a nation-state by 2030. Hoskinson envisions this nation-state as a substantial entity, potentially serving tens of millions of people.
We as an ecosystem have to make a decision. Do we want to be timid and just chase our tales and focus on small concerns or do we want to be bold and change the world? There’s no reason we can’t for the first time in human history. […] We have to decide what we’re going to do with it and how far we want to take it. I believe we can run a nation state on Cardano by 2030 and not a small one, one with tens of millions of people,” the Cardano founder claimed.
How Cardano Can Run A Nation State
Hoskinson reflected on the journey of Cardano over the past seven years, emphasizing the project’s transformative impact. “We have gone from a whiteboard like this to something that has changed the lives of countless thousands of people,” he stated. Having traveled to 74 countries and interacted with tens of thousands of individuals, he noted that many have expressed how their lives have been changed by being part of the Cardano community.
A central theme of Hoskinson’s speech was the power of on-chain governance and community collaboration. He highlighted that the upcoming on-chain governance system is “not just some [mechanism] to make a decision; it’s a thing to bring people together to make the right decisions.” This system aims to engage the community in shaping the future of Cardano, with hundreds of workshops planned for next year to discuss marketing, branding, and system growth.
Hoskinson also highlighted the central role of the Cardano Constitution, crafted “by and for the people,” which embedded human rights at its core. “We have to have some protections for our data and our privacy, our freedom of association, commerce, and expression,” he asserted. The constitution seeks to guarantee that the original intentions of the ecosystem are preserved, especially in a landscape where trust in unelected entities is dwindling.
The roadmap includes the launch of major projects like Midnight, which is expected to attract millions of new users to the ecosystem. Hoskinson believes that such initiatives will catalyze the development of dozens of other significant projects across various domains, further expanding the Cardano community.
Addressing the broader implications of Cardano’s evolution, Hoskinson drew parallels with historical revolutions that have reshaped societal structures. “Just like the American Revolution fundamentally changed the social contract of the world […] we can hold another revolution to take back our digital lives,” he proclaimed. He criticized the dominance of multi-trillion-dollar corporations that exert significant control over individual lives, advocating for a future where power is decentralized and returned to the people.
Hoskinson also emphasized the unity within the blockchain industry against centralization. “Everybody in the blockchain industry is the same in that we’re all trying to fight the same thing: centralization,” he said. He called for an end to divisive narratives, urging collaboration to prevent a “terrible future of 2030” dominated by centralized control.
Concluding his keynote, Hoskinson expressed optimism about the Cardano ecosystem’s future. “We built a group of people who can do pretty much everything and we now have the resources as an ecosystem to do that. And we also have an engine that keeps speeding up and getting faster. We just have to have the will to coordinate and prove that we are the ones to do this and we also have to realize that.”
At press time, ADA traded at $0.34.
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