Key takeaways:
- Charles Hoskinson, Cardano’s founder and the co-founder of Ethereum, talked about his vision for Cardano in 2022
- According to Hoskinson, several improvements to the general DeFi functionality are coming in 2022
- The price of Cardano rallied to a near-monthly high following Hoskinson’s Youtube appearance
Last Friday, Cardano’s founder Charles Hoskinson unveiled plans for the rapidly developing network in a half-hour-long Youtube video. The prominent software developer and co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain platform talked about his vision for Cardano in 2022 and beyond.
Cardano trails top DeFi competitors due to slow development and complex smart contract language
In his Youtube appearance, titled Happy Christmas Eve, Hoskinson touched upon several key issues that need to be resolved if Cardano is to become a leading decentralized finance (DeFi) platform. After a long wait, the network saw the launch of highly anticipated smart contract functionality in September’s Alonzo hard fork upgrade.
Charles Hoskinson is one of the most respected figures in the community, both for his engineering prowess and leadership mindset.
However, the programing language for smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps), called Plutus scrips, has gained little traction over the last couple of months due to its reportedly high complexity and steep learning curve.
While the price of Cardano’s native digital assets ADA exploded to an all-time high above $3 in anticipation of the Alonzo upgrade, the network still holds no TVL on its rails according to blockchain analytics firm DefiLlama. For reference, there is currently more than $150 billion value locked in decentralized services and products on the Ethereum platform, Cardano’s top competitor.
Improvements to DeFi, a native web wallet, and a peer-to-peer framework are in the pipeline for next year
Hoskinson is well aware of the problems that are holding Cardano back from reaching its full potential.
“My goal for the second half of 2022 is to figure out how to put all the pieces together to get an end-to-end microfinance transaction on Cardano,” explained Hoskinson and added, “A formal open-source project structure is going to be formed, kind of like Hyperledger to Linux.”
Judging by Hoskinson’s statements, it seems that the developing team is working on a structure that would oversee the process of creation of decentralized applications on the platform. If met with open arms by software developers, this could lead to the proliferation of a high number of public DeFi services on Cardano in 2022.
The team is reportedly also working on a native web wallet designed for seamless interaction between various Cardano-based DeFi protocols and improvements on community governance.
Hoskinson continued by turning his attention to peer-to-peer (P2P) functionality and decentralization efforts. “Peer-to-peer is currently being tested with the stake pool operators on the testnet, and there’s lots of stuff happening there,” the founder said. Once the testing phase is finished, we could see Cardano’s network validators interact directly with one another, which would provide a greater degree of decentralization to the network and help alleviate some of the community’s concerns.
The vision outlined by Hoskinson in the recent video contributed to strong bullish activity, which saw the price of ADA increase from $1.35 on December 23 to the monthly high of $1.59 on December 27 – ADA recorded a 10% jump on Monday alone.
The price of ADA has since retraced to $1.49 at press time, mirroring the broader trend permeating the markets.
