Summarizing the interview content of Charles Hoskinson and Blockchain Daily:
I won't mention the content they boast about here; many bloggers should have summarized this, which is essentially: The Cardano ecosystem has made 'remarkable progress'. The underlying technology is more decentralized and scalable than ever. The on-chain governance system is maturing.
Blah blah blah.
Let's take a look at how Charles answered several questions from Blockchain Daily, and how I view this issue
1. What are the multiple reasons for the market downturn?
I have roughly summarized Charles's response,
1. It's due to market reasons; people haven't fully recovered from the crashes of FTX and Luna in 2022. Retail investors are reluctant to return to this market; simply put, retail investors are scared of being cut.
2. The impact of MEME coins has made the market chaotic, and everyone is gambling on MEME coins.
3. Uncertainty in the political environment; after Trump took office, he did not establish a proper regulatory environment and instead launched his own MEME coin, leading to corruption and chaos in the crypto market.
4. Institutions are constrained by products like ETFs and cannot easily sell Bitcoin, which prevents funds from flowing out of Bitcoin into other crypto assets.
I refute a few points.
1. Not all coins are bad; among the top ten coins, only Doge and ADA have not surpassed their previous highs in this round, while others have broken through their previous highs. You can check the monthly charts yourself.
2. If ADA always has to wait for the market environment to improve to have opportunities, then what is the significance of the things it has developed?
3. Is the reason people are not investing in ADA because of MEME coins?
2. Charles introduced midnight.
First, there was a hype about how great midnight is, and then a comparison was made between ALéo and midnight; one is a traditional VC model and the other is a community-driven model. In any case, midnight is impressive.
Here, Charles actually mentioned a point that many VCs indeed think midnight is great and are willing to invest a large amount of money, but once they hear it has to be issued on Cardano, they are filled with doubts and advise Charles not to launch it on this chain. However, Charles believes that the Cardano chain is very good and has no issues.
I think VCs might believe that, first, they certainly recognize Charles's vision and sales ability, but at the same time, it also indicates disappointment in Cardano, believing that launching night on other chains would have a higher success rate. I think this is also why night has independent governance tokens, independent gas tokens, and an independent network.
3. Then they grandiosely discussed the vision of blockchain.
It was mentioned that the U.S. has become extremely polarized due to a lack of a 'common truth foundation' and 'institutional legitimacy'. Then it was said that blockchain technology provides a way to rebuild objective reality and institutional legitimacy. There was some boasting about witnessing Cardano evolve from an idea conceived by two people in a bar in Osaka into a decentralized ecosystem worth $13 billion, spanning over 100 countries, with millions of participants. It's quite impressive, but I won't summarize too much of those 'showy' remarks.
4. Next, they talked about the global debt crisis and the return of sound money, mentioning that global debt is too high, and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Cardano provide a way to return to 'sound money' to solve these issues.
5. Cardano ecosystem: technology, projects, and future.
First, it was mentioned that Cardano's on-chain governance is strong and important, having made significant efforts and having its own constitution, which is said to be quite remarkable (as a retail investor, I don't know what its use is).
Scalability blueprint: Hydra and Ouroboros Leos
1. Hydra (Layer 2):
* Positioning: Not a 'magical switch' that can be turned on with one click, but a solution for dApps to adopt as needed, aimed at reducing transaction costs and speeding up settlement.
* Application: Already launched on the mainnet and used for Glacier airdrops, Delta DeFi exchanges, and instant payment scenarios (like vending machines).
* Potential: Demonstrated peak throughput of up to 1 million transactions per second in multiple interactive scenarios like gaming.
2. Ouroboros Leos (Layer 1):
* Positioning: A major upgrade to the underlying consensus algorithm, aimed at significantly improving the performance of the main chain.
* Challenges and goals: Achieving speeds similar to Solana while maintaining Cardano's high decentralization (thousands of staking pools, operable on Raspberry Pi).
* Expected outcome: It is expected to be launched next year, bringing a 60 to 100 times increase in throughput.
3. Stablecoins (USDC/USDT): Historically missed opportunities due to shifting responsibilities among founding entities and high integration costs. Now, with Midnight's success proving Cardano's ability to create immense value, the ecosystem's appeal to stablecoin issuers has greatly increased, and integration is expected to be completed next year.
4. Cardano's UTXO model is naturally compatible with Bitcoin, making communication simpler than account-based models like Ethereum. This presents advantages for developing Bitcoin DeFi: a trillion-dollar opportunity.
5. Oracles and other services: Successfully integrated top oracles like Pyth Network, Dune Analytics, and custodial service Fireblocks, showing that the ecosystem's appeal is increasing.
