Charles Hoskinson, co-founder of Cardano, has dispelled allegations that it had abandoned the network’s Hydra layer-2 scaling initiative, saying it is just pure FUD.
The IOHK CEO confirmed to X on March 18 that the project’s developers had not abandoned it.
“I am seeing videos that purport Hydra has been abandoned,” he stated, adding, “That is complete and utter nonsense.”
Prototyped to increase transaction processing capacity and reduce transaction costs on the Cardano blockchain, Hydra debuted on the Cardano platform in May 2023. Cardano’s “Basho” roadmap, which focuses on scalability, has incorporated it as a component.
Hoskinson’s March 13 announcement of an integration with Hyperledger Firefly, a scaling solution involving the delivery of a technology stack for enterprises to construct and scale Web3 applications, prompted The Cryptoviser, a YouTube channel, to publish a video on March 17 claiming that Cardano had “pivoted away from Hydra.”
In debunking the rumors, Hoskinson wrote to his 980,000 followers on X, “The team has never been more motivated and productive, there is tremendous community engagement, and new papers on the way to improve the protocol.”
It was not the first time Hoskinson had to publicly defend ” FUD ” regarding Hydra.
Hoskinson promoted Hydra in an October video as a scaling solution for Cardano, thereby protecting against FUD regarding networks’ inadequate or nonexistent scaling.
He defended Castro against then-prevailing throughput criticisms by stating, “Cardano is not a TPS system.” “The system is transaction-per-transaction.”
Hydra, he continued, had “made a slight pivot” by creating middleware that enables developers to construct decentralized applications (DApps) for Cardano.
Hoskinson resorted to defensive tactics on March 18, addressing a “wave of FUD” concerning its scaling roadmap and partnership with digital ID platform World Mobile.
“Man, it’s raining FUD this weekend, and I’m not sure about the origin. I guess it’s that time of the cycle where everyone freaks out about Cardano’s potential and roadmap, so they throw a wave of FUD at us.”
Cardano’s total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance (DeFi) has increased this year, according to DefiLlama, reaching an all-time peak of $520 million on March 14.
Nevertheless, the network lags significantly behind its rivals, Ethereum, Tron, BNB Smart Chain, and Solana, collectively worth $72 billion in TVL.
