Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has doubled down on his comments about completing the blockchain's development. In an AMA, the Cardano founder was asked about finishing Cardano; he answered in the affirmative, saying yes, the roadmap was done.
In a recent livestream titled “Finishing Cardano,” Hoskinson maintains that his job with Cardano was done. “My job is done with Cardano,” he said, doubling down on his recent statements and on where things stand with Cardano.
Finishing Cardano https://t.co/LtFVLOHrxk
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) November 13, 2026
Hoskinson said he saw a barrage of criticism and negative comments after his remarks, with some speculating that he had failed, that Cardano was a failed project, or that he was leaving Cardano. He, however, maintains that there is no ambiguity in his statements.
From $72 million to $6 billion: Hoskinson spotlights ADA growth
Hoskinson revisited the launch of Cardano (ADA) in 2015 in response to critics who claimed that he or the Cardano project had failed.
“So, let's look at 2015. There was a crowd sale conducted to sell ADA into Japan. The price for this was less than 0.2 cents per ADA. And Bitcoin was actually used as the settlement system for this. They bought in yen and settled in Bitcoin. So there are even on-chain records of the sales tranche. The total amount of money raised was $72 million.”
Highlighting the growth of the Cardano cryptocurrency, Hoskinson noted that the market valuation has increased immensely from an initial $72 million. “We built a network that went from a $72 million valuation to an all-time high of $100 billion,” Hoskinson stated.
Cardano reached an all-time high price of $3.09 on September 2, 2021, which corresponded to an all-time-high market capitalization of nearly $100 billion at that peak.
Following ADA's drop from this ATH, Cardano's market valuation sits at $6.03 billion. Hoskinson maintains that this is still growth, up from an initial $72 million. “Even in its deflated state, everybody's saying it's destroyed and it's a dead coin and all these other things. It's $6 billion. It went from 72 to six,” Hoskinson said.
Cardano roadmap not abandoned
Hoskinson specifically reiterated that the Cardano roadmap is not being abandoned and went on to reveal further growth credentials: “We delivered a fully decentralized, recursively self-improving ecosystem. We left behind a community-led and community-owned treasury that, at its all-time high, had $4 billion in value, and initiated a constitution.”
“We built an entire on-chain governance system, wrote a constitution, got the entire community involved, and created a recursively self-improving system that's fully decentralized—the most decentralized cryptocurrency on the planet,” Hoskinson added.