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Cardano founder eyes ADA at $3 to $10 in major breakout

Charles Hoskinson, the creator of Cardano, warned that the decade-long decentralized governance blockchain experiment could falter unless its holders approve a "package" budget that keeps his company, Input Output Global (IOG), at the heart of the next growth phase of the protocol - a phase he believes could push ADA to between $3 and $10.

During a live stream over the weekend, the founder, sounding hoarse, told viewers he has "drawn a line" after spending the last five years "working for free" on Cardano-Core code. The live stream followed a heated debate about a temporary budget funded by the treasury, which must be ratified by elected DRep representatives before the first fiscal year of the network on-chain ends.

Hoskinson said: "We say, $50, $60, $70 million, and the ecosystem size could triple or quadruple. We might see $3, $5, or $10."

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Hoskinson argued that Cardano can only maintain its significance if the community supports a coherent engineering roadmap, rather than cherry-picking specific items to cut costs. The proposed document - which has already been supported by a majority of DRep representatives in principle - supports nearly 150 full-time engineers from IOG and dozens of research scientists.

This project funds work on new scalability fundamentals, such as state channels, rollups, and new versions of Leios, alongside ongoing investment in the lightweight client Mithril system, privacy-preserving partner chains, and interoperability tools that Hoskinson sees as critical to attracting developers and achieving overall value. He said: "You are funding IOG's vision. You are getting my time, my company's time, and our strategy. The price is the price."

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IOG, which wrote every line of Cardano's original codebase, stopped receiving any revenue related to the 2015 token generation event when those contracts expired in 2020. Since then, the company has funded protocol upgrades and market bridge infrastructure "out of its own pocket," as Hoskinson said, including tens of millions of dollars to list Cardano's native assets with custodians and exchanges.

Cardano treasury with limits

The Cardano on-chain wallet now holds about 1.7 billion ADA. In February, 72% of voting wallets approved a cap on net change, which sets the upcoming settlement at 350 million ADA. Hoskinson praised this barrier but reminded coin holders that it is up to DRep representatives to determine if IOG's request represents value.

Related reading: Cardano price could rise by 300% from here if it breaks this level

He compared the current battle to building a smartphone "by committee": "You have a camera, a CPU, memory, antennas... can you imagine how difficult it is to build a phone with committees? You will never create a competitive product."

If DRep representatives vote against the package or only fund fragmented parts, IOG will begin to "withdraw responsibly" after completing the Leios upgrade, reallocating engineers to other projects - including Midnight, a privacy-focused partner chain that Hoskinson believes will attract "millions of users" and make Cardano the "largest AVS system" in the cryptocurrency world. He admitted: "The vendor can be dispensed with," but warned that downsizing the core team risks losing one of the "finest engineering and research teams in the world of cryptocurrency."

Hoskinson rejected accusations that the proposal contradicts Cardano's decentralization principles. He stated that decentralization does not mean the absence of leadership; rather, it means the right to appoint - and dismiss - stewards of a shared vision for the product. He added: "There is no contradiction in a decentralized system hiring someone to steward your vision and product for a specific period."

However, he acknowledged frustration over what he called the ecosystem's "acquired political impotence," urging representatives to move from attacking on social media to making concrete budget decisions: "Twitter is not reality... Let's build the budget, vote yes or no, and move on."

With the opening of the settlement window, ADA shareholders face a tough choice: either keep IOG as a strategic manager at the declared cost, or redirect treasury funds to new investment pools like Pragma, TXPipe, or DC Spark, accepting the risks of a slower and more fragmented development pace. Hoskinson framed the decision in stark economic terms:

I am not Elon Musk asking for a salary of $50 billion. I am simply saying I want you to cover my engineers' expenses and leave us a small profit... If you like that, vote yes. If you don't like it, vote no, then pick someone else to do it.

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At the time of publishing this report, ADA was trading at $0.71.