Author: Ethan, Odaily Planet Daily
On August 4, in a relatively quiet yet significantly important on-chain vote, the Cardano community passed a core proposal called the 'IOE Roadmap': allocating up to 96,817,080 ADA (approximately 71 million dollars at the time) in treasury funds to support the technical upgrades of the Cardano core protocol. The final approval rate for this proposal was 74.01%, indicating that in a public chain system known for slow governance, a radical reform plan initiated by Charles Hoskinson received support beyond expectations.
According to the proposal document, the funds will mainly be used for three aspects: scalability improvements, developer experience optimization, and cross-chain interoperability upgrades. The underlying goal is clear: to pave the technological runway for Cardano's final phase towards the 'Voltaire era'. In other words, this is a global battle centered around 'on-chain governance, DeFi ecology, and basic protocol iteration'.
This is not a small amount. In the context of DeFi projects, it is enough to support a complete Layer 1 development budget for a year; in the context of Cardano itself, it is even the most significant allocation of protocol-level funds to date. Notably, this was not directly allocated by the three major entities of the foundation, IOG, or EMURGO, but initiated through on-chain community proposals and approved by the governance mechanism—this signifies that Cardano is taking action towards its long-claimed goal of decentralization.
But surrounding this funding vote, there are not only consensus issues but also many questions. Why spend this money when market attention is not on it? Who will supervise the use of these funds? Will the allocation itself trigger liquidity changes in ADA? And all these questions point to that familiar name: Charles Hoskinson (founder of Cardano).
Starting in 2023, Hoskinson's style seems to have undergone a fundamental shift: from a 'philosophical technical idealist' to a 'pragmatist actively promoting governance reform'. And this 71 million dollar allocation may just be a footnote to his identity transformation.
Is all of this a matter of accidental path dependence, or was it prepared in advance? Let's return to the starting point of the proposal.
Proposal retrospective: from criticizing Ethereum to building a governance path.
If Ethereum defined the 'general computational logic of smart contracts', then Cardano's ambition has never been limited to 'smart' at the code level. In Hoskinson's long-term expression, Cardano carries a more complete 'institutional experiment'—it is not just a decentralized execution tool but a set of on-chain public governance systems that can self-update and self-manage. To achieve this goal, he has wagered on the patience of building 'institutional components' from scratch and the stubborn belief that 'slow is fast'.
The approval of the funding proposal was not a sudden event but a natural extension of Cardano's entire governance advancement path. As early as April 2024, Cardano officially announced the hard fork upgrade plan named Chang, which advances network governance autonomy in two phases—of which the core is the reconstruction of the on-chain voting mechanism, constitutional framework, and treasury allocation authority, ultimately moving towards the final phase of its roadmap, the so-called 'Voltaire era'.
On the technical level, the Chang upgrade supporting CIP-1694 proposal has restructured the power distribution among governance participants. ADA holders will be able to delegate their governance rights to 'DReps' (representative voters), SPO (stake pool operators), and the interim constitutional committee ICC, forming a governance pattern that combines tripartite negotiation and on-chain execution. All of this will operate automatically on-chain through smart contracts and the CIP roadmap, without relying on the foundation or Hoskinson himself.
Image source from (What to Know About the Chang Hard Fork (Cardano))
This design sounds complex, but the core logic is quite simple: the distribution of governance rights should match the distribution of economic rights. This is also what Hoskinson has emphasized for many years as 'true decentralization', a structure that no longer relies on leader figures but is led by token holders in decision-making.
However, to truly move from ideals to reality, mere mechanism design is not enough; execution capability, technical architecture, and governance infrastructure must keep pace. Thus, the '710 million dollar allocation' is no longer just a fiscal allocation issue; it is almost a 'major test' of the entire system design.
The more critical point is that this allocation is not a personal command from Charles Hoskinson but is realized through community proposals and on-chain voting. At least from the execution layer's perspective, it also supports that Cardano is moving from 'founder rule' to 'institution-driven', even if the process is long and slow, it is fulfilling Hoskinson's promise from years ago in some form.
As early as an AMA in April 2025, Hoskinson again criticized Ethereum's three structural defects: flawed economic models, redundant VM designs, and L2 'parasitism' that hollowed out the value of the main chain. He pointed out, 'Their governance model failed to address the core scalability issues, instead draining value from the main chain.' Cardano's response is itself—building a complete set of its own public governance stack. In this structure, funds are not weapons controlled by the founding team but rather a concrete embodiment of the governance will of ADA holders. The 71 million dollar allocation is just the first step; the real endpoint is whether Cardano can become the first 'truly autonomous' financial protocol ecosystem in the crypto world.
However, this autonomous path is not without doubts and divisions.
Controversial view: His chain criticism, community distrust, and the reconstruction of the founder's credibility.
For the Cardano community, this is not merely an upgrade vote but more like a trust test for Charles Hoskinson himself—and the tension arises because Hoskinson has always been the entire brilliance of this project and the center of all controversies.
Time rewinds to June 2025, when Hoskinson proposed a radical suggestion in a live broadcast: to exchange 100 million dollars' worth of ADA for Bitcoin and stablecoins within the ecosystem to improve Cardano's stablecoin liquidity and promote the development of the Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem Cardinal. He stated that Cardano's current TVL and stablecoin scale are severely lagging, and this conversion will 'bring non-inflationary income' and establish a healthier asset base.
Once the proposal was released, it immediately sparked controversy. Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko publicly blasted the proposal as 'too stupid', questioning why the project party would hold Bitcoin on behalf of users instead of choosing 'more rational short-term debt assets'. Meanwhile, within the community, there was panic over the potential selling pressure on ADA, with some users candidly stating in forums, 'Are you asking us to delegate voting for you to swap it for other coins?'
Although Hoskinson argues that the market depth is sufficient to absorb the selling pressure, this does not completely quell the concerns. This isn't over yet; on the other hand, more fuel to the fire comes from the revival of old accusations against Hoskinson—a transfer record of 318 million ADA from the 2021 Allegra hard fork period was reexamined, with some questioning whether Hoskinson had ever abused the genesis key to secretly allocate funds, amounting to nearly 600 million dollars. NFT artist Masato Alexander pointed out that this transfer was 'extremely unusual' and directly stated on social media that 'on-chain records do not lie'.
In response to the accusations, Hoskinson stated in mid-May that he felt 'deeply hurt', claiming that most of these ADA had already been redeemed by the original buyers and that the remaining portion had been donated to the Cardano governance organization Intersect. He stated, 'We will release a complete audit report in mid-August.' He also added that he would consider handing over his social media to a professional team to avoid emotional responses causing misunderstandings.
A previous live broadcast of Charles Hoskinson.
In fact, this is not Hoskinson's first encounter with public skepticism. As early as 2022, Laura Shin, author of (The Cryptopians), accused Hoskinson of exaggerating his educational and professional background, claiming he did not have a doctoral degree and had early on claimed to have collaborations with the CIA or DARPA. 'This book is a nice piece of fiction,' Hoskinson responded, 'but it's not good enough to surpass Tolkien.'
These trust crises have cast a shadow of 'founder intervention' over this funding event—despite the allocation being completed through on-chain governance, in the eyes of many observers, all decisions of Cardano still revolve around Charles's will.
This 'binding of personality and protocol' is both the reason Cardano can maintain unity in long-term construction and may also become an obstacle to its path toward true autonomy. Now, as Hoskinson begins to try to delegate more power to Intersect and the on-chain voting mechanism, he himself is also walking the path of transitioning from 'ruler' to 'spiritual symbol'.
Whether this transformation is thorough enough and whether Cardano can withstand the growing pains of moving from 'leader charisma' to 'institutional autonomy' will gradually be revealed in the upcoming market feedback and ecological evolution.
Market follow-up: On-chain ecological reconstruction and the formation of a pragmatic route.
Compared to controversies and emotions, the on-chain data remains calm, even cold. They do not speak of sentiment but only record behavior. From a recent series of governance events and treasury allocation actions, we may see a clear trend signal: Cardano is moving from conceptual grounding to pragmatic execution.
This signal is first reflected in the change in asset structure. The Cardano Foundation disclosed that as of July, the total value of its held crypto assets increased to 659.1 million dollars, with Bitcoin's share rising to 15%, while ADA's share fell to 77%. In other words, the foundation itself has begun to reduce its single reliance on its native currency and shift towards a more robust asset allocation structure.
This echoes Hoskinson's proposed concept of 'non-inflationary income sources' to some extent and indirectly refutes the community's concerns that 'the coin swap proposal will harm ADA prices': the reality is that they have already started doing this.
At the same time, Cardano is quietly undergoing changes at the DeFi layer. In June 2025, Hoskinson announced the launch of the Bitcoin DeFi protocol Cardinal, which enables cross-chain non-custodial support based on MuSig 2 multi-signature, allowing BTC to participate in staking, lending, and trading operations on the Cardano chain, and compatible with Ordinals inscriptions as collateral. This protocol will also integrate zero-knowledge proof systems to enhance liquidity and interoperability.
This marks the first time Cardano has technically opened up the liquidity entry for Bitcoin assets, and it signifies that its ecological strategy has shifted from 'building a closed academic public chain' to 'embracing cross-chain compatibility with mainstream assets'. In other words, Cardano is no longer trying to carve out a separate track but is attempting to participate in the DeFi world dominated by Bitcoin and stablecoins.
In terms of governance structure, the first phase of the Chang hard fork has been basically completed, the DRep representative registration channel has opened, the SanchoNet test network is operating stably, and Intersect has implemented a membership-based collaborative development mechanism, representing that Cardano's on-chain governance has moved from framework design to practical implementation phase. Governance authority is gradually transitioning from core development teams like IOG to community governance and treasury proposal systems.
In multiple indicators, Cardano has demonstrated consistent adjustments from top to bottom: a more robust asset structure, a more open technical ecology, and a more autonomous governance mechanism. The underlying logic of all this is its attempt to build a long-term incentive model driven by institutions that allows on-chain governance to truly detach from 'founder's will' and operate towards institutionalization and sustainability.
Ultimately, the effectiveness of this transformation still needs to be observed through two key indicators: first, whether the TVL of stablecoins can rise from the current 10% to 30%-40%; second, whether the community can continue to produce governance decisions with consensus and quality from DRep.
Conclusion: Cardano's second chance at 'self-definition'.
In a sense, this is not Cardano's first 'self-definition', but perhaps the most critical one.
As early as 2017, Charles Hoskinson founded Cardano, choosing to bypass Silicon Valley, rejecting venture capital, and starting from academic standards to build the consensus model Ouroboros. He hoped Cardano would become a rational system that does not rely on personalities or chase cycles—that was the first self-definition: not following the ETH route, not catering to the DeFi craze, but achieving stability through slowness.
Now, after the transfer of governance authority, treasury fund allocation, and ecological planning updates, Cardano has entered its second self-definition phase: no longer a 'project led by Hoskinson', but as an existence of the governance structure itself, beginning to operate independently of personal will.
From asset structure adjustments, DeFi connections with mainstream assets, to the promotion of CIP-1694 and the autonomous mechanism of Intersect, Cardano is shedding external labels like 'symbolic chain' and 'zombie chain' through a series of technical and institutional implementations. It no longer emphasizes crypto ideals but chooses a slow yet clear path—replacing sentiment with systems, responding to criticism with practice.
Charles Hoskinson himself is gradually stepping back: from CEO to system designer, now turning to ranching, healthcare, and extraterrestrial exploration. What he leaves behind is an autonomous system that can be driven by representative voting and can operate through financial governance.
The allocation is not the end, but a verification of the system's self-rotation. One day, when Cardano can continue to evolve without a leader, Hoskinson's name will also retreat from 'executor', remaining in the logic of the system itself.
This may be the 'Voltaire moment' he has truly been waiting for.
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