- Cardano is backed by at least 168 researchers, refuting claims of its centralization by the few including founder Charles Hoskinson.
- Cardano comes under scrutiny about its end goal as well as the accusation of its network being a ‘ghost chain.’
A Cardano proponent has taken to X to remind the crypto community that Cardano is led by a team of more than 168 researchers. Rick McCracken, a Cardano Stake Pool Operator (SPO), was addressing a popular narrative that Cardano is centralized and hugely influenced by a few individuals like Charles Hoskinson.
McCracken manually listed down all those involved in the research and development of Cardano (ADA). This list is comprised of various individuals, organizations, and teams from all over the world. This demonstrates its decentralization and greater influence from a few individuals within the project.
In the past, Cardano has been accused of being at the whims of a few individuals. The list provided was not exhaustive and was missing some prominent names such as co-founders Charles Hoskinson and Jeremy Wood.
Reminder: Cardano's research stems from at least 168 people from various organizations and parts of the globe, and is not reliant on any one individual. (I manually made this list so there may be omissions and errors)#Cardano #Ada 🏆 pic.twitter.com/cH9A06jS8W
— Rick McCracken DIGI (@RichardMcCrackn) August 21, 2023
Centralization has long been an issue within the blockchain and cryptocurrency community. Many projects have been accused of going against the decentralized narrative that they purportedly strive for within the ecosystem. Centralization influences voting and project decisions, censorship and bias, and even price manipulation. Most projects faced by this issue end up ultimately losing relevance or forking after a disagreement.
Cardano Accused of Collaborating with Governments
This comes amidst claims by a Bitcoin Maxi that projects such as Cardano exist solely for the purpose of supporting the government issue CBDCs, and other types of Orwellian tracking. According to the Bitcoin influencer, projects such as Cardano and Solana have an end game to specifically work with governments, influence regulations, and attack decentralized networks. The analyst and commentator noted;
Hard to swallow pill: Ethereum, Solana, Cardano & all the other implementations of “Bitcoin 2.0” ideas are meant to help governments issue CBDCs & other types of Orwellian tracking.
The end game is specifically to work with governments, influence regulations, attack decentralized networks. Their centralization is a feature, not some temporary issue.
This is a bold claim but one that is hard to dispute. Cardano is working with various c]governments including Ethiopia be it not specifically on CBDCs or tracking and centralization. Others like Ripple are openly working with governments on CBDCs, with the use of its technology by governments viewed as the ultimate goal.
One Cardano proponent was quick to defend Cardano and its position on issuing a CBDC on its network which he claims would require it to be permissionless. He responded;
Cardano is not centralised https://cexplorer.io/groups
It is on a mission to decentralise even it’s governance, which will make it a chain with true longevity and beyond tampering by legacy systems.
If a government did issue a CBDC on Cardano, it would be permissionless.
Cardano has in recent times come under great criticism with founder Charles Hoskinson only recently disputing claims that the network is a ‘ghost chain.’ This implies that there are no developers building on the network, few project deployments nor community or substantial transactions completed. Hoskinson cited over 72.5 million transactions, the $185 million TVL in Cardano, and more than 8.6 million native assets.
