Hoskinson slams legacy crypto media after calling Ethereum a 'dictatorship'

Charles Hoskinson, Cardano founder and former Ethereum chief executive, criticized an article published by Cointelegraph after an interview where he dubbed Ethereum a ‘dictatorship’ when compared to Cardano’s new governance model.

In an interview with Cointelegraph on the the sidelines of TOKEN2049 conference in Singapore, Hoskinson explained how Ethereum’s (ETH) current governance model is too dependent on its co-founder Vitalik Buterin when it comes to decision-making, though he does not view Buterin as having absolute power.

Shortly after the article was published, Hoskinson took to his X account to claim that he would not be giving the legacy crypto media any more interviews, due to having “had enough of the dramatic headlines and wasted interviews.”

⚡️𝗘𝗫𝗖𝗟𝗨𝗦𝗜𝗩𝗘: Ethereum is a ‘dictatorship’ claims Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson.

Hoskinson argues that Vitalik Buterin exerts too much influence over the development of the decentralized network. pic.twitter.com/Nh27nSa2UP

— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) September 25, 2024

When asked to explain why he compared Ethereum to a dictatorship, the Cardano (ADA) founder said that the decentralized platform looks to Buterin for inspiration on where the blockchain is headed.

Though he does acknowledge that Buterin does not necessarily hold all the power, as Ethereum consists of the Ethereum Foundation, a community and stakeholders that make major decision during core meetings. Even so, he cannot deny the influence Buterin has over the blockchain.

As an example, he highlights how Buterin had a major role in spearheading Ethereum’s shift from sharding-based optimization to rollups and layer-2 networks.

In contrast, Hoskinson claims that Cardano’s own governance model is much more collaborative and ensures that the decentralized platform will still go on long after he is gone.

This is due to the blockchain’s delegate-based model, consisting of researchers and engineers that make up what he calls an Intersect that uses a voting system to determine its next steps.

He goes on to explain how the model solves the problem that has plagued other major blockchains, such as “the anarchy” of Bitcoin’s governance and “the dictatorship” of Ethereum’s model.

Before founding Cardano, Hoskinson was one of the co-founders of Ethereum along with Buterin and held the position of CEO in 2013. He was later removed from the company in 2014 because Hoskinson wanted the protocol to be commercialized while Buterin wanted it to be a non-profit.