Original｜Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
After Trump announced the advancement of the cryptocurrency strategic reserve plan, the market experienced a strong V-shaped reversal. In addition to the much-anticipated SOL and XRP, there is a dark horse that has performed low-key yet strongly in this cycle—ADA (Cardano).
Why can ADA be listed alongside SOL and XRP on Trump's "favor list"? What insider stories are behind the surge in ADA's price? What do market participants think of ADA? Odaily Planet Daily will attempt to analyze these questions in this article for readers' reference. Recommended reading: “Cryptocurrency Market V-shaped Reversal: The 'Trump Effect' Reappears, Supporting XRP, SOL, and ADA as Core Reserves”
The Core Technology of ADA (Cardano): Having Connections
Interestingly, this is not the first time ADA has surged in price due to favorable Trump concepts.
In November last year, after Trump was successfully elected as President of the United States, foreign media reported that Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson had confirmed plans to collaborate with the U.S. government under Trump's leadership to help formulate cryptocurrency legislation, thereby creating a clear regulatory framework for the cryptocurrency industry.
In a recent speech, Charles Hoskinson announced these plans and stated that developing positive policies regarding cryptocurrencies requires support from both the Democratic and Republican parties. He also mentioned that his company Input Output Global (IOG) would establish a separate policy department for cryptocurrency regulation, which would focus on creating a legislative framework that incorporates the provisions of the "Financial Innovation and Technology Act of the 21st Century" (FIT21) and the "Responsible Financial Innovation Act" (RFIA). Finally, he added, "I will work with legislators and the government to push for a bipartisan bill to be passed."
Affected by rumors of joining the Trump administration, at that time, ADA's price surged over 30%, approaching a price peak of $0.597 in April 2024. Subsequently, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson also revealed the "core technology" of ADA in a public talk. He candidly stated, "You know, I have a deep friendship with a manager in Trump's transition team." (Note: Building relationships is also a "hard technology" that has been tried and tested in both China and abroad.)
Charles Hoskinson "reveals" his network of connections
This time, the hype seems more like a rehearsal and warm-up for ADA's future surge.
At the beginning of this January, ADA significantly surged past $1, when analysts monitored that a giant whale had accumulated about 100 million tokens in a short period. In March, this surge saw ADA rise from around $0.66 to nearly $1.2, almost doubling. And all of this, of course, cannot be separated from the project's founder—Charles Hoskinson.
The Founder Behind ADA, Refusing to be Called "Co-founder of Ethereum"
As one of the first "Ethereum killers," Cardano's founder Charles Hoskinson is more commonly known for another identity as a "co-founder of Ethereum."
At the end of 2013, introduced by Bitcoin enthusiast Anthony Di Iorio, Charles Hoskinson read the "Ethereum White Paper" written by Vitalik Buterin. Subsequently, due to issues with some content in the white paper, Hoskinson took this opportunity to connect with Anthony Di Iorio and Vitalik through early meetings. At that time, Ethereum was just starting out, and he revealed, "There were only four people at the meeting, and I was the fifth."
Later, Hoskinson participated in designing Ethereum's ICO and briefly served as CEO due to the need to register the Ethereum Foundation in Switzerland. Later, due to a significant disagreement over whether Ethereum should operate as a non-profit organization, Hoskinson, who favored a for-profit approach, officially left the Ethereum ecosystem in June 2015 (some say he was fired by Ethereum's officials). Perhaps his experience in the Ethereum ecosystem was not pleasant; in 2020, after an interview with the media, Hoskinson posted that he did not like being referred to as "co-founder of Ethereum."
"He doesn't even want to mention Ethereum, only referring to it as the word starting with E."
Subsequently, Charles Hoskinson started anew. After a brief hiatus, he and former Ethereum colleague Jeremy Wood began discussions on a new project called IOHK (an abbreviation for "Input Output Hong Kong," where Hoskinson was living at the time)—a cryptocurrency and blockchain built for companies, government entities, and academic institutions. Charles Hoskinson stated that Cardano emerged after IOHK clients proposed developing a "Japanese version of Ethereum." Initially, Cardano focused on the Japanese market, aiming to establish "something at the intersection of business, computation, and regulatory compliance." Cardano thus became a key project of IOHK—a public blockchain and smart contract platform that hosts the ADA cryptocurrency.
Additionally, Hoskinson emphasized that Cardano is an improvement over first-generation platforms (like Bitcoin) and second-generation blockchains (like Ethereum), which he refers to as "a third-generation smart contract platform and cryptocurrency"; compared to its competitors, it has undergone more rigorous research and testing, offering better security and scalability for companies, government entities, and academic institutions than Ethereum.
In early 2017, leveraging the ICO boom, Cardano successfully raised $62 million, positioning itself at the time as a "retirement investment," primarily sold to Japanese investors. It is understood that about 95% of buyers at that time were Japanese.
Subsequently, the Cardano and ADA token ecosystem entered a somewhat dull growth phase. IOHK CTO Romain Pellerin recently summarized the past development milestones of the Cardano ecosystem:
2025.03 - ADA mentioned in the U.S. cryptocurrency strategic reserve;
2025.02 - On-chain constitution approved;
2025.01 Plomin - All decentralized governance actions activated;
2024.09 Chang - Decentralized governance and Plutus v3 (supporting BLS-enabled ZKP verification);
2023.02 Valentine - Interoperability with Bitcoin (ECDSA and Schnorr), dynamic P2P;
2022.09 Vasil - Data diffusion pipeline and Plutus v2;
2021.09 Alonzo - Plutus v1 smart contracts;
2021.02 Mary - Tokens and NFTs;
2020.12 Allegra - Metadata upgrade;
2020.07 Shelley - POS upgrade.
Perhaps feeling resentful about being ousted from Ethereum's management, Hoskinson has always viewed Cardano as a competitor to Ethereum, proudly stating that adopting the POS mechanism ahead of Ethereum makes them "the first project to prove that POS can have the same security properties as Bitcoin." Although Vitalik later responded that it was not the first company to launch a proof-of-stake (PoS) network, in fact, PoS had already occurred in 2013. "The goals of modern PoS protocols are now much higher," he said. "Perhaps the Cardano protocol Ouroboros will launch some form of PoS first, but that is not remarkable."
In November 2023, Vitalik discussed the Ethereum roadmap in an interview and proposed redesigning Ethereum's staking system to address centralization issues. During the discussion, he mentioned the possibility of adopting a UTxO method to tackle the challenges. Members of the crypto community quickly pointed out that this solution is similar to the approach Cardano uses in its staking system. Subsequently, Charles Hoskinson criticized Vitalik Buterin for not acknowledging Cardano (ADA)'s innovations in staking, sarcastically stating, "Don't worry, Ethereum 3 will solve all problems." The feud between the two sparked market discussions.
Hoskinson VS Vitalik: Bitter Rivals
In September 2024, during an interview in Singapore, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson stated that the governance reforms of the Voltaire era in the Cardano ecosystem prevented it from becoming a "dictatorship" like Ethereum and avoided the "anarchy" of Bitcoin.
Hoskinson said that blockchains can choose to keep their protocols simple forever, like Bitcoin, or "pick a king" to manage affairs. However, Cardano's new governance model addresses the "trilemma of governance" concerning "efficiency, effectiveness, and integrity" by distilling complex governance topics for voting through delegated representatives and a membership organization called Intersect. When asked to explain his controversial remarks linking Ethereum to dictatorship, Hoskinson stated that Ethereum's "entire vision" began with Buterin but would ultimately end with him.
In July 2024, amid a tight U.S. election situation, Vitalik openly expressed his "opposition to making political votes based on support for cryptocurrencies," to which Charles Hoskinson countered, "My primary goal has always been to keep the government as far away from cryptocurrencies as possible, but when that goal is unattainable, the remaining choices become very clear. If they continue to over-regulate, then we should not vote for them… Voting for Biden is voting for the demise of the U.S. cryptocurrency industry; for this reason, we should vote for candidates who support cryptocurrencies." During last year's TOKEN2049 conference, he even stated in an interview with CNBC, "From a cryptocurrency perspective, between Harris and Trump, Trump is undoubtedly the most popular candidate."
From past experiences, value orientations, and even political inclinations, the two have long-standing grievances. Now, since Hoskinson has climbed the relationship ladder with Trump, perhaps the trajectories of ADA and ETH will diverge significantly.
**ADA's TVL is only 5% of Solana's, but its market cap has risen to 8th in cryptocurrency rankings
**
According to DefiLlama data, despite the recent surge in ADA (Cardano) token prices, its ecosystem's TVL remains only $460 million, with just 70,681 active addresses and only 40 on-chain DeFi protocols; the DeFi TVL is only equivalent to 5.75% of Solana's and just 0.86% of Ethereum's.
After the surge, the TVL is still below $500 million, not even a fraction of Ethereum's.
On the other hand, according to Coingecko data, ADA's price is currently around $0.97, with a market cap of approximately $35.14 billion, surpassing DOGE and following closely behind Solana, ranking 8th in overall cryptocurrency market cap.
It's no wonder that ABCDE co-founder BMAN stated, "In crypto, the price of the coin is the real product. From this perspective, XRP and ADA have done a great job with their products."
Reference Articles:
The History of Cardano: The Hellish Soul of Charles Hoskinson
Planet Frontline｜Charles Hoskinson: Don't Call Me Co-founder of Ethereum
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