Charles Hoskinson is a prolific figure in the cryptocurrency industry. He’s among the original Ethereum co-founders, having worked alongside Vitalik Buterin and others to build Ethereum. Hoskinson also briefly served as the Ethereum CEO before a fallout that saw him leave the Ethereum network to build Cardano, a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain. Read on to learn who Charles Hoskinson is, what he does, why he is important, and some of the challenges he has experienced.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Charles Hoskinson is a blockchain developer, co-founder of Ethereum, and founder of Cardano.
• He played a key role in developing blockchain technologies that enhance smart contracts and decentralized applications.
• Hoskinson’s work prioritizes scalability and sustainability, thereby setting the direction for future blockchain innovations.
- Who is Charles Hoskinson?
- What does Hoskinson do?
- Why is he important?
- An origin story: The founding of Cardano
- Establishment of IOHK and its goals
- What motivated Hoskinson?
- What are some of the challenges he has faced?
- Charles Hoskinson: Approach, thoughts and views
- A key founding figure in crypto
- Frequently asked questions
Who is Charles Hoskinson?
Charles Hoskinson is an American mathematician and tech entrepreneur in the web3 space. He was born in Hawaii, USA, in 1987 to a family of doctors. Hoskinson initially toyed with following in his parents’ footsteps to study medicine. However, he later chartered his path and instead chose to study mathematics.
Education
Charles Hoskinson began his academic journey at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, where he earned a degree in analytic number theory. He then enrolled for a Master’s in Mathematics at the University of Colorado Boulder. Hoskinson later enrolled for his PhD but dropped out before he could graduate and joined Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Paul’s libertarian views fueled Hoskinson’s decision to join his campaign. Hoskinson was fascinated by Austrian economics and monetary theory, which argued that an economic system founded on fiat currency is essentially unstable, worked. Something that Bitcoin, the first digital currency, attempted to address.
Net worth
Given that the crypto market is volatile, it’s difficult to get the exact net worth of prolific figures in the space, including Hoskinson. This is because his net worth is directly connected to his crypto holdings, and a large chunk of it is linked to the value of the ADA coin.
However, most estimates have placed his net worth somewhere between $500 and $600 million. Still, this is subject to change based on Cardano’s price action and the future ADA price.
Achievements
Hoskinsom has founded and co-founded three crypto-related companies: Ethereum, IOHK, and Invictus Innovations. Charles is among the eight co-founders of the Ethereum network and the founder and CEO of Cardano. He has also held various positions in both the private and public sectors.
Charles Hoskinson was also the founding chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation’s education committee and helped establish the Cryptocurrency Research Group in 2013.
Well-revered within the crypto community, Hoskinson has built projects to educate people about blockchain technology and decentralized assets. He co-founded BitShares, an early crypto-decentralized exchange (DEX) platform.
As the Cardano founder, Hoskinson continues to lead the design, development, and research of the Cardano blockchain and ADA cryptocurrency.
Philanthropy
Besides being a tech entrepreneur and founding several crypto-related entities, Charles Hoskinson is also a philanthropist. In 2020, Hoskinson’s company, IOHK, donated $500,000 in ADA cryptocurrency to the University of Wyoming and established a Cardano Research Lab to advance the research and development of blockchain technology.
In 2021, he donated $20 million to Carnegie Mellon University to build a center for mathematics named Hoskinson Center for Formal Mathematics. According to the university’s website, “the center is dedicated to using formal computational methods and new technologies for mathematical research and education.”
In 2022, IOHK donated $4.5 million to the research hub at the University of Edinburgh to fund research on new projects that would advance blockchain development.
Charles Hoskinson’s IOHK rebranded to Input Output Global (IOG) in 2021 after moving its headquarters from Hong Kong, China, to Wyoming, U.S.
What does Hoskinson do?
With over 900,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter), Charles Hoskinson is a mathematician and crypto entrepreneur primarily known for creating Cardano, a proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol. The Cardano blockchain has its own native crypto, ADA, which has a maximum supply of 45 billion coins.
Hoskinson is also the CEO of IOHK, a company he founded in 2015 alongside Jeremy Wood. IOHK markets itself as “one of the world’s pre-eminent blockchain infrastructure research and engineering companies.” He is also one of Ethereum’s co-founders. Ethereum is the second largest cryptocurrency globally in terms of market capitalization. He also had a brief stint as the CEO of the Ethereum network.
Before Hoskinson joined the crypto community as an entrepreneur, he was one of the presidential campaign for Ron Paul in 2008. He then went ahead to work at a consultancy firm.
Hoskinson also stated that he briefly worked at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), even though the institute has never formally acknowledged or refuted his claims.
He was also the founding chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation’s education committee and helped to create the Cryptocurrency Research Group.
Why is he important?
Charles Hoskinson has made significant contributions to the cryptocurrency and blockchain technology industry. As explained in previous sections, he was part of the founding team that created the framework and vision for the Ethereum network.
He also helped build Ethereum’s highly successful initial coin offering (ICO).
Besides Ethereum, Hoskinson also built the Cardano blockchain and the ADA coin, a leading altcoin in the crypto asset market. Cardano is a next-generation blockchain network, smart contract platform, and digital currency built for scale and speed, and it is more secure than older blockchains. It’s also home to thousands of decentralized applications (DApps).
He also created the ADA cryptocurrency that powers the Cardano ecosystem. The ADA coin has several uses, including paying transaction fees on the network and sending and receiving payments.
Moreover, ADA holders can also stake Cardano to validate transactions and secure the network. It also almost always ranks among the top ten cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
An origin story: The founding of Cardano
Before Cardano existed, Hoskinson was involved in developing the Ethereum network. In 2013, Anthony Di Lorio, another of Ethereum’s co-founders and fellow Bitcoin enthusiast, introduced Hoskinson to the Ethereum whitepaper.
Hoskinson became intrigued and began attending early Ethereum meetings. He would later join the team and become one of the network’s founders.
While it isn’t entirely clear what his exact role was in creating Ethereum, he was, nevertheless, pivotal for the network’s success. Hoskinson helped develop Ethereum’s first ICO and was also part of the decision-makers who decided to register the Ethereum Foundation in Switzerland.
Trouble began when part of the team wanted Ethereum to take a non-profit approach. Hoskinson, on the other hand, wanted Ethereum to be a for-profit project.
Some of the developers, including Vitalik, disagreed with this. Hoskinson also disagreed with the approach of having the Ethereum network use the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism, which made it less environmentally friendly than blockchains with PoS-based consensus protocols.
Following these disagreements, Hoskinson left Ethereum and took a six-month sabbatical. He briefly toyed with the idea of going back to mathematics before Jeremy Wood, another Ethereum co-founder approached him with the idea of establishing an engineering and research firm that would develop blockchains and digital currencies for academic institutions, corporations, and government entities.
The company was named Input Output Hong Kong, or IOHK. Hoskinson would later suggest developing a “Japanese version of Ethereum” for a client. In 2017, Hoskinson built and launched Cardano, an open-source, decentralized, intelligent contract protocol initially focused on the Japanese market. It would later expand its operations globally.
So far, Cardano has been the most noteworthy project developed by IOHK.
The vision behind Cardano
Cardano is Charles Hoskinson’s most prestigious and popular web3 venture. He began developing the PoS blockchain in 2015 with the help of Wood. The project was created to be everything that he wanted Ethereum to be but wasn’t at the time.
The vision behind Cardano was to improve on the functionality that was initially missing in Ethereum. Hoskinson, therefore, developed Cardano with an efficient and environmentally friendly consensus mechanism, the proof-of-stake protocol.
This was so that it could be more efficient than older blockchains that relied on the proof-of-work mechanism. Moreover, Hoskinson also wanted a protocol that could address the major problems facing other blockchains, such as decentralization, scalability, security, and smart contract functionality.
He wanted Cardano to be more flexible, scalable, and secure than Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Hoskinson also envisioned a blockchain network that would advance into a network for decentralized applications with numerous use cases governed by stakers. Cardano has over 1,000 projects developing web3 decentralized applications on its platform today.
The protocol’s native coin, ADA, is named after the Countess of Lovelace, Augusta Ada King, who was the first computer programmer. Users can trade ADA from most crypto wallets and exchanges like other cryptocurrencies.
Establishment of IOHK and its goals
IOHK was established in 2015 by Charles Hoskinson and Jeremy Wood. IOHK is a leading research and engineering company in the blockchain space.
IOHK aims to develop blockchain projects for academic institutions and companies in the private and public sectors. Its most significant blockchain project is Cardano, a leading smart contract platform.
What motivated Hoskinson?
Hoskinson got the idea to develop Cardano after a client proposed building a “Japanese version of Ethereum.” However, he was motivated to build Cardano as an improved version of first (Bitcoin) and second-generation (Ethereum) blockchains. He wanted Cardano to address the limitations he perceived Bitcoin and Ethereum lacked, including scalability and security issues.
The Cardano blockchain differs from other blockchains through its diligent peer-reviewed research foundation that aims to create a more interoperable, scalable, and secure blockchain network. Utilizing the PoS consensus mechanism means that Cardano is energy-efficient and sustainable.
In addition, he wanted to create a protocol that was accessible and useful to billions of people, especially the unbanked, across various populations worldwide.
What are some of the challenges he has faced?
As a passionate public speaker and advocate for blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, Charles Hoskinson has faced a few challenges. Users have accused Hoskinson of having too much control over the decision-making process at Cardano. Moreover, Cardano’s roadmap has also been criticized for being too long and slow to progress.
There was also a controversy with Laura Shin, a journalist and author, who criticized Hoskinson for his contribution to the blockchain and crypto space.
The Laura Shin controversy
In February 2022, Laura Shin, a crypto journalist, Unchained podcast host, and author of The Cryptopians, suggested in her book that Charles Hoskinson never finished his undergraduate degree or enrolled in a PhD program.
The controversy started on X (formerly Twitter) when a user tweeted that they were reading Shin’s book and were fascinated by Hoskinson’s early years in crypto. Hoskinson responded to the tweet, calling Shin’s book a “great work of fiction.”
Not one to take it lying down, Shin responded to Hoskinson’s tweet asking him to address the discrepancies in his claims of having dropped out of his PhD program despite the school stating that he had only enrolled for his undergraduate degree.
Shin stated that she had thoroughly researched her book and had even contacted both universities that Hoskinson claimed he attended.
In her book, Shin noted that the Metropolitan State University of Denver didn’t have a graduate math program. She asserted that both universities stated that Hoskinson enrolled and studied as an undergraduate but didn’t graduate from either university.
Shin also wrote in her book that Hoskinson’s claims that he worked at DARPA were false. In her tweets to the Cardano founder, Shin also tweeted that she had given Hoskinson and his team ample time to talk to her and offer their perspective, but they never did.
It, therefore, remains unclear whether Hoskinson earned an undergrad and master’s degree from the two universities.
Charles Hoskinson: Approach, thoughts and views
Hoskinson has been quite vocal about his approach, thoughts, and views on cryptocurrencies and the blockchain. He has in the past shared his views regarding the purpose of digital currencies on X, stating that:
“Crypto doesn’t want to set the world on fire; it just wants to start a flame in your heart.”
Through his company, IOHK, he has funded various blockchain technology research labs globally to boost blockchain and crypto adoption. He has also shared his thoughts on the high energy that older blockchains such as Bitcoin consume. He believes that blockchain technology is the future and that it’ll help the world become a more inclusive and better place.
A key founding figure in crypto
Charles Hoskinson has significantly contributed to the crypto sector since he started in 2013. He was part of the team that created the Ethereum network before he left to establish Cardano. Through IOHK, Hoskinson hopes to educate and provide financial services to the three billion people worldwide who lack an equitable and transparent financial system.
Frequently asked questions
Why did Charles Hoskinson create Cardano?
What is Charles Hoskinson doing now?
Who is the founder of Cardano?
Why is Cardano famous?
What is so special about Cardano?
How does Cardano differ from other blockchain platforms?
What are some key features of Cardano’s technology?
How has Charles Hoskinson influenced blockchain education?
How is Cardano contributing to global blockchain adoption?
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