Cardano News: Charles Hoskinson finally addresses Hydra rumors

by cryptheory

April 5, 2025

Reading Time: 2 mins read

While Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) have seen significant price gains in recent weeks, Cardano (ADA) has noticeably lagged behind its major cryptocurrency competitors. Despite occasional convincing price increases, the ADA token has not been competitive with the major cryptocurrencies. Developers from Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) have been working on the Layer 2 solution Hydra for some time to make the Cardano network competitive. However, there have been rumors claiming that this project was abandoned. Charles Hoskinson, co-founder of Cardano and CEO of IOHK, has commented on these rumors.

Hoskinson has dismissed the rumors about Hydra as “pure FUD”

Hoskinson has dismissed the rumors as “pure FUD” (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt), a strategy commonly used in the crypto world to discredit projects and instigate fear among existing and potential investors towards other cryptocurrencies. He argues that the rumors spread in some social media videos are entirely false.

I'm seeing some videos claiming that Hydra has been abandoned. It is just pure FUD. The team has never been more productive and motivated, there is great community engagement and new papers on the way for enhancements to the protocol. If you are ever curious about the project go…

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) March 16, 2024

Hydra was introduced as a Layer 2 scaling solution in May 2023, but it has not yet reached its final phase. Developers continue to work on the protocol to make it even more efficient, aiming to reduce Cardano network costs and significantly improve its scalability.

This is not the first time Hoskinson has had to comment on Hydra and the future of the protocol. In October 2023, he released a video over 20 minutes long explaining the benefits of Hydra and defending against “FUD attacks.”

Hoskinson also noted that comparing Cardano directly with fast and cheap blockchains like Solana does not make sense because while those models are measured by transactions per second (TPS), Cardano is considered a per-transaction system.

On Hydra Scaling https://t.co/u5tl7FBI9A

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) October 5, 2023

He suggests that envy might be a factor in the current “attack” on Cardano, stating that a cycle has begun again where “everyone is crazy about Cardano’s potential and its roadmap,” generating FUD to minimize the project. However, Hoskinson also states that he does not know who exactly could be behind this marketing attack.

Despite this, Cardano’s market capitalization has steadily grown over the last year. In March 2023, its market value was still under 12 billion US dollars, but it managed to grow to almost 24 billion US dollars within a year, making ADA the eighth largest cryptocurrency, just behind USDC and XRP.

Hoskinson plans to continue using his unique method for further development of Cardano. The smart contract platform relies on a scientific, peer-reviewed approach where all changes undergo a slow but optimal process. This ensures that Cardano can offer the best technologies in the crypto market in the long term.