The Cardano network got closer to more intense competition with the larger Ethereum network this past weekend after a critical upgrade meant it could host decentralized financial applications.
But founder Charles Hoskinson does not believe that any blockchain will dominate in the next few years, not even so-called “Ethereum killers” like Cardano. As the internet has become a part of everyday life, consumers are no longer wondering which manufacturer made some of the key hardware that enables connectivity.
“You’re not asking – ‘is this a Samsung router? Is this an Apple router?’ and my hope is, that’s what’s going to happen in the industry, where Cardano is infrastructure, ethereum is infrastructure, bitcoin is infrastructure, ”Hoskinson told Insider in a recent interview.
“Of course we compete under the hood, and businesses, governments and people who care about these things will care about them. But at the end of the day, if it’s going to work for everybody, we have to have that ‘wi-fi moment’ where it’s consumer-friendly, and it just works on your phone and you can just set a transaction, you can seamlessly move between things.”
Cardano Can Now Host DApps, Smart Contract or NFT
The last “Alonzo” upgrade in the Cardano network series on Sunday means that the blockchain can now run applications such as smart contracts or host digital collective tokens – referred to as non-fungible tokens, for example.
A few years ago, Hoskinson, Vitalik Buterin, and a few others co-founded the Ethereum network, which is the largest network with these features and is known as the industry’s first-layer protocol.
In the past few weeks, Cardano, Solana, and Avalanche have all seen their native token prices rise as they launched upgrades to increase their chances of weakening Ethereum’s lead.
However, Hoskinson said that this has nothing to do with competition and dominance, but more to do with the collaborative work of the blockchain.
“What’s probably going to happen is we’re going to live on an internet of blockchains,” said Hoskinson.
At the moment, different blockchains cannot be connected to each other. But thanks to so-called zero-layer protocols like Polkadot, this interoperability becomes a reality.
