Cardano Founder Predicts Ethereum's Survival Uncertain

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson delivered a critical assessment of Ethereum’s future prospects during his latest ask-me-anything session. He argued that Ethereum, the world’s second-largest smart-contract platform, is burdened by what he described as three “self-inflicted wounds” and lacks the necessary on-chain governance to address these issues.

Hoskinson, who co-founded Ethereum in 2014 before launching Cardano in 2016, highlighted three key design flaws in Ethereum: the wrong accounting model, the wrong virtual machine, and the wrong consensus model. He believes these decisions now threaten Ethereum’s survival. He warned that the fixes adopted so far, such as layer-2 solutions and slashing economics, have unintended consequences that are starting to impact the network negatively.

Hoskinson suggested that a viable turnaround for Ethereum would require addressing its technological problems first. He pointed out that Ethereum’s proof-of-stake implementation needs to be phased out. He proposed a shift to a “telescoping protocol design” similar to Cardano’s Ouroboros-Leios upgrade path. He also recommended that Ethereum developers consider the object model of SWE, Narwhal-and-Tusk-style consensus, and a move to the RISC-V instruction set.

Hoskinson emphasized that the bigger obstacle for Ethereum is its lack of formalized self-governance. He estimated that building an effective on-chain governance system would take five to seven years, given the network’s size and entrenched stakeholders. Without such a system, he warned, protocol upgrades and community coordination will remain fragile.

Hoskinson’s most striking prediction was that Ethereum will not survive more than 10 to 15 years. He forecasted that layer-2 networks will continue to erode the base chain’s utility, sparking internal conflicts that will be difficult to manage. He also contended that a revitalized Bitcoin ecosystem and faster monolithic chains could outcompete Ethereum on both liquidity and user experience.

Hoskinson contrasted Ethereum’s roadmap with Cardano’s own, highlighting Cardano’s RISC-V-based virtual machine, its extended UTXO accounting, and its “non-parasitic” approach to layer-2 scaling, such as Hydra and the Midnight sidechain. He acknowledged that some of Cardano’s governance tooling is currently “kind of weird,” but maintained it will be “awesome in three to five years.”

Hoskinson’s remarks come at a critical time for Ethereum, which completed its proof-of-stake merge 18 months ago and is preparing for upgrades aimed at lowering transaction costs and boosting throughput. While his comments are unlikely to sway Ethereum’s core developers, they underscore a growing debate over whether modular, rollup-centric roadmaps can maintain network coherence as competing ecosystems evolve.

Hoskinson summed up his outlook by describing Ethereum as “a brilliant project” that is “a victim of its own success.” He concluded that without decisive architectural and governance reforms, the platform risks “a very hostile divorce” between the base layer and its scaling solutions, ultimately leading to obsolescence within the coming decade.