Hoskinson slams legacy crypto media after calling Ethereum a ‘dictatorship’

Cardano founder and former Ethereum CEO Charles Hoskinson has criticized an article published by Cointelegraph following an interview in which he compared Ethereum to Cardano’s new governance model, calling it a ‘dictatorship’.

In an interview with Cointelegraph during the TOKEN2049 conference in Singapore, Hoskinson explained that Ethereum’s (ETH) current governance model is overly reliant on co-founder Vitalik Buterin for decision-making, but he does not think Buterin has absolute power.

Shortly after the article was published, Hoskinson claimed on his X account that he would no longer be giving interviews to traditional crypto media, saying he was “tired of dramatic headlines and pointless interviews.”

⚡️𝗘𝗫𝗖𝗟𝗨𝗦𝗜𝗩𝗘: Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson claims Ethereum is a ‘dictatorship.’

Hoskinson argues that Vitalik Buterin exerts too much influence on the development of the decentralized network. pic.twitter.com/Nh27nSa2UP

— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) September 25, 2024

When asked why he likened Ethereum to a dictatorship, the Cardano (ADA) founder said the decentralized platform looks to Buterin for inspiration on where blockchain is heading.

While Buterin acknowledges that he doesn’t hold all the power, Ethereum is comprised of the Ethereum Foundation, a community of stakeholders who make key decisions during core meetings. Still, he can’t deny Buterin’s influence on the blockchain.

As an example, he highlights how Buterin played a key role in Ethereum’s transition from sharding-based optimization to aggregations and layer-2 networks.

Hoskinson, on the other hand, claims that Cardano’s own governance model is much more collaborative and that the decentralized platform will continue to exist long after he is gone.

This is because of blockchain’s delegate-based model, which consists of researchers and engineers who use a voting system to determine their next steps.

He then explains how the model solves problems that affect other major blockchains, such as the “anarchy” in Bitcoin’s governance and the “dictatorship” in Ethereum’s model.

Prior to founding Cardano, Hoskinson was a co-founder of Ethereum alongside Buterin, assuming the CEO position in 2013. He was later removed from the company in 2014 because Hoskinson wanted the protocol to be commercialized while Buterin wanted it to be a non-profit organization.