Developments in the blockchain sector continue to attract attention. Accordingly, Cardano co-founder Charles Hoskinson has dispelled rumors claiming that the Hydra Layer-2 scaling project for the network has been abandoned. On March 18th, the CEO of IOHK confirmed via Twitter that developers have not given up on the project and stated in his post that videos claiming Hydra’s abandonment are merely FUD.
What’s Happening on the Cardano Front?
The Cardano-based protocol Hydra was launched in May 2023 and is designed to increase transaction processing capacity and reduce costs on the Cardano blockchain network. It was seen as a component of Cardano’s roadmap under the name Basho, which was entirely about scaling.
However, the YouTube channel The Cryptoviser uploaded a video on March 17th, claiming that Cardano was moving away from Hydra based on Hoskinson’s announcement on March 13th about the integration of Hyperledger Firefly, a technology rollup for businesses to create and scale Web3 applications. While debunking the rumors, Hoskinson made the following statement via Twitter:
“The team has never been more productive and motivated, there’s great community engagement, and new papers on protocol improvements are on the way.”
Claims Directed at Cardano
Hoskinson is not facing public defense of Hydra against FUD for the first time. In October, Hoskinson released a video presenting the features of Hydra as a scaling solution for Cardano and defended against FUD regarding network scaling or its absence.
At that time, he refuted criticisms about efficiency by explaining that Cardano is not a TPS system but a transaction per block system. He added that Hydra had shifted direction slightly and developers were creating middleware to help build decentralized applications (DApps) for Cardano.
On March 18th, Hoskinson went on the defensive again, addressing what he called a wave of FUD regarding collaboration with the digital identity platform World Mobile and the scaling roadmap:
“I think it’s that time of the cycle when everyone goes crazy about Cardano’s potential and roadmap, and so they throw a FUD wave at us.”
According to data from the blockchain data analytics platform DefiLlama, Cardano has seen an increase in total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance (DeFi) this year, reaching an all-time high of $520 million on March 14th. However, the network continues to lag far behind competitors such as Ethereum, Tron, BNB Smart Chain, and Solana, which have a TVL of $72 billion.
