Charles Hoskinson: How Ethereum and Cardano's Approach to Scaling Differs

At the Malta Blockchain Summit, Ethereum co-creator and IOHK CEO Charles Hoskinson spoke to CryptoSlate in an exclusive interview to share insights into his early days at Ethereum and the work IOHK has done to develop Cardano from scratch.

In 2014, before the launch of ETH, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network, Hoskinson left the project to create IOHK, a company that oversees the development of Cardano, the eighth most valuable cryptocurrency in the global market with a valuation of $1.9 billion.

At the time, Hoskinson stated that the difference in opinion in regards to the technical roadmap of the Ethereum blockchain led to the creation of IOHK, as he split from Ethereum to develop a scientific and peer-reviewed blockchain project.

As the first multi-layer blockchain network, Cardano employs a system that allows users to utilize the first layer of the blockchain as a settlement layer for payments and the second layer as a control layer for smart contracts.

Through the utilization of Ouroboros, a unique peer-reviewed proof-of-stake consensus algorithm, the multi-layer blockchain protocol of Cardano maximizes scalability and efficiency in processing information while neutralizing attacks such as selfish mining.

The core difference between the development of Ethereum and Cardano is that while the former focuses on establishing an open-source community to approach scaling with a variety of solutions, Cardano has a clear vision on how to scale the protocol to the point in which large-scale decentralized applications and systems can use the blockchain to seamlessly transmit data.

Since its inception, IOHK has set forth a long-term vision of creating a blockchain network from scratch with each layer supported by scientific research to build the most practical version of a distributed system possible.

IOHK has employed an uncommon method of releasing a paper for every new component of the blockchain to ensure that the system can operate with the same level of security as proof-of-work and practicality of a network without miners.

"We said blockchain, what makes it a secure blockchain, can proof-of-work create a secure blockchain, can proof-of-stake achieve the same security as proof-of-work, and then can we actually make it practical. We have been publishing paper after paper after paper."

Throughout the years to come, IOHK and Cardano aim to continue publishing peer-reviewed papers to back the development of the blockchain and strengthen Cardano's presence in rapidly growing markets like Japan and South Korea that have shown strong demand for the protocol.