Charles Hoskinson

By Shreya Bhattacharya
5 Min Read

It is time you learn about Cardano, and the best way to start is to know about its founder Charles Hoskinson, who is also a crypto head, just like us. Even if you are a complete newbie in the crypto space, you must have heard about Ethereum and witnessed its hype. But you might still be unaware of its rivalry with Cardano. The fight between the competitors is so intense that mentioning one without talking about the other is almost impossible. However, it might blow your mind to know that the person who launched the ‘Ethereum killer’ also contributed to the launch of Ethereum. 

Early Life of Charles Hoskinson

Besides Charles Hoskinson’s birthplace Hawaii, very little is known about his childhood. But, fast forward to his college days, he was learning about analytic number theory first at the Metropolitan State University of Denver and then at the University of Colorado Boulder. So far, it has been hard to vouch for the authenticity of Hoskinson’s degrees as he is known for mostly dropping out from most of them.

Charles Hoskinson claims that he joined a Ph.D. program but could not continue for long, probably because he did not have a degree in Mathematics. He did not earn a degree from Colorado Boulder, where he joined as a half-time undergraduate math major. 

Creating Cardano

From what we know about Hoskinson’s career, before getting started in crypto, he worked as a consultant. However, after realizing the potential in the digital realm, Charles Hoskinson did not take long to quit. To gain experience in the field, he even worked with two blockchain startups. It turns out he got a chance to collaborate with the big players of the industry – Invictus Innovation, the company that launched BitShares, and Ethereum early on his crypto journey. The founder of Ethereum’s rival once headed the former company as CEO. 

But he soon left Ethereum to start his blockchain, which he called Input Output (IOHK), with his ex-Ethereum colleague Jeremy Wood. The project aimed to build a blockchain whose core is based on science and mathematics. Though Charles Hoskinson was inspired by how Ethereum was built and its operations, he did not exactly plan to copy-paste the same on Cardano. Lucky for him, the steps he took for the next couple of years, like choosing Haskell as a programming language and creating the Ouroboros protocol, made Cardano a worthy opponent of Ethereum. 

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Source: TradingView

Charles Hoskinson’s Advice 

 To ace your game in the crypto industry, you should either follow the footsteps of the pioneers or listen to their advice. From what we have learned so far, these winners of Web3 not only share their business strategy and values that will help make the core of the industry more concrete. 

Charles Hoskinson did the same. Talking to new startup leaders, he says they should focus on bringing the community together instead of putting all their efforts into creating an ecosystem. What he said makes a lot of sense, especially when the initial aim of building a decentralized community was to get as many people on the boat as possible. It is the only way to outrun the centralized system or those controlled by third parties. 

Conclusion

Charles Hoskinson’s contribution to the crypto industry has not only been in the form of Cardano. He has also encouraged developers to help create new values in the industry. It reflects that his motive is not to gain fame in the industry but to bring development and unity to the crypto community. We need leaders like Hoskinson in Web3 who can drive success in the space by bringing in innovations and more values.