Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said on May 12 that Cardano may offer a stablecoin that provides the same privacy as cash. He also revealed on Saturday that Cardano will undergo a major transformation as it adopts a more open and agile development infrastructure.
Hoskinson recently made headlines saying that major tech companies, including Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia, and Tesla, are increasingly interested in digital assets. He revealed that these giants are exploring integrating crypto wallets and stablecoins into their platforms, which he envisions could connect with 3 billion users.
Charles Hoskinson says he wants Cardano-based privacy stablecoins
Charles Hoskinson wants to bring privacy to stablecoins on Cardano, aiming to offer cash-like confidentiality without breaking compliance rules.
Cardano is already developing a privacy-focused stablecoin – a bold move in a $243B market under growing regulatory scrutiny.
Despite… pic.twitter.com/bmY1YbofEY
— TomiEyro ⛋⚛️ (@tomieyro) May 12, 2025
Charles Hoskinson spoke on eToro’s “Conversations with Leaders” podcast on May 9 and proposed privacy-preserving stablecoins for Cardano.
Hoskinson said his team wants Cardano to be the first blockchain with a private stablecoin. The stablecoins market is currently worth $243 billion, and the company has stablecoins deployed on its blockchain with a total market size of $31.5 million.
“Maybe people don’t want to have a stablecoin where every time they buy something it’s forever tracked by everyone everywhere.”
–Charles Hoskinson, Founder of Cardano.
Privacy virtual assets have been viewed as a threat, with privacy-enabling cryptocurrencies like Monero and Zcash getting delisted and banned from exchanges due to concerns over their use by criminals. The European Union also revealed it will ban exchanges from dealing with private digital assets from July 2027.
Hoskinson believes there’s a way to offer privacy without sacrificing compliance with regulators. He argued that the stablecoin could have selective disclosure to provide the anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism funding provisions that regulators require. In the U.S., the Genius Act, a stablecoin bill, failed to pass a Senate vote last week after Democrats cited anti-money laundering and national security concerns.
Hoskinson says Cardano expects massive changes in 2025
We are at a very exciting inflection point with respect to Cardano’s engineering and the diversity of ideas and teams. In the beginning there was one philosophy that was rigorous, safe, and effective, but it also deeply alienated many who wanted to contribute, prevented new ideas…
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) May 9, 2025
The company’s founder noted on May 10 that there will be a transformation in Cardano as it adopts a more open and agile development model. Hoskinson revealed that the new approach will allow external contributors to participate more actively in building the ecosystem. He also said it will introduce flexible workflows to speed up innovation while preserving the firm’s security principles.
The blockchain’s founder acknowledged that Cardano’s early design favored caution over speed. He argued that the same approach slowed development and made it harder for outside teams to contribute and for Cardano to grow and thrive.
Hoskinson said the company will address the issue by introducing smaller, adaptive teams like Aiken and Midgard. He maintained that the groups will work alongside established teams like Input Output’s formal verification unit, which uses advanced tools to ensure code safety. The entrepreneur believes the new approach will encourage innovation while preserving Cardano’s foundational strengths.
The firm’s founder also believes that some community members may not want the change and prefer the platform’s earlier methods. He argued that this evolution is necessary for Cardano to reach its full potential.
The company dismissed several contributors after allegedly planning to delay the Leois upgrade to 2028. IOG was terminated on April 30 after its long-running contracts with Well-Typed and PN-Sol, two specialist vendors that supplied much of the talent for Cardano’s networking, scalability, and key-management initiatives.
Hoskinson highlighted that such delays will no longer be acceptable. He answered a user on X asking about the terminations, saying that he wants Leios in 2026, not 2028, adding that he values Pragma and different ideas and implementations.
Jeff Watson, Director of Engineering at Input Output, revealed that the team is hiring new contractors. He added that the recruits will come from within the Cardano ecosystem and help push the Leois upgrade forward.
Duncan Coutts, a veteran Cardano architect now serving on the TSC, argued that one-third of the company’s networking team may have been lost and that onboarding replacements took over six months. He believes it will raise the specter of delivery slippage at the very moment when Hoskinson is pressing for acceleration.
