Hoskinson Warns DReps: Rejecting Research Funding Could Undermine Cardano's Edge

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has urged the network’s delegation representatives (DReps) to back a high-profile research funding proposal — warning that rejecting it could undermine one of Cardano’s defining features: its identity as a research-driven blockchain. Speaking from England during a May 21 livestream, Hoskinson said Cardano is entering “treasury season” amid a tighter funding environment. The ecosystem is requesting roughly $52 million in treasury support this year, down from about $98 million last year, after a round of budget cuts that have already impacted engineers and community teams. “Many people have had to make profound sacrifices,” he said, noting layoffs and the dissolution of familiar community groups. What alarmed Hoskinson most, he said, is a “disturbing trend” of DReps voting against funding the platform’s research arm — a program he describes not as an optional line item but the “spine and backbone” of Cardano’s competitive edge. “The spine and backbone of what makes Cardano Cardano has always been and will always be the fact that we’re the science coin,” he said. “We’re the research coin.” He pointed to a decade of investment — “hundreds of millions of dollars” and “countless hundreds of researchers,” in his words — and highlighted concrete outputs from that effort: proof-of-stake research, the extended UTXO model, Plutus smart-contract work, sidechain development and Bitcoin-related DeFi research. He also underscored Cardano’s academic links with institutions such as Stanford, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Wyoming, arguing those relationships are hard to rebuild if eroded. Opponents of the proposal, Hoskinson said, have suggested breaking research funding into smaller pots so the community can “pick and choose” projects. He rejected that approach, arguing it would force fragmented, damaging choices — and asked DReps bluntly which researchers or institutions they would cut. A core concern: if Cardano signals it no longer values its research base, those cryptographers, programming-language experts and distributed-systems researchers could be poached by better-funded rival ecosystems. “If you treat these people like commodities, they will leave,” he warned. “We can’t recover this. It’s a one-way door.” Hoskinson also tied research funding to Cardano’s investment narrative. He asked DReps to consider what the project’s three- to five-year story would look like if it abandoned its research identity — suggesting that without that foundational layer, Cardano’s case to investors would fall back on metrics such as monthly active users, TVL or transaction volume. The livestream concluded with a direct appeal to DReps who have not yet voted — and to those who have voted against the measure — to reconsider and support the research proposal put forward for IOG (Input Output Global), the engineering firm closely associated with Cardano’s development. “Please vote for science. Please vote for the research proposal for IOG. It’s a necessary foundational proposal, and we can’t afford to lose it,” he said. At press time, ADA was trading at $0.2499.