In an interview on The Wolf of All Streets podcast, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson revealed new particulars about Cardano’s subsequent main scalability improve, Leios, positioning it as a game-changing protocol enhancement designed to ship “Solana-style velocity” with out sacrificing the challenge’s core commitments to decentralization and resilience.
“Leios goes to offer us Solana-style velocity however with full decentralization and no stalls,” mentioned Hoskinson, drawing a deliberate distinction to Solana’s efficiency profile, which has delivered industry-leading throughput at the price of periodic community failures and validator centralization considerations.
With Leios, Cardano is trying to do what no different Layer 1 has achieved thus far: mix throughput that may rival Solana’s with operational uptime and decentralization that match—or exceed—Bitcoin’s.
What Is Cardano’s Leios?
Leios is a part of Cardano’s multi-pronged scaling technique designed to extend the bottom layer’s throughput by parallelization of validation and execution processes, environment friendly dealing with of transaction inputs, and a extra versatile mempool design. It builds upon the foundational rules of Prolonged UTXO (EUTXO), Cardano’s information mannequin, which reinforces Bitcoin’s unique UTXO mannequin with sensible contract capabilities.
Leios is tightly built-in with enter endorsers, a parallel pipeline that separates transaction propagation from block validation, permitting the community to course of a number of transactions in parallel whereas sustaining deterministic ordering and consensus safety. In essence, Leios is the execution layer improve that allows quick transaction processing with out compromising on finality or decentralization.
“It’s not nearly throughput—it’s about throughput beneath constraint,” Hoskinson emphasised. “You possibly can have all of the TPS on this planet, but when it solely works when a couple of persons are operating all the things on Amazon Internet Providers, that’s not decentralization. We needed to do it proper.”
Solana has made headlines for its blistering velocity and ultra-low transaction prices. Nonetheless, it has additionally skilled 13 main outages since its mainnet beta launched in 2020. Critics argue that Solana’s validator necessities—excessive {hardware} specs and reliance on a small variety of operators—compromise decentralization and resilience.
Hoskinson used this distinction to place Cardano as a extra resilient, decentralized different: “No stalls,” he mentioned pointedly. “Cardano has been operating for practically seven years, 24/7, with out a single minute of downtime. That’s not an accident—that’s as a result of we took the time to construct it correctly from the bottom up.”
Not Like Solana
Leios goals to match Solana’s velocity, however with out introducing centralization vectors or risking downtime. Mixed with upcoming applied sciences like Hydra (Cardano’s Layer 2 state-channel system) and Midgard (an optimistic rollup platform), Leios types a key pillar in a modular scaling stack that’s designed to fulfill future consumer and institutional demand.
In line with Hoskinson, Cardano isn’t just aiming for efficiency parity with sooner chains—it’s constructing with resilience, governance, and self-sovereignty in thoughts.
Citing the Edward Decentralization Index, Hoskinson said that Cardano ranks as probably the most decentralized Layer 1 within the {industry} as we speak. The platform boasts over 1,000 DReps (delegated representatives) beneath its on-chain governance framework—“twice as many because the U.S. Congress,” he quipped—and a community-ratified on-chain structure, handed with an 85% approval score.
The community additionally maintains an enormous $1.5 billion treasury, managed by the group and earmarked for ecosystem growth, protocol upgrades, and strategic funding. “We’re near ending the roadmap we set out 10 years in the past. The instruments are coming on-line, and the Treasury ensures we are able to preserve shifting strategically—with out having to bend to VC pressures or company shareholders.”
Bitcoin DeFi
In the identical interview, Hoskinson detailed Cardano’s rising position within the rising Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem, positioning it as a computational layer that may function beneath Bitcoin’s safety ensures. Due to Babel charges, customers will pay transaction prices in BTC whereas operating sensible contracts on Cardano.
“We’re best-in-class for a lot of completely different approaches. We predicted UTXO DeFi and instantly Bitcoin DeFi is changing into a factor. We’re the primary system to construct that infrastructure. We’re going to be an ideal layer for Bitcoin DeFi,” Hoskinson mentioned.
Cardano’s structure opens the door for the blockchain to turn into a central liquidity and execution hub for Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and different UTXO-based belongings—an ecosystem that collectively has extra market cap and liquidity than Ethereum and Solana mixed. “Cardano has an ideal likelihood to be the nexus of your complete UTXO DeFi ecosystem,” Hoskinson mentioned. “And as soon as Bitcoin DeFi activates—and it’ll—ETFs, establishments, and lots of of tens of millions of customers will comply with.”
Hoskinson’s remarks additionally addressed ongoing criticisms that Cardano lacks the “hype cycles” of different chains or hasn’t produced flashy DeFi TVL numbers. “12 months by yr, our DApp rely is rising. TVL is doubling yearly. Transaction quantity is up. And we’ve had zero main safety incidents,” he famous. “However as a result of we’re not chasing memes or pumping VC tokens, individuals say we’re irrelevant. That’s irritating.”
He argued that speculative tendencies—like meme cash or yield farming manias—might carry short-term consideration, however not often ship lasting worth. Cardano, in contrast, is constructing methods to assist real-world belongings, regulated finance, and public infrastructure use instances.
At press time, ADA traded at $0.6595.
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