Cardano (ADA) introduced decentralized governance through the Chang hard fork upgrade that went live last month. While this upgrade made Cardano more decentralized, Charles Hoskinson believes it has also spurred negative sentiment around the project.

In an X post, Hoskinson noted that allowing the Cardano community to contribute and voice their concerns about the project opened up “pent-up grievances” on a wide range of issues.

“There have been years of pent-up grievances, unexplored road map items, unfunded growth strategies, and needed partnerships that haven’t been addressed due to Cardano’s governance not scaling to meet the needs of the ecosystem,” Hoskinson stated.

The outspoken Cardano founder also noted that the Voltaire upgrade would introduce a new roadmap for the project. This roadmap will ensure that issues not previously addressed will be brought into focus to improve the network’s scalability.

One of these issues is the Cardano sidechain solution known as Midnight. This solution will help boost the project’s liquidity. Furthermore, the blockchain is also boosting stablecoin support to boost usage.

Cardano is “different”

Hoskinson also stated that Cardano differed from the rest of the cryptocurrency industry by being more transparent. He mentioned that, unlike other projects, Cardano did not deal in “backroom deals and dirty tricks.”

“It’s why we are loathed by a lot of others… Short-term thinking, market manipulation, and companies seeking a handout have no role or place here,” he stated.

Hoskinson also bashed projects fighting for recognition on Wall Street through exchange-traded funds (ETFs). He stated that ADA was one of the few cryptocurrencies that still wanted to be “real and not the patron of BlackRock and Wall Street.”

Crypto community reacts

Hoskinson’s statement has drawn reactions from the broader cryptocurrency community. X user @cardano_whale stated that the negative sentiment around ADA revolved around price action and engagement farming.

However, not all community members believe that Cardano is doing well in terms of governance. One user noted that Cardano developers were supposed to improve scalability before introducing the Voltaire upgrade.

Wasn’t IOG supposed to finishing scaling BEFORE Voltaire? So that part of the roadmap was supposed to be YOUR responsibility.Or am I wrong?

— Opti (@store_optimal) October 10, 2024

Another user also stated that Cardano was suffering from a lack of volumes and declining usage, which pointed towards the failure of the founding entities. Furthermore, the few governance wallets limited the project’s level of decentralization.

Cardano traded at $0.3468 at press time after an around 1.49% drop in 24 hours.