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Key Takeaways
- Hoskinson said Cardano’s “best days are ahead” during a July 27 X AMA, as ADA trades near $0.16, down 95% from its 2021 peak.
- Governance disputes, ecosystem shutdowns, and a cancelled 2026 summit have added pressure on the network this year.
- Hoskinson wants to clear a backlog of over 600 million ADA in pending treasury funding requests, capped at 350 million ADA at a time.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said the network’s “best days are ahead” during a surprise X AMA on July 27. The comment came as ADA, the project’s native token, trades near its lowest levels in years. It changed hands around $0.16 at the time of writing, down roughly 95% from its all-time high.
ADA Slides as Governance Fights Mount
ADA hit an all-time high of $3.09 in September 2021 and has fallen 53% so far in 2026 alone, according to CoinGecko data. The token has been on a losing streak over the past week, following a brief rise toward $0.20 on July 5.
Governance disputes, shutdowns among Cardano-ecosystem builders, and the cancellation of Cardano’s planned 2026 Singapore summit have added to the pressure on the network this year. Hoskinson has faced sustained criticism from parts of the Cardano community over the token’s performance, and he stepped back from social media for a period before returning to address the backlash directly. Hoskinson said in a post on X:
“I still do believe our best days are ahead of us, and I still do believe that we can succeed despite the demons we’ve let in. We just have to change the approach, and we just have to change the strategy.”
A Governance System Under Strain
The canceled Singapore summit has become one of the clearest examples of the friction inside Cardano’s governance model. The Cardano Foundation had proposed 7.8 million ADA, roughly $2 million, to fund the two-day event scheduled for October 5-6. The request was itself a reduction from an earlier ask of 14.07 million ADA that had bundled the summit with a separate sponsorship of the TOKEN2049 conference.
Under Cardano’s Voltaire governance model, treasury withdrawals require support from at least 66.67% of active Delegated Representative, or DRep, stake. The summit proposal drew backing from 135 delegates against 61 opposed, with 24 abstaining, for an approval rate of about 65.21%. That fell just short of the required threshold, and the Cardano Foundation confirmed the vote’s outcome would stand. The Foundation said in a statement:
“Governance requires not only participation, but also a commitment to accept collective decisions. The Cardano community has spoken, and we respect the outcome.”
A separate proposal from EMURGO, Cardano’s commercial arm, to sponsor TOKEN2049 Singapore passed by the required supermajority, meaning Cardano will still have a presence in the city during the same week even without its own flagship event.
Why the Treasury Is Backed Up
Hoskinson’s AMA comments echo a broader funding overhaul he has been pushing in recent weeks. He wants to clear a backlog of more than 600 million ADA in pending treasury funding requests from developers building on Cardano.
The bottleneck stems from a structural limit: Cardano’s treasury currently caps net funding changes at 350 million ADA at a time, well short of the volume of requests currently pending. That gap between available funding and requested funding has left builders waiting on decisions even when their individual proposals have community support.
Hoskinson has argued that the network’s long-term security and utility, not short-term speculation, should ultimately drive ADA’s price. He has framed the funding bottleneck as a structural problem rather than a sign of weak developer interest.
A Plan to Loosen IOG’s Grip on Development
To address the funding gap, Hoskinson has proposed spreading Cardano’s development work across a wider set of independent companies, rather than relying primarily on Input Output Global, the firm he leads, to carry the bulk of the work.
The proposal would mark a shift from Cardano’s early development model, in which IOG served as the network’s primary technical contributor. Hoskinson has framed the change as a way to clear the funding backlog faster by distributing both the work and the treasury requests across more organizations rather than routing most proposals through a single firm.
ADA’s Price and Governance Tests Remain Unresolved
Whether a shift in funding strategy translates into a turnaround for ADA’s price remains unproven. The token continues to trade far below its 2021 peak, and Hoskinson’s comments are among the few public statements pushing back against the network’s recent negative sentiment among traders and community members.
The Singapore summit vote followed Cardano’s governance rules: the proposal fell short of the required threshold even after backers trimmed the budget, and the vote’s outcome stood. Whether that same system can move quickly enough to clear a 600 million ADA funding backlog remains unclear.
