Charles Hoskinson Criticizes ETH, EOS's ‘Lone Samurai’ Development Approach

Charles Hoskinson, the co-founder of Ethereum (ETH) and IOHK, the company behind Cardano (ADA), has criticized Ethereum and EOS’s approach to development. Hoskinson made his comments during an interview with business news outlet Fortune published on April 9.

During the interview, Hoskinson noted that most protocols publish all their code open source and free from patents, explaining that ideas which Cardano or most other crypto development teams come up with can be used by other teams. This, he claims, is different from EOS’s approach and the way in which Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake (PoS) algorithm Casper is being developed:

“This is a stark contrast to the development you see with things like EOS or with Ethereum with Casper, where they kind of adopt this lone samurai viewpoint.”

Hoskinson noted that Ethereum and EOS’s approach to development, which centers around strong leadership by Vitalik Buterin or Dan Larimer and a group of engineers, leads to nothing getting done. He points out that “if you look at going to the moon, over a million people were involved in that megaproject,” in reference to the literal moon landing in 1969.

During the interview, Hoskinson also addresses what he defined as a governance crisis in the cryptocurrency industry. He pointed out that Bitcoin (BTC) development needs important decisions to be made, for instance in regards to the implementation of Schnoor signatures or better sidechain support.

Still, while such implementations would reportedly represent a dramatic improvement in Bitcoin’s usability in the views of many, they also introduce more complexity and risk to the system in a way that could compromise BTC’s current value. How to solve such debates is still unclear, according to Hoskinson.

EOS seems particularly relevant when it comes to cryptocurrency governance problems. As Cointelegraph reported in October last year, its nodes (called block producers) have reportedly colluded and mutually voted for each other, resulting in backlash in the crypto community.

At the end of March, Hoskinson had also called for a WiFi or Bluetooth moment in the cryptocurrency industry, referring to the need for greater interoperability.