Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson says the network will “win this fight,” as ADA rebounds 26% and criticism of the ecosystem grows louder. He also revealed that cooperation with Ethereum developers could produce a working integration within months.

The comments offer Hoskinson’s clearest answer yet to claims that Cardano is losing relevance.

Hoskinson Pushes Back Against Cardano Critics

During a recent interview on The Breakdown with David Gokhshtein, Hoskinson addressed mounting criticism of Cardano’s ecosystem directly.

That criticism has intensified following ADA’s sharp decline from previous market highs, alongside ongoing governance disputes and struggles affecting some ecosystem projects. Some observers have questioned whether Cardano can maintain its position among leading crypto networks.

“It’s 2026, and we’re still talking about Cardano. We’re still inviting Charles to conferences, treating Cardano as newsworthy, accepting its sponsorship money, and giving it airtime on podcasts. Then we wonder why this industry struggles for credibility. We deserve the reputation we have. No serious industry keeps rewarding irrelevance like this,” ARK Invest’s Lorenzo Valente previously noted on X.

Hoskinson rejected that narrative, continuing to encourage the community to focus on the network’s long-term potential rather than short-term price action. He has previously stated his ambition for ADA to eventually become the largest crypto by market cap.

“Don’t bet against me, we’re gonna win this fight,” Hoskinson said, responding to questions about the network’s ability to recover and compete going forward.

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ADA price performance offered some support for his optimism. The altcoin gained roughly 26% over the last week, according to BeInCrypto data.

Beyond price action, Hoskinson pointed to concrete development work underway.

Ouroboros Leios aims to significantly increase Cardano’s transaction-processing capacity, while Hydra remains a key Layer-2 initiative designed to support faster, more efficient transactions as the network competes with Ethereum and Solana on scalability and adoption.

Cardano Founder Backs Collaboration With Ethereum

After years of rivalry, Hoskinson said Cardano and Ethereum developers should work together. He wants Ethereum to explore Cardano’s UTXO-based technology, which changes how transactions and smart contracts are processed.

He said the collaboration would require no funding or apologies over past disputes and could produce a working integration within months.

“… it’s not like we would just be like no we don’t want to work with you. We’d be actually that’s great for both ecosystems. This is a natural easy academic and engineering collaboration which requires no transfer of money, no apologies, just an acknowledgement and just an desire to work together,” Cardano founder noted.

For Cardano, such cooperation could give its technology a much larger stage. It would also help Cardano connect more closely with Ethereum and show that ideas developed within its ecosystem can have value beyond ADA’s price.

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Source: BeInCrypto