Charles Hoskinson: Ethereum Will Go Extinct in 10 Years

Cardano’s founder, Charles Hoskinson, believes that Ethereum (ETH) will go extinct in the next 10 years.

In a surprise AMA uploaded to YouTube, Hoskinson classified Ethereum as a brilliant project, but it is also a victim of its own success due to its “network effect” and “momentum,” much like MySpace and BlackBerry did in their time.

The founder stated that Solana is eating Ethereum alive, with more users, developers, and investors migrating to more modern, high-performance blockchains, which only accelerates Ethereum’s decline.

Moreover, he also stated that layer-2s are syphoning the “alpha” (and revenue) out of the layer-1:

“The layer-2s will continue to suckle out all of the alpha and people will start fighting and it’ll get harder and harder for Vitalik to be able to hold it together through sheer force of will.”

In his view, Ethereum’s core infrastructure is aging poorly, pointing to three issues that will ultimately undermine the network’s long-term viability: an outdated architecture, a fractured ecosystem (where L2s come into play), and a lack of effective governance.

Despite his best efforts to be nice, he criticized Ethereum’s accounting model, virtual machine, and consensus mechanism quite sharply, claiming they aren’t engineered for long-term sustainability.

Can Ethereum Survive?

Currently, ETH is trading at a loss, priced at $1,765, a 14.8% decline in the last month. The currency remains down over 60% from its all-time high three years ago, despite its best efforts last year to reach the $4,000 mark, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

While most analysts and influencers can call the bottom, the fundamentals aren’t backing them up. Spot Ether ETFs listed in the U.S. experienced $10 million in net outflows between April 21 and 23, despite Bitcoin ETFs setting new records for inflows.

Moreover, it appears that ETH whales are selling Ethereum now that the price has seen a slight uptick. Popular crypto analyst Alí Martínez tells his over 130,000 followers that whales have offloaded over 63,000 ETH in the last two days, roughly $110.2 million.