• Cardano’s founder, Charles Hoskinson has admitted to spying on Polkadot.
• He made the admission on the Lex Fridman Show where he spoke at length about Cardano and its future.
• Spying on rivals is not a new thing in cryptocurrency circles, according to Hoskinson, as he cited the example of ConsenSys and EOS.
• Cardano’s Alonzo update spells a run of good fortune for the network with smart contracts now a reality.

2021 has been a pretty interesting year for Cardano given the tremendous increase in value the crypto has seen so far. The network has gone on to celebrate one milestone after another with the successful Mary hard fork reaching over 1 million wallets and setting a new all-time high of $2.46. 

In an interview on the Lex Fridman Show, Charles Hoskinson stated that the team at Cardano will keep a close eye on Polkadot and may be taking a page from their books. The founder heaped accolades on Polkadot and went on to state that corporate espionage is a fairly common practice in the industry.

Cardano’s Espionage

Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, has let the cat out of the bag over spying on the competition. He made this known to crypto enthusiasts while speaking on the Lex Fridman Show, saying that the team at Cardano is paying rapt attention to Polkadot.

Hoskinson went on to disclose that Cardano’s development team is analyzing Polkadot’s code and “eventually forking their code and running private versions of it.” By fiddling with Polkadot’s code Hoskinson is hopeful that significant insights may be obtained.

Presently, Cardano is faced with the challenge of how best to tackle the issue of a sidechain model with an Ouroboros Proof-of-Stake. 

Hoskinson was quick to mention the parachain system designed by Polkadot’s development team. He said, “well, we already have this parachain thing, right” and by studying the design of parachains, the team can get ideas of the best way to solve the sidechain puzzle.

According to Hoskinson it is a fairly common occurrence for projects to “spy” on each other; he cited the scenario of ConsenSys and EOS. In 2018, ConsenSys released a report after carrying out a careful perusal of the EOS systems, stating that a bulk of the claims made by EOS were false, particularly the claim that EOS could carry out 250 transactions per second.

On the Flipside

• Galaxy Digital CEO, Mike Novogratz has referred to Cardano as a “weird cult” after being taken aback by Cardano’s valuation
• Regardless of the deferring views about the project, Cardano has been marked by a flurry of developments
• Charles Hoskinson took to Twitter to respond to the allegation saying that Novogratz is riled up because he doesn’t see a “backdoor to get in at a favourable price.”

The Alonzo Update

Cardano’s Alonzo Update is in full gear after the news broke that Alonzo now has smart contract capabilities. Marketing and Communications Director, Tim Harrison made the groundbreaking announcement, stating that this development marks the beginning of the Alonzo White phase.

The Alonzo mainnet update is scheduled to be launched at a later date, Ahead of its launch, Charles Hoskinson has revealed the biggest challenge facing Alonzo. Hoskinson noted on the Lex Fridman Show that it is “less of a technological problem” instead it is more of a coordination issue. This is because there is a litany of exchanges that have listed Cardano and this introduces “lots of wallet infrastructure and different constituencies.”

Cardano remains one of the greenest coins with its Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm that has seen it soar in value in recent weeks. Cardano is the fifth-largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of over $45 billion.