Cardano's Hard Fork Set for Next Month Amid Growing Ecosystem Momentum

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has confirmed that the network's hard fork is expected to take place next month. In a recent livestream, he emphasized that the project is on track for this milestone and highlighted several key developments in the ecosystem.

Hoskinson also spoke about the upcoming Leios scalability upgrade, which remains scheduled for delivery sometime this year. He expressed satisfaction with the progress made so far and mentioned additional near-term milestones, including a new Plutus version and the integration of Pyth as a 'tier one Oracle' for Cardano.

The founder also discussed the Midnight network launch, which he expects to happen next month, describing it as a project that has been unusually difficult to ship even for teams with experience launching major chains. He noted that the ecosystem is showing growing momentum around cross-chain connectivity and stablecoin access, citing the newly announced LayerZero integration, which connects Cardano to more than 80 blockchains.

Hoskinson used the occasion to address what he sees as a shift in the industry's central battle from enforcement actions to questions of custody and settlement architecture. He warned about factions pushing for crypto transactions to be routed through permissioned federated networks owned by large financial institutions, which he believes would give them too much control over users.