Ethereum Accused of Quietly Copying Cardano's Core Design
Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano (ADA), has accused Ethereum (ETH) developers of quietly copying its Extended Unspent Transaction Output (EUTXO) design. The accusation came after a new research proposal was published by Ethereum Foundation researcher Toni Wahrstätter, which treats simple payments as temporary, one-shot objects rather than permanent account-state entries.
The proposal aims to reduce Ethereum's state growth by about 99.8%, with a fresh account entry using roughly 100-150 bytes and a native UTXO leaving only about 0.3 bytes. This design is similar to Bitcoin's (BTC) UTXO model, where each output is created once, spent once, and then leaves the active memory set.
Hoskinson claimed that Ethereum developers are trying to copy EUTXO without giving credit to Cardano, which he said is 'literally a crime' inside Ethereum circles. He pointed out that mentioning Cardano's innovation would be taboo within Ethereum, citing its past position as the third-largest asset on CoinMarketCap.
The proposed change has not yet become a formal EIP and would still require community review and a hard fork before being implemented. This argument remains theoretical unless developers move it into the upgrade process.