Hoskinson Ditches Developer Count Metric for AI-Driven Crypto Growth

Charles Hoskinson claims that artificial intelligence (AI) has made traditional developer counts obsolete in the cryptocurrency space. The founder of Cardano says AI coding assistants have reduced the scarcity and value of human developers, allowing anyone to produce working software without technical knowledge.

Hoskinson argues that this shift makes it difficult to verify authorship, leading to issues with code bounties and hackathons where entrants often pass off AI output as their own work. As a result, teams spend time interrogating authorship rather than attracting projects, which is why he prefers ventures with paying users and outside investors.

Interestingly, Hoskinson's own ecosystem is running three hackathons with prize pools worth $26,500 in partnership with the Midnight Foundation. However, this contradicts his stance on AI-produced code as these programs reward exactly that kind of output.