Charles Hoskinson has delivered his sharpest ultimatum yet to the Cardano community, telling viewers of a June 16 white-board livestream that he will “simply retire” if the network rejects his plan to overhaul its 1.7 billion ADA treasury—now worth about US $1.1 billion at the current spot price of roughly $0.64 per ADA—into an actively managed, multi-asset sovereign wealth fund.
What rendered the session extraordinary—and electrified social channels—was Hoskinson’s tone. He confessed to being “thoroughly tired” of “paralysis analysis” and vitriol on X , declaring: “I’m not going to cuddle people anymore… I’m going to tell you in a frank, adult way what we need to do.”
Then came the ultimatum: “Our burden is to submit a governance action and you get to decide. […] It’ll become very clear to me if I share ideas and they don’t get adopted that the ecosystem has lost confidence in my ability to lead, in the ideas that I bring to the table. In which case I don’t provide value to the ecosystem and I’ll just simply retire. If you adopt the ideas and they’re successful, well then I’ll stay. If you adopt the ideas and they fail, obviously I have bad ideas. There’s no ego in that. That’s just objective reality. And that’s where we’re at.”
He warned the Cardano community that the ecosystem still has a lot of catching up to do in many areas compared to its competitors, and that this will only be possible with a functional treasury. “We are not the market leader. Even though we enjoy technological superiority, we currently do not have a fully functioning governance superiority, nor do we have the investment momentum necessary to go to number one. Now, with good strategy, good governance, and decisive action, we can grow every year and get into a very strong position. But we have to act.”
To insulate the treasury from mismanagement, the DAO’s elected board would control asset-manager mandates, while an independent audit layer would “verify that everything that’s happening in this structure is correct.” A built-in “rip-cord” would allow Cardano Governance to liquidate positions back into ADA if strategies sour.
A formal governance action is expected to surface at Rare Evo in Denver this August, giving ADA voters the first opportunity to bless or reject the framework. Hoskinson made it clear that his future rests on the outcome: “If you adopt the ideas and they’re successful, then I stay… If not, I’ll retire.”
For an ecosystem that has long prided itself on measured, peer-reviewed progress, the founder’s demand for decisive action—and his threat to walk away—marks a pivotal moment. Whether Cardano embraces an active sovereign wealth fund or clings to its passive reserves may dictate not only the chain’s DeFi prospects but also the role Hoskinson plays in the project he created eight years ago.
At press time, ADA traded at $0.63.
