Charles Hoskinson Shares Ambitious 2025 Plans for Cardano: Bitcoin DeFi, Scalability with Leios, and ChainLink Integration

Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, and one of the more influential people in the blockchain industry, has recently shared ambitious plans he has for the Cardano project in 2025.

Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano (ADA), has recently shared some ambitious plans he has for the blockchain project in 2025.

In a brief X post, Hoskinson stated that this year, he will be “deeply” focused on three major initiatives for Cardano: Bitcoin decentralized finance (DeFi), scalability with Leios, and a potential partnership or integration with ChainLink.

Bitcoin DeFi on Cardano

DeFi, a service that initially emerged on Ethereum (ETH), has seen strong adoption on the blockchain. As of January 2025, Solana’s (SOL) DeFi ecosystem attained a Total Value Locked (TVL) of $9.52 billion, marking its highest in three years.

To put things into perspective, TVL for the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem is ten times as large, standing at approximately $98.7 billion.

Hoskinson, however, is dreaming even bigger, suggesting that Bitcoin’s market is four times the size of Ethereum and Solana combined, which is why he’ll be heavily invested in Bitcoin DeFi on Cardano this year.

Related: DeFi’s Best: Chainlink and Synthetix Push Innovation in 202sq5

Scalability: A 24/7 Endeavor

The second major topic for the year is scalability. Hoskinson hints the team will work 24/7 on scalability, mainly through the Ouroboros Leios, a consensus mechanism proposed for the Cardano blockchain.

Leios aims to enhance scalability, throughput, and decentralization by building upon earlier versions of Ouroboros and optimizing transaction processing and validation.

The core idea of Leios involves separating the validation and propagation of transactions to improve network efficiency. That, in turn, should allow for more transactions to be processed simultaneously while maintaining high levels of security and decentralization.

Cardano: A Peninsula, Not an Island

Finally, Hoskinson discussed making Cardano a “peninsula, not an island,” something the team can only achieve with “integrations, integrations, integrations.”

On that road, Hoskinson’s first stop seems to be ChainLink, since a meeting with the team is “already on the books.” After that, the founder plans on meeting with stablecoin developers, to discuss potential integrations there, as well. He didn’t mention which stablecoins Cardano is looking at, right now.

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