Hoskinson Discusses Hydra’s Next Steps

• Charles Hoskinson has cleared the community on when the Cardano Hydra Doom tournament will end.
• He said Hydra’s development is key to driving long-term sustainability.

Charles Hoskinson, founder of the Cardano blockchain, recently discussed the future of Hydra, the network’s Layer-2 scaling solution. Launched in 2023, Hydra is designed to improve Cardano’s capabilities, such as transaction speed and cost reduction.

The Next Step for Hydra

Cardano showcased Hydra protocol’s capabilities in December through a Doom gaming test. Hydra clinched a key milestone following the Doom launch, surpassing 1 million Transactions per Second (TPS), per a CNF report.

The success of the initiative has raised questions about Hydra’s next steps. Hoskinson offered insights into the burning questions in a video shared with followers on January 8. While he acknowledged the success of the Hydra Doom, Hoskinson disclosed that the game tournament would end on January 20.

The next steps for Hydra @phil_uplc @SundaeSwap @adamKDean pic.twitter.com/GeMqa9zOYn

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) January 8, 2025

Hoskinson said the game would round off with a tournament scheduled to take place in Las Vegas. A winner will be selected during the event by a merit-based competition. Moving on from Doom, Hoskinson disclosed that Hydra will integrate into real applications.

He noted that independent firms like Anastasia Labs and Sundae Labs have already started building their infrastructure on Hydra. Hoskinson said there are also plans to initiate a three to six-month research and development collaboration effort between these firms and Input-Output, the blockchain’s primary developer.

The goal is to integrate the Midgard and Gummiworm protocols built by Anastasia Labs and Sundae Labs into the production of Cardano applications. The aim is to integrate Hydra’s capabilities into real-world applications such as gaming, Decentralized Finance (DeFi), and payments.

The Cardano founder further emphasized that Hydra still needs more work. These include unlocking communication between Hydra Heads, which refer to instances of the protocol. There are also plans to integrate zero-knowledge technology into the Hydra heads and Hydra Tail protocol. 

According to Hoskinson, the goal for Hydra is iterative and not based on threshold. He explained that Cardano intends to improve Hydra yearly rather than achieving capabilities that are not sustainable. He added that improvements on Hyrdra would continue and expressed excitement about the next phase of the protocol.

Favorable Cardano (ADA) Upsides

So far, January 2025 has begun on a good note for the broader Cardano ecosystem. As CNF mentioned, Cardano is back in Graysclale’s largest multi-asset fund, the Digital Large Cap Fund (GDLC). Grayscale announced the removal of the ADA from the fund in April. 

However, by January 6, Grayscale’s website showed the digital asset had replaced Avalanche (AVAX) in the $811.5 million fund. Cardano’s re-inclusion in GDLC has raised optimism about the potential launch of an ADA spot exchange-traded fund (ETF). 

A possible ADA ETF launch would likely spark increased adoption from institutional investors. As these investors inject capital into ADA, the cryptocurrency is anticipated to soar higher, even reaching new highs.

ADA price was trading at $0.9154 at press time, down 8.7% in the last 24 hours. This sharp decline comes amid bearish sentiments in the broader market.

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