Charles Hoskinson, founder and CEO of Cardano (ADA), gave a keynote speech at Blockchain Rio 2024, where he talked about the future of blockchain projects.
Hoskinson began his speech with a funny reference to getting rid of his famous beard, and stressed the importance of remembering youth and energy before delving into his topic.
In his speech, Hoskinson emphasized that identity, privacy and interoperability will be the cornerstones of the next generation of blockchain networks, pointing to the Midnight network as a model for this vision.
He expressed his hope to see widespread adoption of this new approach in the field of blockchain.
To illustrate the importance of these concepts, Hoskinson goes back to Bitcoin's humble beginnings, highlighting its role in bringing privacy and transparency to the transfer of value on a global scale.
He expressed his astonishment at the great progress the industry has achieved since then.
Hoskinson pointed out that all cryptocurrency projects at their beginning were self-financing, but as money flowed in, pioneers in this field began building larger solutions such as smart contracts, decentralized finance (DeFi), and non-fungible tokens (NFT), which led to... To the boom in easy-to-use cryptocurrency platforms.
With the third generation of cryptocurrencies, innovations were not limited to programming only, but expanded to include blockchain technology and interoperability, which led to the emergence of governance and the need for identity on the network.
Hoskinson confirmed that the fourth generation of blockchain will be the final stage in the blockchain industry, anticipating the entry into the blockchain space of $16 trillion.
He pointed out that identity will be a crucial element, as countries and companies will rely on blockchain.
Although metadata carries identity on legacy systems, blockchain networks provide transparency that can threaten identity, making privacy an urgent necessity.
Hoskinson concluded his speech by emphasizing that privacy on the blockchain still does not exist completely, and that future platforms will pay attention to this point and work to solve it perfectly.