The Cardano (ADA) ecosystem has a complex governance structure, which is no different from the way American democracy operates. It has a fixed mechanism of checks and balances.
There are three main participants in the Cardano (ADA) ecosystem: Cardano Foundation, EMURGO and IOHK; according to Frederik Gregaard, the incoming CEO of Cardano Foundation, as more and more organizations join, governance will become more complex. He also stated that he intends to maintain the independence of the Cardano Foundation from the influence of Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano and CEO of IOHK. :
“Swiss foundation law stipulates that we must be independent. That’s why it is interesting, and why Charles chose to create it this way, because he really feels that independence is needed to protect the Cardano agreement for future generations.”
The mission of the Cardano Foundation is to promote the development of the “Cardano Protocol”. It also retains IOHK, the developer of the agreement. Although its contract will expire later this year. With Voltaire scheduled to be released within a few months, the community will soon vote on whether to extend the IOHK contract. If IOHK cannot get the support of the community, it will hire another development company to replace them.
Although there were serious disagreements between the two as early as 2018, the partnership seems to have been repaired since then. IOHK is an independent entity and although its main focus is Cardano, it also cooperates with other projects. For example, recently, it has proposed several solutions for Ethereum Classic. EMURGO was originally established as a risk department of this ecosystem, but it seems to have transformed into a broader technology company.
Gregaard admitted that Hoskinson is not just the person in charge of the Cardano development company, and sometimes they may conflict in the direction of Cardano’s development:
“Charles did initiate this project with one of his colleagues. So there is no doubt how smart and visionary he is. But he runs a product company and needs to provide products. I’m sure that the priorities and There will be some disputes on some things. In some places, we believe that maybe we and the community should lean more to the right, and Charles hopes to lean more to the left. We need to reach consensus together.”
He said that in the past 6 to 12 months, working with Hoskinson (as a PwC consultant), he feels good about the relationship, although he doesn’t think it will be easy. Gregaard is a strong supporter of decentralized governance. He believes that this provides a viable alternative to the current status quo. In the current status quo, technology giants such as Facebook and Google are manipulating their users.
