Red Lines

Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado. It's a fun day, and I'm just about to go on Paul Barron's network. We have a unique relationship with him, so we'll see how that goes. We've had a lot of great communication recently. We just did a Twitter space discussing some funding proposals and also had a four-hour space yesterday as a Sunday hangout, which 11,000 people attended.

It was great to see that engagement. I want to talk a little bit about red lines. There are a lot of people floating around the social sphere who attack a straw man. They create an image of me as thin-skinned, unstable, and so forth, and then they burn that image down. I have red lines—there aren't many, but if you cross them, I will always behave the same way.

As a project founder in Cardano and a member of the community, understand that those lines exist, and you'll always get the same result. There will never be a counterexample. If you accuse me of criminal conduct or illegal activity, and you're more than just an anonymous internet troll—if you actually have a following—we will respond to that, up to and including litigation. We saw this with the AID of Alger situation, where we were accused of criminal conduct and were, of course, exonerated with an audit. It was a very dark time in the history of Cardano.

The other red line is if we create a product or are involved with a product and are directly building the community around that product. If you have disagreements with me or my company and then extend those disagreements to attack volunteers connected to our projects, bullying and harassing them, that will always end badly for you. It is not acceptable to take someone who believes in something, extract them, and then bring them into the court of public opinion to demand a purity test or recusal. This is a direct attack and a common tactic used to intimidate, harass, and bully, which only damages our ability to build a community. If you engage in that activity, it will have a bad outcome.

I will hit back. Now, the CEO of Iagon chose to do this. In my opinion, he can apologize and say he will never bully or harass Midnight community members or Midnight ambassadors again, or he can double down. What he's chosen to do is weaponize his entire ecosystem to create a narrative that Charles is cancer for Cardano, that Charles is evil, unstable, and victimizing everyone. If you're an Iagon token holder, there is no Charles Hoskinson here.

Every communication I've had about Iagon historically has been neutral to positive. There was never a negative communication until your CEO first voted to defund us and then attacked the Midnight ambassadors, bullying and harassing them to try to get them to vote to defund us or not participate in the process. He did this out of spite, partly because he didn't get paid what he felt he should have been paid for Fireblocks and also because Blockfrost partnered with Filecoin. Your CTO has also voted to defund us, specifically stating in his tweet that IO is evil because of me. If you're an Iagon token holder, all these losses and conflicts came from the decisions your fiduciaries made.

He has every right to vote against an IO funding proposal; many people have and will continue to do so. The Cardano Foundation abstained, and Emurgo has abstained or voted no on things in the past. It is what it is; you move on. It's not necessarily a problem. Where it becomes a problem is when you cross a red line.

You will always get a predictable outcome when you cross a red line. Unfortunately, your project is mostly controlled by a small group of people at the top. I have no animus and no problem with Iagon holders; I don't think there's any issue there. I question your leadership, their integrity, ethics, and the purpose behind what they're doing. My belief is that he wanted to provoke a fight to give him an excuse to leave the Cardano ecosystem because he's not getting the success he hoped for.

He's been telegraphing this for a while with the multi-chain conversation and various statements in different channels. That's between you and your leadership; I don't care. Normally, I don't get involved, but if you cross a red line, you cross a red line. It's that simple. You have to ask your leadership why they crossed that red line.

Don't think the cop-out of "they're just asking questions" is appropriate. I have a million followers. These projects are huge. An everyday person—a pharmacist, a teacher, or a construction worker—who has 30 followers on Twitter should not be dragged into the court of public opinion with millions of people looking at them as a Twitter mob, yelling at them and demanding things be done. They shouldn't be scrutinized this way.

It's not appropriate; it's not acceptable. It's a tactic of bullies. Then, and only then, did I say my first negative thing. It wasn't against the Iagon project; it was directly against the leader of the project who conducted himself in this reprehensible way. Instead of saying, "Let's have a call and talk about it," he chose to weaponize the Iagon community to attack the founder of the ecosystem.

The asymmetry of power means he's probably not going to win that fight, and it's going to create catastrophic and grievous harm to his project, giving him an excuse to leave the chain and go somewhere else where he thinks the commercial opportunities will be better. I don't know; it's the only reasonable strategy if this is his intention. If his intention is to stay in Cardano, I can't understand why he'd want to create permanent and irreparable damage between our entities. He's also accountable for the statements of his executive staff, and the statements of his CTO were disgusting and reprehensible as well. But this is what I've come to expect in 2026 with discourse, which is why I tell people up front what my red lines are.

If you cross them, this is what's going to happen. I'm never going to back down; I'm never going to stop. That's what a red line means. If you don't the outcome, don't cross the line. You can criticize me directly; that's never been an issue, and many people do.

Do not attack our ambassadors—not once, not ever. Do not bully them, do not harass them, and do not @ them on Twitter to bring them into the court of public opinion for a Twitter mob to tear them apart and claim that they're bought and sold and owned by me. It's disgusting, and if you do it, then we're at war. Until you stop doing it and apologize, don't accuse me of illegal conduct as a project founder or a community member of substance. If you do, there will be problems, and it's unforgivable.

You can say I'm a sociopath, ugly, fat, incompetent, or a poor leader. All these things are opinions, and it is what it is. Sam, we're probably not going to get along at cocktail parties, but for the most part, I stay silent about these things. But when you cross a red line, you cross a red line. That's not immature or irrational; that's called having standards.

I'm not going to allow the conversation to be gaslit by the ego of the few to the harm of the many. I have no incentive to see Cardano projects fail. I have no incentive to see anyone in Cardano have a bad experience. But I do have to protect our people, our projects, and the individuals committing real time—mostly as volunteers or not very well-paid ambassadors. They should not be harmed or dragged into a bare-knuckles brawl over competitive differences.

That's not fair to them; it's not fair to our community, and no one should feel they have to pick sides. We never once put on the table that during my disagreements with the Cardano Foundation over their form and structure, if you work with the Cardano Foundation, you can't work with IO. We never once said that or did that. We were sympathetic to people who felt they should be able to work with everybody and understood the awkwardness of the situation. Many people produced content for, attended events of, and collaborated with both entities.

I think that's a testimony to our maturity and our ability to disagree while still doing things for the greater good of the ecosystem, for example, with the pentad and what we've been able to accomplish there. But we cannot work with entities and people that either accuse us of criminal conduct, as in the case of the ADA voucher scandal, or abuse and harass our community members. It's not okay and never will be okay. Perhaps that wasn't the intent, but that was my reading of the intent, and now they've doubled down. So, where do we move from here?

From our part, all we're going to do is show that there are many options in decentralized infrastructure. We're going to have a space tomorrow with Filecoin, set something up with Walrus, and build bridges and relationships because the Cardano DApp and DeFi ecosystem deserves decentralized infrastructure. I want to ensure that there are great projects in the Cardano ecosystem that provide this at an affordable price to the DApp and DeFi community. I do not have any faith in the leadership, ethics, or integrity of the Iagon principles at the moment, based on their statements and conduct. It seems to be deeply unstable and bizarre, which does not give me high confidence that they will be able to deliver on their mission.

If changes occur in leadership or if the leadership stops conducting themselves in this way, perhaps I'll give it a second assessment. But that's my opinion as the CEO of Input Output and as a member of this community who wants to see it grow and thrive. I'm always going to push for decentralization and diversification. Just like if one node has a problem—maybe the Go node, the Rust node, or the Haskell node—it's good to have more than one option in the ecosystem. So we're going to ensure that multiple options are available, led by credible teams with long track records of achieving wonderful things.

That's to the benefit of everyone in Cardano. I know as an Iagon token holder that probably sounds really bad right now, but again, these are the leaders you have chosen to buy into, and they were the ones who invited this fight. The entire history of the project has been positive for me; I have one of their devices in my office, the Cyclone or whatever they call it. I've been nothing but positive and respectful. Your leader chose to start this fight and cross a red line that he knew I had, and then chose to double down.

This is the consequence. I'm not going to back down. So then you have to ask: Is it in your best interest for him to continue to do this? Yes, it may feel good to go on Twitter and weaponize and attack me. It may feel great to say I'm immature, stupid, evil, and a narcissistic sociopath.

But at the end of the day, it will not increase your token value, adoption, or commercial opportunities. It will not improve the state of the project. As we grow, it reduces your commercial activity in this ecosystem, and we are growing by leaps and bounds. Furthermore, it increases the desire of everyone to pick neutral or positive decentralized infrastructure. If you want to carry out this feud and fight, you can do so.

From my position, I'm not going to talk about it anymore. Every single person who brings it up on Twitter will simply get blocked. As far as I'm concerned, the project doesn't exist anymore. It's done. You can do whatever you want; you can say whatever you want.

It's between you, your leadership, and your character. But I made this video as a broader point: I have red lines—not many of them, and they don't involve me. They involve criminal conduct and the protection of the community. When people cross those lines—fiduciaries, projects, etc.—I have to react.

That's the way it's going to be. That's how I conduct myself as long as I'm in this ecosystem. Now those red lines. It's your choice and your leadership's choice whether to cross them or not. They were crossed in this circumstance, and this is the consequence.

It's not ego; it's about protecting the innocent—small people who make $50,000 or $60,000 a year, who are part-time interested in crypto. They should never be abused or punished for liking or affiliating with a project. They should never be dragged into the court of public opinion and publicly harassed and bullied, exposed to a Twitter mob because they happen to have an affiliation with a competing entity. It's wrong, it always will be wrong, and it will never be right. The people who engage in it are scum.

When I saw it happen, a line was crossed. It is what it is. These are the facts; you can reconstruct them any way you want. You can behave any way you want, but understand that this is where we're at right now, April 27th, 2026. This is the last video; this is the last comment.

If you continue to engage, you're simply going to get blocked forever. I'm never going to engage with you again. It's your prerogative if you want to bully, harass, and say things. I'm just moving on. Tomorrow, we'll have a great space with Filecoin, and we'll continue to bring more options.

We'll set something up with Walrus, and we'd love to see Blockfrost add some things in the future. We can create a nice, diverse ecosystem of decentralized infrastructure, and I think Cardano's best days are ahead of it. This funding process has been a bit stressful, but it has been wonderful from the perspective of bringing people together. When we set these local dramas aside, there's a lot of good work happening, a lot of decentralization and diversification. We're able to do more with less.

Last year, the total fiat value of all the IO proposals was $97.5 million. Now, the total fiat value of the coalition—us plus all the vendors working on this work—is about $47 million, give or take. That's truly extraordinary when you think about it: we are able to do the same amount or more with more people for half the price. That's a massive improvement in efficiency, and a lot of sacrifices had to be made.

Some people had to be let go, and some were good friends. We tried to find soft landings for them, but we recognize and appreciate that ADA is not at 83 cents; it's at 25 cents. So we have to be very concise and precise with the resources we spend. I'm very encouraged by the fact that the ecosystem as a whole has come together, and everybody's working towards a common cause. We brought in a tier-one VC; there's some work to be done to make that maximally effective, but I believe long-term it's a force for good.

Now we're discussing bringing in dedicated marketing. On the infrastructure side, my goal has been to turn every piece of core infrastructure into open-source projects, meaning many independent companies contribute to them, and there are technical and product steering committees made up of the many, not the few. The Intersect KPI committee has also done a phenomenal job of setting, for the first time ever, ecosystem KPIs that we can score our proposals against. I'd highly encourage everyone voting to take a look at them and understand them. We have a lot more work to do, but we're making forward progress.

I believe that after we get over this slump, we're going to see a lot of new blood enter the ecosystem, thanks to Bitcoin DeFi, Midnight, and the growth of Cardano as a whole. It can sometimes feel like our best days are behind us, but they're not. We have had many projects succeed and many projects fail, and despite those failures, we can move on. The thing that matters most is that each of us sets red lines and expectations about how we treat each other and how we treat others. I'm not always perfect, and sometimes I trip over others' red lines, but let me be clear about mine, and that's the point of this video.

I consider this a closed matter. I'm not going to comment on it anymore, no matter how much you want. In some of my spaces, I've noticed that people are parachuting in and attacking, Howard Stern style. That's fine; you'll just get muted, blocked, and we move on. I hope that this resolves itself amicably.

Thank you.