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- Cardano's Charles Hoskinson said there would be no dominant blockchain, much as there is no dominant wi-fi router.
- He believes there will be an "internet of blockchains" that are fully interoperable.
- Cardano is one of a breed of "ethereum killers" – smaller, faster networks with DeFi capabilities.
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The cardano network took a step closer this past weekend to competing more fiercely with the larger ethereum network, after a key upgrade meant it could host decentralized finance applications.
But founder Charles Hoskinson doesn't believe any blockchain will be dominant in the years to come, even the so-called "ethereum killers" like cardano. Much like when the internet became a part of daily life, consumers ceased to question which manufacturer made some of the key pieces of hardware that made connectivity possible.
"You're not asking – 'is this a Samsung router? Is this an Apple router?' and my hope is, that's what's going to happen in the industry, where cardano is infrastructure, ethereum is infrastructure, bitcoin is infrastructure," Hoskinson told Insider in a recent interview.
"Of course we compete under the hood, and businesses, governments and people who care about these things will care about them. But at the end of the day, if it's going to work for everybody, we have to have that 'wi-fi moment' where it's consumer friendly, and it just works on your phone and you can just set a transaction, you can seamlessly move between things," he said.
The last in the cardano network's series of "alonzo" upgrades on Sunday means it's now possible for the blockchain to run applications such as smart contracts, or host digital collectible tokens – known as non-fungible tokens, for example.
Ethereum, the network that Hoskinson co-founded along with Vitalik Buterin and several others a few years ago, is the largest network with those capabilities, known in the industry as a layer one protocol.
Cardano, solana and avalanche have all seen their respective native tokens surge in price in recent weeks as they roll out upgrades that improve their chances at chipping away at ethereum's lead.
But Hoskinson said it was less about competition and dominance and more about blockchains working together.
"What's probably going to happen is we're going to live on an internet of blockchains," Hoskinson said.
Right now, the various blockchains can't yet connect to one another. But thanks to so-called layer zero protocols like polkadot this interoperability will become reality.