Cardano supremo Charles Hoskinson has revealed the organisation’s mission is to have a billion users over the next five to 10 years.
In a rare interview, the IOHK chief said he felt strongly that a target of a billion people using the network was within reach after already surpassing the one million mark.
In a live discussion with World Mobile CEO Micky Watkins and IOHK’s African Operations Director John O’Connor, the Cardano founder also described the recent partnership with World Mobile and an opening focus on Africa.
Micky Watkins began the discussion by explaining World Mobile’s decision to take its operation to Africa as it bids to ‘connect the unconnected’.
“We go where the demand takes us, and right now that’s sub-Saharan Africa where the demand is massive with a billion people there – 800,000 without any internet at all,” he said.
“We’re starting in Tanzania, specifically in Zanzibar.”
Charles Hoskinson then talked about the reasons behind the partnership with World Mobile and the use of Cardano’s blockchain.
“Our vision as a company is to improve the systems of the world for everyone everywhere, and no system needs more revolution or change than the telco space,” he said.
“Internet is so much more than utility – it’s a human condition. It allows us to talk to eachother, connect with eachother, share ideas, and it’s the single biggest driver of change throughout the world. It spreads freedom, financial freedom, economic identity.
“It gives you the ability to do business with people you’ve never met and never would have met if not for the existence of the internet.”
He then went into the details of why the partnership dovetailed well with Cardano’s goals.
“Very few people are banked or reliably connected, so what we can bring to the table is a wonderful toolbox of services to help with the economic identity and banking side,” he added.
“But those tools generally rely on some notion of connectivity, but that’s not our area of expertise.
“This is not a one agent business – a winner takes all – you have to be good at partnering with people.
“It felt to me like a natural relationship for us to pursue and something that would allow us to achieve our mission.”
That mission, he revealed when asked by John O’Connor where Cardano would be in five years, was to hit a startling one billion users.
“If we’re wildly successful, it will probably be one of the dominant protocols in the blockchain space,” he replied.
“Our goal is to have a billion users – we already hit the million point – but getting to a billion is something we feel strongly that we can do over a five to ten year period.
“The goal there is for it to be an alternative economic rail – a financial operating system for those who don’t have one – that you can run your nation state on, you can run your voting system, property ledger, stock market and all the other services we take for granted in Europe and the United States.
“That requires a lot of miracles and a lot of innovations and bottom-up activity.
“What makes Cardano different from what you see with Microsoft, Google, Apple and Facebook is there’s no notion of top down, rather it’s a self-evolving, self-healing protocol stack that is defined by its user base.”
Cardano’s mission looks to be on track, given recent narratives. Only weeks ago, it was announced that IOHK were teaming up with Chinese public blockchain Nervos to connect it to the Cardano network.
The bridge will allow users to transact with Nervos and Cardano’s native currencies (CKB and ADA, respectively) as well as create their own tokens across both blockchains, which is done through a technique called token wrapping.
Earlier this week, it was also revealed that Cardano’s native ADA token had surpassed Bitcoin as the most held coin by eToro users.
See the full interview here.
