Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has denied the “lies and misinformation” surrounding the network’s staking operations.
In a Sept. 11 post on X, Hoskinson expressed frustration with the misinformation being spread about ADA, pointing out that the network does not lock staked tokens.
“The lies and misinformation about Cardano have reached epic levels. The stake has not been locked yet they are still lying.”
Hoskinson's comments come in response to allegations that Cardano's large market cap is due to investors being locked into their ada holdings and unable to sell them. The allegations came up during a recent podcast featuring several crypto commentators, including InvestAnswers, CTO Larson, MartyParty and Mando.
During the podcast, MartyParty suggested that Cardano's high market capitalization isn't a true reflection of its value, arguing instead that it's due to investors being “tricked” into locking their assets in the network's staking pools and therefore unable to sell their ADA holdings.
Community response
Besides Hoskinson, several other Cardano holders were quick to refute the claims, with many denouncing the accusations as false.
PRIDE, a prominent stake pool operator within the network, noted that Cardano is the only top 20 crypto project to offer native liquidity staking, meaning ADA tokens are not locked. Unlike other networks, Cardano does not require derivatives or tokens for liquidity staking. Therefore, its flexible staking system allows users to maintain self-custody of their assets, which is in line with Satoshi Nakamoto's vision, PRIDE explained.
The company added:
“Stacked coins never leave your wallet and can be spent or used in DeFi at any time, which means there is no slashing.”
According to staking rewards data, over 22 billion ADA tokens have been staked to contribute to the security of the network and facilitate the validation of new blocks. The current reward rate for staking ADA is 2.82% per year.
Cardano Development
The controversy surrounding ADA staking comes at a time when Cardano has recently recorded significant milestones in the development of its network.
On September 1, Cardano completed the first phase of its long-awaited Chan hard fork, introducing decentralized governance to the network.
Ahead of the upgrade, the Cardano Foundation revealed that the network's key metrics had risen in August, with the number of smart contracts, transactions, and wallet interactions each increasing by around 1%.
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