Cardano: Interview with Frederik Gregaard, CEO of the Foundation

In the current context of the crypto market, only well-established players still live and build in the shadows. New trends and technological advancements pose many challenges for the future, and existing big names must adapt their ecosystem to this phenomenon. Cardano has been years of building and still has its place at the top of the ecosystem. Today we interviewed Frederik Gregaard, CEO of the Cardano Foundation, to learn more about how Cardano sees its future.

Liâm: How do you plan to maintain Cardano’s level of decentralization in the future, with the arrival of large investors in the crypto market?

Fred: We have 5 different axes to maintain decentralization. These are the following:

• the governance ;
• the decentralization index (supported by the University of Edinburgh);
• operation of hardware and software;
• the comparison with the Bitcoin index;
• guaranteeing an optimal amount of staking pools.

Our technical features use game theory to calculate transaction validation, which helps distribute decisions more equitably across stake pools and players. This consensus can be beneficial up to a certain number of stake pools, and we are trying to ask what the right number is for it to be optimally decentralized without too much risk. We want to continue to educate our users to delegate their ADA to be staked, which already represents 100 million ADA staked today.

Regarding the entry of new large financial players, we know that many large investors enter the market through custodian banks. These do not currently stake ADA for their customers. So for now it’s not a big problem, but it will become one later. We are aware of this future issue, but it is not an area where we are maintaining a red flag on at this time.

Liâm: With the rise of Layer 2 solutions on Ethereum in particular, don’t you fear a loss of competitiveness for Cardano and its crypto ecosystem?

Fred: Yes, that’s true. The adoption of these solutions has been growing astonishingly in recent months, but all parameters are positive for the Cardano Foundation. We recorded 20% more transactions on our blockchain compared to the same period a year ago. In these overall transactions, we see good growth in the use of new non-custodial wallets, as well as advanced transactions. What we call advanced transactions are identity-related transactions, business-related wallet transactions, etc.

We have also observed that, unlike Ethereum and some of its Layer 2 solutions, our total value locked (TVL) is growing organically without much marketing compared to these other projects. Interested people stay in our ecosystem, which makes me excited for the long term.

Liâm: How do you plan to train people to become creators in your crypto ecosystem?

Fred: To ensure we have enough creators, we focus on long-term adoption. We are currently working with major institutions such as universities, EU and others to ensure good connectivity between blockchain and real-world infrastructure in the future. This connectivity and collaboration with these stakeholders aims to be an excellent educational tool to enable mass adoption one day.

We are also working on a free learning platform where every blockchain foundation or company could put educational content to bring better general education around the ecosystem, which could be beneficial for everyone, and also for Cardano.

Finally, we are trying to simplify the core programming languages ​​and compatibility of the Cardano blockchain with other players to allow more builders to get on board. We do this in particular thanks to Aiken, a toolkit for programmers that we are currently developing.

Liâm: Do you think that the peer review model that the Cardano Foundation promotes is central to the success of the Web3 world?

Fred: I hope so. Our way of seeing things is oriented towards this paradigm. We want blockchain to be promoted, and if this model can be spread through new uses of blockchain technology, we are even more optimistic. The world is a big place and it is certain that blockchain technology will be used even if its use does not exactly follow this model. Even if only part of it corresponds to our ideology, it would certainly be a good thing from my point of view!

Liâm: How do you plan to continue to have a positive impact in terms of sustainability with your crypto ecosystem in the future?

Fred: First of all, our consensus system is truly sustainable, because it pollutes infinitely less than P blockchains.

Concerning people, we mainly focus on education, as with everything related to our ecosystem. Our Foundation is truly committed to education on blockchain use cases for positive impact. We offer our Cardano4Climate initiative which greatly contributes to the awareness and application of green and sustainable practices in our ecosystem. Cardano is fortunate to have a very strong community, so we are able to leverage this strength to spread sustainable behaviors.

Additionally, our Foundation only provides grants to builders that leverage our ecosystem, meaning it’s easier for us to monitor the positive impact of the projects we invest in, and help them to integrate good practices from the start of their projects.

Liâm: Are you afraid of crypto regulation and the fact that Cardano could be considered a security token?

Fred: We could talk about this at length. Yes but no. It depends a lot on the country, the setting, the people… We remain confident in the goodwill of regulators, and are aware that the fundamental work on policies is being done correctly. Staking is the most delicate subject. Is staking a financial service; is it supposed to be solely intended for the good utility of the token and not for remuneration; how can it be considered in terms of a form of income… We are trying to show that our token is not a simple security by educating the regulators and the EU commission as well. There are a lot of use cases for the ADA token, it’s not just for trading, because people trust us, and those use cases need to be proven to people who want to regulate it. And as we know, these entities are really picky and precise in their work, that’s why it takes time, and it’s even better if it does. It is a guarantee of confidence.

It is with these words that the interview with Frederik Gregaard ended. Many promising commitments are being made by the Cardano Foundation, to be able to maintain and expand its vision and use of Web3. See you soon for a new interview!