Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano and CEO of Input Output Global, is embarking on what might be the most ambitious governance homework assignment in crypto history. He’s reviewing governance models from more than 11,000 decentralized autonomous organizations, plus a decade of related academic and industry literature, all in an effort to fix how Cardano handles internal disputes.
What Hoskinson is actually proposing
The review, announced on May 23, 2026, zeroes in on three areas: executive functions, roadmap planning, and strategy setting. In English: who gets to make decisions, how priorities are ranked, and what happens when people disagree about direction.
That last part, conflict resolution, is the real target here. Cardano’s shift toward decentralized governance under its Voltaire era has surfaced the kind of friction that any large, distributed organization eventually hits. Previous tensions between Hoskinson and the Cardano Foundation over governance structure and transparency are a case study in why this matters.
Hoskinson isn’t just reading papers and tweeting about it, either. He’s reportedly contemplating becoming a Delegated Representative, or DRep, himself. He’s also floating the idea of organizing a mini-convention to bring the community into the process more directly.
