Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson Sparks Tokenization Debate With XRP and Canton Network Comments

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has ignited fresh debate across the crypto community after praising XRP and Midnight while criticizing traditional finance’s approach to tokenization on the Canton Network. His remarks, shared on X, questioned whether legacy financial institutions truly understand what makes Web3 innovation scalable and meaningful in the rapidly growing real-world asset (RWA) tokenization market.

Hoskinson argued that legacy finance players building on the Canton Network are attempting to replicate what XRP and Cardano’s privacy-focused sidechain Midnight are already achieving, but at a scale far beyond their ambitions. According to him, these institutions are missing the core principles of Web3 and repeating old mistakes. He emphasized that targeting a $10 trillion RWA market requires a fully integrated strategy rather than partial solutions, stating that there is no room for “half-measures or half technologies.” Hoskinson added that success in tokenization depends on strong ecosystems, committed communities, and long-term partners, noting that networks like Cardano and XRP have built authentic, grassroots support that cannot be manufactured.

His comments quickly drew responses from reminder figures in the Canton ecosystem. Yuval Rooz, CEO of Digital Asset, the company behind the Canton Network, challenged Hoskinson’s claims and questioned his accomplishments, accusing him of benefiting disproportionately from retail investors. The exchange intensified discussions around whether public blockchains or permissioned networks are better suited for large-scale institutional tokenization.

The debate escalated further when Zenith co-founder Heslin Kim publicly criticized Hoskinson, calling his assertions unfounded. Kim argued that Canton already has the institutional adoption and validation Hoskinson aspires to achieve, pointing to major financial players such as DTCC, Broadridge, and Tradeweb actively operating on the network. He stressed that Canton is not attempting to imitate XRP or Midnight but has instead developed a mature, enterprise-grade product refined over more than a decade.

Kim also highlighted that Canton leverages Daml, a smart contract language developed around the same time as Ethereum’s whitepaper, and noted Digital Asset’s deep cryptographic roots, including contributions to libsnark, a foundational SNARKs library used by Zcash. Data from RWA.xyz further supports Canton’s position, showing it leads all networks in total real-world asset value at approximately $388 billion, while XRP Ledger and Cardano currently rank outside the top 10.