In an extensive two-hour live broadcast on December 26, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson talked about ongoing discussions about partnering with Ripple, improving Chainlink integration, and integrating Bitcoin into the Cardano ecosystem. Speaking from Gillette, Wyoming, Hoskinson provided new details and timelines for these initiatives, emphasizing the need for security and technical interoperability across multiple blockchains.
Update on Potential Cardano and Ripple Partnerships
Hoskinson described the relationship with Ripple as “early days,” highlighting the desire to integrate Ripple’s infrastructure into Cardano’s upcoming privacy-focused sidechain, Midnight. “We would like to include Ripple in the Midnight ecosystem,” he said, emphasizing that his team and Ripple CTO David Schwartz have pursued technical discussions about how both platforms can benefit from each other.
“There are ongoing discussions between the Midnight people and the Ripple people and a lot of technical discussions. And we’ve been trying to learn more about how their stack works,” Hoskinson confirmed.
He also referred to the language of Cardano’s smart contract, Marlowe, suggesting that it may be of great interest to Ripple developers. “There are technologies that we have developed, especially Marlowe, that would be very useful for the Ripple ecosystem, and it would be very interesting to see what we can do there and some things in Ripple like Flare, for example, very good, very interesting” he explained.
Still, Hoskinson noted that partnership agreements need time to “ferment,” adding, “The first step was just technical discussions and that’s what we did with David. [Schwartz] which has been a great help and a good asset. And then sometimes when you get past that, then there’s real work to do with other things to do, but overall they’re easier to work with. “
Chainlink integration
Speaking about Chainlink’s absence from the Cardano blockchain so far, Hoskinson recalled the initial discussions from 2021 when the two parties reached an agreement to integrate oracle services. Despite initial enthusiasm, the project never fully materialized.
“We talked about coordination. They agreed to do it and, for a long time, I thought they had put the chain together,” said Hoskinson, explaining how the plan was set up. “When I don’t think there is a commercial problem or a merger or a technical problem, something has gone wrong […] we’ll go back and find out what happened there.”
He also emphasized Cardano’s interest in oracles—the critical infrastructure that feeds real-world data onto the blockchain—citing alternatives such as Charlie3 and Flare. At the same time, Hoskinson confirmed that there is no bad blood between the parties.
“I know Sergey [Nazarov]the Chainlink ecosystem has always been very friendly to us,” he continued, reiterating plans to reopen negotiations.
Linking Bitcoin to Cardano
In one of the more technically intensive parts of the AMA, Hoskinson outlined plans to integrate Bitcoin into the Cardano ecosystem—discussions involving multiple teams exploring trustless integration solutions.
“Whenever assets move from one blockchain to another blockchain, that’s a point of attack,” he said, pointing to a series of actions that have abused cross-chain protocols in recent years. “We’ve seen billions of dollars in hacks.”
Hoskinson emphasized the importance of legal methods and security evidence in building a strong BTC–ADA bridge, warning that “one very important project to bridge the bridge” will not be able to keep up with the short market cycle. Instead, the goal is to unveil a reliable, cryptographically strong design through Bitcoin 2025, an industry conference scheduled for May 2025.
“We can’t put our fingerprints on it until we know the cryptography works,” he said, “because if we build something and a year down the line there’s a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin on it and it gets hacked, that’s a disaster. .”
Alongside IO (Input Output) developers, several community-driven groups have been experimenting with integration methods under platforms such as Bitcoin OS. Hoskinson noted that similar efforts are welcome in the open space, although he stressed that his organization’s effort is focused on “belt and hanger security”. “We’re really good at understanding the real and the unreal, and we’ve built things that stand for a long time,” he concluded.
At press time, ADA traded at $0.90.
The featured image was created with DALL.E, a chart from TradingView.com