Are XRP and Midnight Ahead in Tokenization? Cardano’s Hoskinson Sparks Debate

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has sparked a debate in the crypto community following his remarks about how XRP and Midnight are ahead in tokenization. He also suggested that legacy finance was getting it wrong with its tokenization push on the Canton Network.

Cardano Founder Praises XRP And Midnight Amid Canton Criticism

In an X post, Hoskinson criticized legacy finance and their tokenization push on the Canton network, stating that they are trying to build what XRP and Midnight are already doing at a “scale 100x beyond their ambitions.” He further remarked that they never learn and don’t understand what makes Web3 unique and meaningful.

When asked about his “scale 100x” comment, the Cardano founder explained that when going after the $10 trillion RWA market, there are no “half-measures or half technologies,” suggesting that these TradFi institutions were backing the wrong horse. “You need an end-to-end strategy, great partners, and great communities. You can’t fake Cardano or XRP Nation,” he added.

Hoskinson’s comments drew remarks from Yuval Rooz, who is the CEO of Digital Asset, the creator of the Canton network. Rooz questioned the Cardano founder on what he achieved while accusing him of extracting money from retail investors.

It is worth mentioning that Hoskinson’s praise of XRP and Midnight comes as the Canton network gains traction in the tokenization space. Wall Street giant DTCC recently partnered with Digital Asset to tokenize DTC-custodied U.S. treasury securities on the Canton network. This came after DTCC received SEC approval via a No-Action letter to begin tokenizing assets.

Canton Stakeholder Criticizes Hoskinson

In an X post, Zenith’s co-founder, Heslin Kim, criticized the Cardano founder’s statement, suggesting that Hoskinson’s claims were baseless, since Canton already has the adoption and validation he is seeking from the exact market participants he dreams of servicing. Kim then declared that Canton isn’t trying to build what XRP or Midnight have built.

He asserted that Canton has already built a “superior product” with players such as DTCC, Broadridge, and Tradeweb running on the network, with over 10 years of optimizing and refining this product. Kim also mentioned that Daml (Digital Asset Modeling Language), which Canton utilizes, was created at the same time as the whitepaper for the top layer-1 network, Ethereum.

As such, the Zenith co-founder believes that any claim that Canton is non-web3 is “laughable.” He also noted that Digital Asset’s co-founder, Shaul Kfir, is one of the original authors of libsnark, the open-source software library for SNARKs, which Zcash uses to shield transactions.

According to data from RWA.xyz, the Canton network is the top network in terms of real-world assets value, both distributed and represented ($388 billion). Meanwhile, the XRP Ledger and Cardano both fail to make the top 10 list.