Who founded the Cardano blockchain?

Charles Hoskinson founded the Cardano blockchain project.

Hoskinson is a co-founder of Cardano and helped establish the engineering company Input Output Hong Kong, later known as IOHK, to develop the platform. Jeremy Wood was also a co-founder of IOHK and an important collaborator in Cardano’s development, but Charles Hoskinson is the canonical answer among the choices given.

Cardano’s development began in 2015, and the public blockchain launched in 2017. Its native cryptocurrency is ADA, named after mathematician and computing pioneer Ada Lovelace. The platform emphasizes academic research and uses a proof-of-stake protocol called Ouroboros rather than Bitcoin-style proof of work.

Hoskinson was also one of Ethereum’s early co-founders. He left Ethereum in 2014 after a disagreement over the project’s organizational direction, including whether it should pursue a commercial model or remain a nonprofit. That history explains why names such as Vitalik Buterin appear as tempting distractors: Buterin co-founded Ethereum, not Cardano. Charlie Lee is associated with Litecoin, while Gavin Wood co-founded Ethereum and Polkadot.