Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson fired back at Flare Networks CEO Hugo Philion after Philion touted his blockchain’s recent DeFi gains and took aim at Cardano.
On X, Philion pointed to DeFiLlama figures showing Flare with $159 million in total value locked (TVL) versus Cardano’s $132 million. He argued that Flare — which launched six years after Cardano (Cardano debuted in 2017) — has outpaced Cardano across DeFi metrics despite Cardano’s head start and previously large treasury. Philion framed Flare as one of the largest DeFi providers in the XRP ecosystem and said his project is building a unified DeFi layer for assets like FXRP, FBTC, FXLM, RWAs and stables — a strategy he believes will beat ADA in the race to bring Bitcoin-native assets into programmable finance.
Hoskinson responded dismissively, calling the tactic of attacking another network to grab headlines “an old marketing trick” and suggesting Philion update his playbook — even cheekily recommending “TikTok reaction videos.” He also said he didn’t have time for a prolonged back-and-forth. Philion later maintained he was merely citing the numbers and even teased offering Hoskinson an advance look at Flare’s 2027 strategy.
The exchange highlights a broader competition between chains vying to become the DeFi rails for Bitcoin and other tokenized assets. Cardano has openly discussed making BTC programmable within ADA smart contracts so market participants could earn BTC yield on the network — a move Hoskinson says could unlock yield opportunities for large institutional holders, including governments and funds like BlackRock.
For context, CoinGecko lists FXRP’s market cap at just over $220 million with about 155 million tokens in circulation. And CoinMarketCap data shows ADA trading around $0.27 at the time of writing, up more than 5% over the past 24 hours.
As TVL snapshots and token market caps shift rapidly, this spat underscores how networks are using on-chain metrics and public messaging to stake out leadership in DeFi — especially where tokenized Bitcoin and XRP-related liquidity are concerned.
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