Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has yet again accused Ethereum developers of adopting Cardano’s Extended Unspent Transaction Output (EUTXO) architecture after an Ethereum Foundation researcher proposed a new native UTXO payment model recently.
Key Takeaways
Ethereum Foundation researcher Toni Wahrstätter proposed native UTXOs that could cut permanent state use by 99.8%.Charles Hoskinson said the proposal copies Cardano’s decade-old EUTXO model without credit.The proposal remains in research phase, with no formal Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) filed yet.The proposal builds on Ethereum’s upcoming Frame Transactions standard, EIP-8141, and aligns with co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s Lean Ethereum roadmap, an initiative aimed at simplifying the network’s architecture and slowing state growth. The proposal remains in the research phase, and no formal Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) has been filed.
It’s literally a crime in the Ethereum inner circles to mention Cardano. EUTXO is the biggest innovation of the smart contract world and Ethereum cannot mention it as they literally try to copy it.
Cardano’s Extended UTXO model extends Bitcoin’s original UTXO transaction structure to support smart contracts, an approach Hoskinson has long argued offers more predictable transaction execution than Ethereum’s account-based model. He said Cardano’s team published a paper called “Chimeric Ledgers” explaining how to run UTXO-based and account-based systems in parallel, work he says predates Ethereum’s current proposal by years.
Hoskinson argued that deterministic transaction behavior, transactions that execute the same way regardless of network conditions, remains one of Cardano’s strongest competitive advantages. He said predictable execution reduces unexpected failures, minimizes network congestion, and creates a more secure foundation for decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.
Part of a Broader Pattern This MonthHoskinson maintains that Cardano’s real competitive edge lies less in any single feature and more in its overall engineering philosophy, arguing that competitors may copy individual technical ideas but cannot easily replicate Cardano’s research-first culture.
In any case, the technical disagreement carries real stakes for both ecosystems because if Ethereum successfully implements a native UTXO model (meaningfully cutting its state growth), the network would address one of the its longest-running scaling criticisms while potentially undercutting one of Cardano’s key differentiators. Ethereum developers have not directly responded to Hoskinson’s copying allegation, and Wahrstätter’s proposal has not credited Cardano’s EUTXO work in its public documentation.
