Key Takeaways
What’s really holding Cardano back in DeFi?
Weak coordination and governance. Hoskinson noted that most of ADA’s 1.3 million active users aren’t yet fueling DeFi liquidity.
How does Cardano plan to fix it?
By linking with Bitcoin and real-world lending to draw new liquidity and break its DeFi stagnation loop.
Cardano’s [ADA] DeFi problem is coordination.
Charles Hoskinson said Cardano’s technology isn’t the issue — its challenge lies in how the community coordinates compared to Ethereum [ETH] or Solana [SOL].
Instead of chasing the usual TVL race, he’s now pushing a different path: linking Cardano with Bitcoin [BTC], and using real-world lending to pull in liquidity.
Cardano is still far behind in DeFi volume, but the base is there. Now, can it unlock that user base and come back to life?
What’s Cardano’s real problem?
Hoskinson’s latest comments made one thing clear that the low DeFi numbers don’t reflect the size of Cardano’s actual base. He stressed that Cardano already has over 1.3 million users staking ADA and participating in governance, but most of them don’t engage in DeFi protocols.
Source: IOHK_Charles/X
That creates a “chicken and egg” loop where low on-chain activity keeps liquidity and partners away.
As Hoskinson put it,
“It’s not a technology problem. It’s not a node problem. It’s not a problem of imagination and creativity. It’s not a problem of execution. We can pretty much do anything. It’s a problem of governance and coordination and ultimately accountability and responsibility.”
As far as solutions go, he referenced Midnight and RealFi as core pillars, both designed to link ADA with Bitcoin and real-world lending. This would mean capital can flow in from outside crypto.
Hoskinson added that this could unlock “billions of dollars,”, especially once ADA and BTC can be lent, converted into stablecoins, and used inside real credit markets.
TVL may be dwarfed, but Cardano is still building
Source: DeFiLlama
At press time, Cardano’s DeFi TVL sat at just $271 million, miles behind Ethereum’s $85.5 billion and Solana’s $11.29 billion. On paper, that placed ADA far behind.
Yet, Santiment data showed Cardano’s Development Activity index surpassed ETH and SOL in late October, proving consistent builder momentum.
Source: Santiment
This is the contradiction Hoskinson was trying to explain: Cardano doesn’t have a demand problem, it has an activation problem.
ADA is on weak momentum
At press time, ADA traded around $0.60 and the trend remained soft. The price stayed under all major EMAs, with the 20 EMA near $0.65, the 50 EMA around $0.71, and the 200 EMA near $0.74.
Source: TradingView
This showed that sellers still controlled the bigger trend.
The RSI showed momentum was weak and nowhere close to a bullish reversal zone. Moreover, the CMF was slightly below zero again, so capital inflows had not stepped back in yet.
Overall, ADA looked stuck in a slow drift, with no strong sign that buyers were returning.
