In a wide-ranging two-hour livestream on December 26, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson addressed ongoing discussions around partnering with Ripple, advancing a Chainlink integration, and bridging Bitcoin into the Cardano ecosystem. Speaking from Gillette, Wyoming, Hoskinson provided new details and timelines for these initiatives, emphasizing security requirements and technical collaboration across multiple blockchains.

Update On The Potential Cardano And Ripple Partnership

Hoskinson described the relationship with Ripple as “early days,” highlighting a desire to incorporate Ripple’s infrastructure into Cardano’s upcoming privacy-focused sidechain, Midnight. “We’d like to include Ripple in the Midnight ecosystem,” he stated, underscoring that his team and Ripple CTO David Schwartz have pursued technical conversations about how both platforms could benefit from each other.

“There are ongoing talks between the Midnight people and the Ripple people and a lot of technological talks as well. And we’ve been trying to learn more about how their stack works,” Hoskinson confirmed.

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He also referenced Cardano’s smart contract language, Marlowe, suggesting it could be of particular interest to Ripple developers. “There’s some tech we invented, in particular Marlowe, that would be tremendously useful with the Ripple ecosystem, and it would be a lot of fun to see what we can do there and also just some things in Ripple like Flare, for example, are pretty cool, pretty interesting” he explained.

Nonetheless, Hoskinson noted that partnership agreements require time to “ferment,” adding, “First step was just technical conversations and that’s what we did with David [Schwartz] who’s been tremendously helpful and a great asset. Then at some point once you’ve got beyond that, then there’s actual integration work and other things to get done, but overall they’ve been easy to work with.”

Chainlink Integration

Addressing Chainlink’s absence on the Cardano blockchain to date, Hoskinson recalled initial discussions from 2021 in which the two teams had reached an agreement to integrate oracle services. Despite the early enthusiasm, the project never fully materialized.

“We talked about integration. They agreed to do it and, for a long time, I thought they had integrated on the chain,” Hoskinson said, describing how the initiative became stalled. “Where I don’t think there’s a commercial issue or an integration or technical issue, something got cross-wired […] we’ll circle back and I’ll find out what happened there.”

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He reiterated Cardano’s interest in oracles—crucial infrastructure that feeds real-world data onto the blockchain—mentioning alternatives such as Charlie3 and Flare. At the same time, Hoskinson reaffirmed that no bad blood exists between the parties.

“I know Sergey [Nazarov], the Chainlink ecosystem has always been very friendly to us,” he continued, reiterating plans to reopen discussions.

Bridging Bitcoin To Cardano

In one of the AMA’s more in-depth technical segments, Hoskinson outlined plans to integrate Bitcoin into Cardano’s ecosystem—discussions that involve multiple teams exploring trustless bridging solutions.

“Anytime assets move from one blockchain to another blockchain, that is a point of attack,” he said, pointing to the string of exploits that have plagued cross-chain protocols in recent years. “We’ve witnessed literally billions of dollars in hacks.”

Hoskinson stressed the importance of formal methods and security proofs in building a robust BTC–ADA bridge, warning that “the single most important bridging project” cannot be rushed to match shorter market cycles. Instead, the goal is to unveil a reliable, cryptographically rigorous design by Bitcoin 2025, the industry conference slated for May 2025.

“We can’t put our fingerprints on it until we know the cryptography works,” he said, “because if we build something and a year down the road there’s a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin in it and it gets hacked, that’s a catastrophe.”

Alongside the core IO (Input Output) developers, several community-driven teams have been experimenting with bridging approaches under monikers like Bitcoin OS. Hoskinson noted such parallel efforts are welcome in an open ecosystem, though he emphasized that his own organization’s effort focuses on “belt-and-suspenders” security. “We’re really good at understanding what’s real and what’s not real, and building things that stand the test of time,” he concluded.

At press time, ADA traded at $0.90.

Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com