I recently came across an interesting discussion in the Cardano community regarding the absence of ADA from the list of 87 cryptocurrency partners of Mastercard. Researcher Thomas Bush mapped out the entire ecosystem of Mastercard's collaboration with the crypto industry and found that Aptos, Avalanche, Polygon, Solana, and Ripple are included, but Cardano somehow was left off the list. ADA holders started asking questions about what’s going on.

Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, responded to the discussion. His reply was quite honest and actually makes sense. Hoskinson pointed out that the problem isn’t with the technology itself or the project’s potential, but rather with how Cardano approaches integrations and partnerships. Specifically, they lack a dedicated structure or team that focuses solely on negotiating and executing such collaborations on a daily basis.

He also reminded that newer projects like the Midnight blockchain have foundations that actively work on the ecosystem every day. In the case of Cardano, there was a group called Pentad that tried to handle this, but it was more of a one-time effort rather than a continuous strategy. Hoskinson emphasized that if they want to secure larger partnerships at scale, it must become a systematic activity rather than an occasional project.

An interesting observation, because it shows that sometimes success isn’t determined solely by technology, but by organization and consistency in actions. ADA is currently hovering around $0.25, and a growth of over 0.61 percent in the past 24 hours indicates that the community still has trust in the project. Perhaps Hoskinson’s honesty will serve as a catalyst for changes in Cardano’s structure.