Hoskinson accuses Ethereum of copying Cardano EUTXO

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson accused Ethereum developers of copying Cardano’s Extended UTXO (EUTXO) architecture after an Ethereum Foundation researcher proposed native unspent transaction outputs for Ethereum.

Ethereum Foundation researcher Toni Wahrstätter published a research proposal that would add native UTXOs as one-shot payment objects. Wahrstätter wrote that those objects would exist temporarily rather than creating permanent account records and estimated the approach could cut permanent state use by about 99.8% for payment workloads that do not require persistent state. The proposal references Ethereum’s Frame Transactions work, EIP-8141, and the Lean Ethereum research agenda. It remains in the research phase and no formal Ethereum Improvement Proposal has been filed.

Hoskinson responded publicly, accusing Ethereum developers of republishing ideas Cardano has worked on for roughly a decade and saying the Ethereum community has not given Cardano credit. He pointed to Cardano research, including a paper titled “Chimeric Ledgers,” that describes operating UTXO-based and account-based systems in parallel. Hoskinson wrote that EUTXO is “the biggest innovation of the smart contract world” and added, “It’s literally a crime in the Ethereum inner circles to mention Cardano.”

Cardano’s EUTXO model builds on Bitcoin’s UTXO structure and extends it to support smart contracts. Cardano engineers say the model makes transaction execution more predictable by limiting how state changes across transactions. They argue predictable execution reduces unexpected failures, eases congestion, and provides a firmer basis for some decentralized finance applications.

Wahrstätter framed the native UTXO idea as a way to reduce long-term state by creating temporary payment objects for workflows that do not require persistent accounts. The proposal links to ongoing efforts in Ethereum research to slow state growth, but its public documentation does not reference Cardano’s EUTXO work.

Ethereum developers had not issued a public response to Hoskinson’s accusation at the time of reporting. The proposal remains experimental; any formal protocol change would require further design work, community discussion and a potential EIP before being implemented on the main network.

Hoskinson has also criticized other aspects of Ethereum governance in July, including the absence of an on-chain treasury to fund long-term development.

UTXO and account models record value differently. UTXO systems track individual outputs that are spent and created by transactions. Account-based systems maintain balances for addresses. EUTXO adapts the UTXO concept to support more complex contract logic, while Ethereum’s account model has supported widespread smart contract composability but has faced concerns about long-term state growth.