Charles Hoskinson dropped a doomsday prediction for Ethereum during his latest AMA, which has the entire crypto world talking.

The founder of Cardano and co-founder of Ethereum believes the world's second-largest blockchain will become irrelevant within 10-15 years.

Coming from anyone else, this might be dismissed as FUD – but from one of Ethereum's original architects, it carries a different weight.

The Three Fatal Flaws

Hoskinson isn't pulling punches about Ethereum's consensus model, claiming it's fundamentally broken even after the much-hyped merge to Proof-of-Stake.

He's calling Ethereum's Layer-2 solutions "parasitic" – saying they're sucking all the value and innovation while the main chain rots.

The governance model is his third target, with Hoskinson claiming forum-based governance makes it nearly impossible to evolve the protocol.

Ethereum's off-chain governance model is apparently so bad that eventually not even Vitalik's "sheer force of will" can hold it together.

The Cardano Alternative

But there’s a bit of an incentive for him to do so – Hoskinson is talking his book, given he’s the founder of Cardano, a direct competitor to the Ethereum network.

Cardano's on-chain governance system is purportedly the solution to all of Ethereum's problems, particularly with the upcoming Voltaire upgrade.

The dual-layer architecture Hoskinson designed for Cardano is supposed to handle congestion better than Ethereum's approach.

Essentially, Cardano claims to be everything Ethereum aspired to be but couldn't due to its early design decisions.

The Community Reaction

Half the crypto community is accusing Hoskinson of being the ultimate hypocrite for trashing the project he helped create.

The other half is nodding along, admitting that Ethereum's governance and scaling issues are precisely what they've been complaining about for years.

Meanwhile, Ethereum still boasts the largest developer ecosystem in the crypto space, despite years of predictions about its demise.

The smart contract wars are officially heating up as competitors close in on the once-dominant smart contract network, Ethereum. 

Market Reality Check

Ethereum is trading around $1,800 with analysts eyeing a push toward $2,700 if the market cooperates.

Cardano is currently trading at roughly $0.70, with some technical analysts projecting a potential run to $2.65 in the coming months.

The price gap between the two still reflects the massive difference in adoption and market position, regardless of which founder you consider to be the right one.

The markets clearly aren't pricing in Ethereum's demise anytime soon.

The 15-Year Countdown

Hoskinson is essentially claiming that Ethereum will follow the path of BlackBerry and Myspace – once dominant, now largely irrelevant.

He's betting that Bitcoin will continue to lead Ethereum, while platforms like Cardano attract users frustrated with scaling issues.

This prediction is about whether decentralized governance can actually work at scale.

The crypto industry now has a 15-year timer to see whether Hoskinson's bold prediction becomes prophecy or just another hot take that aged like milk.