In the crypto, whenever the market crashes, a classic meme goes viral: a crypto investor dressed in a McDonald's uniform, accompanied by the caption "Back to frying fries." This meme has been used since the 2022 bear market, and even El Salvador's President Bukele photoshopped a picture of himself making fun of it.
But this time, Charles Hoskinson actually wore a McDonald's uniform and walked onto the stage of the Consensus Hong Kong convention.
This move quickly caused an uproar on social media. The official CoinDesk account reposted the photo with the caption, "When you show up for your first day of work and they give you the uniform."
However, considering that Hoskinson admitted earlier this year that he had suffered a paper loss of more than $3 billion and said that he "could have easily cashed out and left" but chose to stay, is this uniform on him a self-deprecating joke or something that is inappropriate for retail investors who are suffering real pain?
ADA is currently priced at around $0.258, a drop of over 92% from its all-time high of $3.09 in 2021.
LayerZero confirms Cardano deployment
Despite the uniform, Hoskinson announced a major collaboration during his speech: the cross-chain interoperability protocol LayerZero will be officially deployed to the Cardano blockchain.
LayerZero is one of the most mainstream full-chain communication protocols on the market, supporting cross-chain message transmission and asset transfer across more than 80 chains. This integration means that the Cardano ecosystem will be able to directly access the liquidity of mainstream chains such as Ethereum, Solana, and Arbitrum, significantly improving the interoperability of its DeFi ecosystem.
Charles Hoskinson also stated that although current market sentiment is at a "historic low," he believes this is only a "micro-level downturn," and the macro trend remains bullish.
Midnight, a privacy-focused blockchain, launched at the end of March, in partnership with Google and Telegram.
In addition to LayerZero, Hoskinson also announced that its privacy blockchain Midnight will officially launch in the last week of March.
Midnight is Cardano's "Partner Chain," which uses zero-knowledge proof technology to achieve selective disclosure. Users can preset to hide transaction data and disclose it to specific parties only when necessary.
Charles Hoskinson presented a tiered access mechanism at the meeting: public access, audit access, and full access, each corresponding to different permissions.
We have some great partners to help run this network, Google is one of them, and Telegram is another.
In addition, Hoskinson released the Midnight City Simulation interactive testing platform, which uses AI-driven agents to simulate a large number of unpredictable transaction flows to stress test the network's zero-knowledge proof generation capabilities. The platform is expected to be open to the public on February 26.
