Charles Hoskinson Hints at a Collaboration With a Major Sneaker Company

On June 13, 2019 Charles Hoskinson gave a talk for the Emurgo sister company in Japan celebrating the 2 year release of Cardano (ADA). The topic of the talk – the success and progression of the Cardano ecosystem.

Cardano Ecosystem

The ecosystem consists of three branches: the Cardano foundation which focuses largely on community engagement, Emurgo which promotes business development, and Input Output Hong Kong which leads the scene on the technological and structural development.

These lines get quite blurred when you realize Emurgo is responsible for developing the Yuroi lightweight wallet for ADA, and Charles the ceo of IOHK is busy traveling the world striking business deals with entire countries.

Charles Hoskinson Traveling

Recently, Charles was in Ethiopia and Mongolia visiting with government officials trying to find solutions for the two countries’ many problems by utilizing one of the pillars of the Cardano ecosystem. Like this trip Charles has actually been to 52 countries over the past 4 years learning and solving the worlds problems. Astounding to say the least as the exposure for Cardano is growing as he speaks and walks.

Charles has a list of travel destinations coming up which include:

• Georgia – planning to meet the Prime Minister
• Uganda – planning to meet with the King of the region
• Israel – Community engagement and meetings
• Virginia – details unknown
• Korea – details unknown
• Bonisari Indonesia – details unknown

With every trip Charles is building his network, relationships and furthering the impact of the Cardano ecosystem.

Shelly and Sneakers

Back to the main point of the talk in Japan, Charles discussed a few of the exciting developments for the asset and the potential partnerships. Obviously, there are many things to comment on, but the targeted topic is the launch of the test net for single nodes under the Shelly protocol. This is an exciting time for Cardano and in essence, with this development, the asset is leaving its generation one phase and transitioning into generation two.

Generation two could be easily summed up as the generation of products. Now that the ecosystem is developed and maturing, full scale products can start to be built, maintained and progressed to impact the world in unthinkable ways.

Although, that is not the only thing Charles highlighted. Very briefly in the video, Charles threw in a short phrase which might have concealed something huge. He mentioned that Cardano has been collaborating with a sneaker company. There are many sneaker companies in the world, but the one that comes to mind has been in the news very recently.

Nike and Blockchain – Cryptokicks

Nike is one of the most prominent sneaker companies in the world, and they just happened to have announced a blockchain initiative and project in late April. The project, named Cryptokicks, is an ambitious dive into the crypto world. Nike will clearly need all the help it can get with this project and the fact that Charles now has a “sneaker company” discussing solutions is probably no coincidence.

This does not mean that Nike is the company collaborating with Cardano. In fact, it could mean just the opposite. Nike made this announcement and other companies like Adidas, Reebok, or heck even Uggs could have seen that announcement and thought, “Hey that is a great idea.”

In short, this is how markets are made with rapid adoption of competing companies. Regardless, the mention caught my ear, and I simply wanted to share with those interested in the little details of the Japan talk.

In full disclosure, nothing in this article should be considered investment or financial advice. Additionally, I do own Cardano.