Hydra being abandoned is “just pure FUD,” wrote Cardano co-founder Charles Hoskinson in a post on X.

Rumors suggesting the abandonment of Cardano's Hydra layer-2 scaling project have been addressed by co-founder Charles Hoskinson. On March 18, the CEO of IOHK took to X to clarify that the project is still in progress and has not been shelved.

"I’m seeing some videos claiming that Hydra has been abandoned," he stated, dismissing such claims as "pure FUD."

Hydra, a Cardano-based protocol launched in May 2023, aims to boost transaction processing capacity and reduce costs on the blockchain. It is an integral part of Cardano's "Basho" roadmap focused on scalability.

Speculation arose following a video uploaded by The Cryptoviser on March 17, which suggested a pivot away from Hydra based on an integration announcement with Hyperledger Firefly, a scaling solution for building and scaling Web3 applications.

Hoskinson refuted these rumors, emphasizing the team's productivity, community engagement, and ongoing enhancements to the protocol in a message to his 980,000 followers on X.

This isn't the first instance of Hoskinson defending against FUD surrounding Hydra. In October, he addressed criticisms regarding throughput, highlighting that Cardano operates as a transaction-per-transaction system rather than focusing solely on transactions per second (TPS). He also mentioned Hydra's evolution towards providing middleware for developers to build decentralized applications (DApps) on Cardano.

On March 18, Hoskinson once again confronted what he referred to as a "wave of FUD" surrounding Cardano's collaboration with World Mobile and its scaling roadmap, attributing it to the heightened scrutiny the project faces during certain cycles.

Despite challenges, Cardano has experienced growth in decentralized finance (DeFi) total value locked (TVL), reaching a record high of $520 million on March 14, according to DefiLlama. However, it trails behind competitors like Ethereum, Tron, BNB Smart Chain, and Solana, which collectively hold a TVL of $72 billion.