Surprise AMA Details: Cardano Prepares Discord Community Push With Input From Hosky Team and Phillip Pon

Charles Hoskinson used a new surprise AMA to outline a planned shift in Cardano community coordination toward moderated Discord channels, while also sharing updates on Midnight, Leios, Poken, TapTools, Midnight Passport and real world asset use cases. The discussion connected Cardano’s communication structure with a broader roadmap that includes scaling infrastructure, privacy products, Bitcoin DeFi and agent based applications.

Cardano Discord Plan Takes Shape With Hosky and Phillip Pon Input

Hoskinson said Cardano is preparing a move from X toward Discord as part of a wider effort to create better moderated and more structured spaces for ecosystem discussion. He said he had spoken with several people who have experience managing Discord communities, including Phillip Pon, members of the Hosky community and others involved in community building.

Midnight Discord was presented as a reference point for the model Cardano may try to replicate. According to Hoskinson, the Midnight Discord community grew from around 11,000 users to 49,000 users over the past six months. He described the first step as bringing people into well moderated channels, followed by additional planning around community contributors and KOLs.

The planned Discord push comes after a period in which Cardano governance debates, treasury discussions, ecosystem disputes and product updates have often taken place publicly on X. The new structure would give Cardano a more curated environment for technical discussion, governance coordination and product focused community activity.

Midnight, Leios and Poken Remain Part of Cardano’s Summer Roadmap

Midnight remained one of the central product themes in the AMA. Hoskinson said the project continues to follow a schedule of major releases roughly every three months. He described the earlier phase as focused on liquidity and the guarded mainnet, while the next steps include guards coming down, contract composition turning on and recursion expected in the third quarter.

Midnight City also received additional context. Hoskinson said a recent workshop had been held for the project and that the team is exploring agent personality systems using models such as Enneagram and Myers Briggs. The goal is to allow users to create agents with distinct personalities inside Midnight City, which fits into a wider roadmap around agent to agent interaction, digital identity and future agentic trading features connected to the Midnight ecosystem and $NIGHT.

Leios was highlighted as one of the next major Cardano development milestones. Hoskinson mentioned June 23 as the expected date for the Leios testnet. In response to a question about how fast Cardano could realistically become with Leios, he said the architecture targets tens of thousands of transactions per second and described the network as moving toward a model where throughput would no longer be the primary constraint, pending testnet validation.

Poken was described as a commercial project rather than paused research. Hoskinson said the original goal was to connect part of the upside from Poken usage directly to the Cardano treasury. After that model was not approved through governance, the project can still move forward commercially, but without the same treasury revenue structure for Cardano holders. He connected Poken to Bitcoin DeFi, TVL growth and a wider debate about how Cardano governance evaluates commercial proposals that may generate ecosystem revenue.

TapTools, Midnight Passport and RWA Insurance Add Product Context

The AMA also addressed TapTools. Hoskinson said the team has been in contact with TapTools for some time and that several outcomes are possible, including another group absorbing the platform. He mentioned Lace and Midnight City as possible areas where TapTools functionality could make sense, but did not announce a final agreement or confirmed acquisition.

Midnight Passport was another product update. Hoskinson said Lace Passport has been deprecated and that Midnight Passport is now being developed for use across multiple product lines. He said the change is tied to privacy features and selective disclosure, extending beyond a basic identity system into self sovereign identity with privacy. He also said DUST will be used to power applications on Midnight, especially as community dApps begin entering the network in later phases.

Real world assets were part of the discussion as well. Hoskinson identified insurance and reinsurance as one of the RWA areas he is most interested in, especially exotic insurance markets that could support marketplace structures with potential returns and low probability default profiles. He said discussions had taken place with insurance companies in Bermuda and that Cardano and Midnight could become platforms for issuance if the right technical, market and regulatory elements align.

The AMA placed Cardano’s near term agenda across three connected areas, community coordination, infrastructure delivery and application level utility. The Discord plan would change where parts of the ecosystem organize and debate, while Leios, Poken, Midnight Passport, TapTools discussions and the next Midnight releases tied to $NIGHT define the product checkpoints that will shape the coming months.