TL;DR: Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson says he is personally developing a programming language that combines transaction intents, proof-carrying data and Groth16 proofs.
Charles Hoskinson is returning to the keyboard. The Cardano founder says he is working directly on a new programming language with Input Output Global engineer Lucas Rosa, aimed at making complex blockchain actions easier to express and verify.
His description brings together three ideas. Transaction intents describe what a user wants to achieve without forcing them to specify every execution step. Proof-carrying data attaches evidence that a computation or action meets certain rules. Groth16 proofs are compact cryptographic proofs that can be checked efficiently.
In principle, those pieces could give Cardano developers another way to build applications that coordinate actions and verify results without putting every underlying calculation on-chain.
There is a major caveat: Hoskinson has not publicly released a finished specification, a name for the language or a timetable for general developer access. A social-media announcement about work in progress is not a new production programming environment.
Cardano already supports tools such as Plutus and Aiken, while the separate Midnight privacy network uses its own developer tooling. A new language would have to demonstrate practical advantages, workable security and a developer experience good enough to encourage adoption.
The idea is ambitious. The unanswered question is how it moves from Hoskinson’s description to publicly reviewable code that builders can actually use.
Written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.