Charles Hoskinson said on October 18 that he is personally developing a new programming language for Cardano with Input Output Global engineer Lucas Rosa, a co-creator of Aiken. The disclosure points to a potential new route for Cardano application developers, centred on transaction intents and cryptographic proofs rather than a conventional description of transaction execution.
Hoskinson has not named the language, released public code or given developers a timetable for access. Those omissions mean the project remains an early disclosure rather than a tool that developers can presently assess or use.
Hoskinson and Rosa begin work
In a post on X, Hoskinson said he was working with Rosa on the language. Rosa’s involvement gives the project a direct link to Aiken, one of Cardano’s existing smart-contract development options.
Programming languages shape how developers express application rules, build transactions and work with a network’s underlying execution model, making the announcement notable. The post itself did not set out a specification or repository, nor did it propose a path for bringing the language into Cardano’s broader developer stack.
For now, the public description is limited to the elements Hoskinson identified and subsequent reporting on their intended use. The lack of code also leaves open practical questions such as the language’s syntax, tooling and the scope of applications it would be designed to support.
Transaction intents and proofs
Hoskinson said the language would combine transaction intents, proof-carrying data and Groth16 cryptographic proofs, according to CoinDesk. The stated design places emphasis on what a user wants a transaction to achieve, alongside evidence intended to show that required conditions have been met.
Under the proposed system, users would specify desired transaction outcomes. Applications would then handle execution and attach cryptographic evidence that those conditions were satisfied, CoinDesk reported.
That distinction matters to the framing of the project. Rather than describing the user’s interaction solely as a sequence of execution steps, the model described by Hoskinson starts with the outcome and assigns applications the task of carrying it out. The proof component is intended to accompany that process as evidence relating to the stated conditions.
Groth16 is the specific proof technology named in the announcement. Neither Hoskinson’s disclosure nor the reported description published details on how it would be implemented in the language, what data would be covered by proofs, or how applications would present the resulting transactions to Cardano users.
Those are material implementation questions for a language making claims about transaction construction and verification. They cannot be resolved from a high-level announcement, particularly without a public codebase or technical documentation.
Alongside Plutus and Aiken
Hoskinson said he was personally developing a new Cardano programming language with Input Output Global engineer Lucas Rosa, co-creator of Aiken.
He said the proposed language would combine transaction intents, proof-carrying data and Groth16 cryptographic proofs. Under the proposed system, users would specify desired transaction outcomes while applications handle execution and provide cryptographic evidence that conditions were satisfied.
If released, the project would add another Cardano development option alongside Plutus and Aiken. CryptoSlate reported that Aiken was intended to make Cardano smart-contract development more accessible than the Haskell-based Plutus environment.
As of October 19, Hoskinson had not disclosed the language’s name, published public code or announced a developer release date, according to CryptoSlate.
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