Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson is building a new programming language for the network

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson is writing a new programming language for his blockchain. He says it will be the first to combine what a user wants a transaction to do with cryptographic proof that the rules were followed.

“I’m actually personally developing a programming language for Cardano,” Hoskinson wrote on X on Sunday, adding that he’s working on it with Lucas Rosa, a software engineer at Input Output Global who co-created Aiken, one of Cardano’s main smart contract languages.

That’s not something most founders do once their network is this big. Hoskinson runs a company full of engineers and is still choosing to write the tool future Cardano apps could be built on himself.

The language would support three tools: transaction intents, proof-carrying data and Groth16 proofs.

An intent lets a user say what they want done and leave the steps to the app. A trader could ask to swap one token for another only if the final price meets set conditions, without spelling out how to get there.

Proof-carrying data attaches cryptographic evidence to a piece of information, showing it follows certain rules. Another app can check that evidence without redoing every calculation behind it.