Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said a proposed SpaceX-linked marketing plan that could have sent Cardano and Midnight community members into space ultimately failed because the parties could not agree on a viable price. Speaking during a June 12 AMA, Hoskinson described the effort as a serious but unrealized attempt to create a major visibility event for Cardano, Midnight, and their wider communities.
The comments came after Hoskinson was asked what happened to an NDA involving SpaceX. He rejected the idea that the opportunity had been mishandled, saying the plan had centered on buying out a SpaceX mission and using part of the capacity for Cardano and Midnight holders.
“So, what happened with NDA and SpaceX? It’s pretty straightforward. So, I went at the Hawthorne facility and one of the ideas that we came up with that we thought would have been a really cool marketing idea was to buy out a SpaceX mission and then have some of the seats be available for Cardano and Midnight community members,” Hoskinson said.
According to Hoskinson, the concept was not merely a branding exercise around a rocket launch. The proposed campaign would have allowed holders of ADA or Midnight to apply for what he described as a professional astronaut role, train alongside him, and participate in a mission connected to Vast, the private space station company.
“So, the basic idea is that if you hold ADA or you hold Midnight, you’d be eligible to apply for a professional job to be an astronaut. Then you’d actually train with me and we’d go to space and it was a rollup with VAST,” he said. “So you get to be astronauts, go to space, do the whole thing and it would be Cardano and Midnight in space.”
Price And Market Conditions Ended The Plan
Hoskinson said discussions advanced far enough for the teams to evaluate pricing, mission design, and possible promotional structures. However, the economics never reached a point where the plan made sense.
“So, we went there and we negotiated. We tried to find a good price point on the mission, but it just couldn’t quite get where we needed to be,” he said. “But we talked about a lot of different options, a lot of different things that could be done.”
He added that the concept was designed to do more than generate a joint announcement. In his view, training through SpaceX and participating in one of its missions would have created a deeper relationship than a conventional marketing partnership.
“We thought that that was going to be a massive marketing event for Cardano and it was a really good way to start a strong relationship with SpaceX because if you actually go up one of their things, you become one of their astronauts,” Hoskinson said. “You train at their facility, you go there every day, you meet the people and it’s much more meaningful than like a joint press release.”
Hoskinson also said the team saw potential crossover with Stellar through Vast, while a separate Starlink-related discussion did not appear to produce a blockchain use case. He said SpaceX already had a strong internal direction for Starlink, while his own interest was more focused on quantum cryptography and quantum communication as possible future areas.
A “Could Have Been” Moment For Cardano
The Cardano founder framed the failed effort as a product of timing as much as cost. He said the team had a “whole marketing package and payload” prepared, with partners such as Book.io potentially involved in a competition-style format where community members could apply for the astronaut seats.
“We just never quite got there because the price was too high and the market conditions didn’t go the way that we thought that they were going to go in 2025,” Hoskinson said. “But that’s what that was all about. And it was one of those could have been things.”
He estimated that a reality-style program around the mission could have drawn between 50 million and 100 million regular viewers, arguing that Cardano and Midnight branding attached to such a format would have been a “massive win.” Still, he made clear that the initiative is no longer active, saying the opportunity may have to wait for another cycle.
For Cardano, the disclosure offers a rare look at the scale of ecosystem marketing ideas considered during the last market upswing. The plan did not result in a SpaceX mission, but Hoskinson’s comments suggest Cardano’s leadership had been exploring high-profile, non-traditional campaigns to push ADA and Midnight beyond crypto-native audiences.
AI Transparency Note: This article was prepared with the assistance of an AI system based on the sources listed and was reviewed, edited, and approved by a human editor before publication. All quotes, data points, and factual claims are intended to be grounded in the cited source material; however, errors cannot be ruled out entirely.