user2236: What risks are there for Cardano when there's such a prominent figurehead for the protocol? How much power does Charles have over the system? Has the community/protocol decided how it would behave in the event of Charles' death or capture by malicious agents?
An extreme scenario I'm imagining (which I hope will never happen) is that Charles is captured and tortured until the community adopts changes to the protocol which would not have otherwise been adopted. Is this possible? If so, is there a plan for this scenario?

user4302: Wild as your examples are, lets indulge them.
Charles himself has explicitly stated multiple times that Cardano is way beyond him at this point. If something terrible were to happen to him, it may shake the price of ADA a bit, but it wouldn't come close to killing Cardano.
In a similar statement ~2 years ago or so, Charles also mentioned that to take out the current Cardano mainchain there would have to be targeted assassinations all over the world the likes of which we'd never seen before. And even then, the code is still out there and open source. That's the main reason it won't die. That even if all the core developers, SPOs, IOG, CF, Emurgo, and Charles himself all went under,
"Someone else will take the code, fork it, build it, and release it" - Charles Hoskinson

2236: <p>What risks are there for Cardano when there's such a prominent figurehead for the protocol? How much power does Charles have over the system? Has the community/protocol decided how it would behave in the event of Charles' death or capture by malicious agents?</p>
<p>An extreme scenario I'm imagining (which I hope will never happen) is that Charles is captured and tortured until the community adopts changes to the protocol which would not have otherwise been adopted. Is this possible? If so, is there a plan for this scenario?</p>
 4302: <p>Wild as your examples are, lets indulge them.</p>
<p>Charles himself has explicitly stated multiple times that Cardano is way beyond him at this point. If something terrible were to happen to him, it may shake the price of ADA a bit, but it wouldn't come close to killing Cardano.</p>
<p>In a similar statement ~2 years ago or so, Charles also mentioned that to take out the current Cardano mainchain there would have to be targeted assassinations all over the world the likes of which we'd never seen before. And even then, the code is still out there and open source. That's the main reason it won't die. That even if all the core developers, SPOs, IOG, CF, Emurgo, and Charles himself all went under,</p>
<p>&quot;Someone else will take the code, fork it, build it, and release it&quot; - Charles Hoskinson</p>
