AMA 09/19/2021

Open the AMA broadcasting live from Colorado, celebrating the Alonzo smart contract launch and the tens of thousands attending the Cardano Summit.

Previews a multi country Africa tour after the summit covering South Africa, Burundi, Malawi, Zanzibar, Kenya, Ethiopia and Egypt.

Outlines near term technical work after Alonzo: block size growth, congestion control, script compression, and the Plutus Application Backend, moving next into the Basho era with Mithril and side chains.

The Cardano Summit's four tracks, utility, adoption, governance and impact, plus musician guests like Paul Oakenfold and ZZ Top.

The virtual conference world built with partner Active Theory to work around covid travel restrictions, including a world built on a giant turtle's back.

The commercial adoption pipeline has grown to 500 deals, more than the team can currently service.

Advises a viewer on becoming a more articulate speaker, crediting a lifetime of meticulous writing, editing, and reading.

Fires back at Mike Novogratz calling Cardano just an identity token, pointing to millions of users and thousands of deployed smart contracts as proof otherwise.

Dismisses Mark Cuban's claim that DeFi requires identity, noting Cardano tested anonymous financial inclusion at scale in Africa years earlier.

Recounts seeing the Eagles play live with Joe Walsh and Deacon Frey stepping into his late father's spot on stage.

Several decentralized exchanges are launching on Cardano, including Meld and SundaeSwap.

Argues open infrastructure inevitably attracts both good and bad actors, and that community curation, regulation, and Voltaire era tools like Catalyst and ambassadors are the answer.

Warns repeatedly against Ada giveaway scams, noting the team never gives away funds and blaming YouTube for profiting from scam videos while doing nothing to stop them.

Teases certified dapp stores and community and professional curation coming with governance, framing governance as auditability and transparency, not just execution.

Jokes about mishearing Deacon Frey's name as the AMA hits the halfway mark.

Update on quietly lobbying Washington and engaging Wyoming and Colorado state politicians, criticizing misinformation from Treasury Department officials.

Rail against Hedera Hashgraph's patented consensus and its community's habit of spamming Cardano channels, contrasting it with open collaboration with Avalanche.

Argues ivermectin deserved serious study early in the pandemic as a cheap, already approved antiviral, citing Dr. John Campbell's meta-analysis.

Vaccines do not stop covid transmission but do prevent hospitalization and death, arguing booster mandates are unnecessary given natural plus vaccine immunity.

Condemns the US government for funding vaccine development then letting private companies keep the profits and liability protection, calling it fascistic corporatism.

Details how BioNTech and Pfizer benefited from German and EU subsidies plus a guaranteed Operation Warp Speed purchase, and notes the flu mysteriously vanished in 2020.

Argues wealth does not guarantee health or happiness, telling the story of a billionaire heir who died of an overdose despite an inherited fortune.

Reflects that his own journey building Ethereum and Cardano, not the resulting wealth, is what has given his life meaning.

People find meaning through children, faith, or accomplishment, citing immigrant parents who sacrifice so their kids have a better life.

Warns wealth often destroys health through stress and sycophancy, citing a Silicon Valley founder's death and lottery winners who end up broke and ruined.

Argues money is not truly the necessary tool in life, people and passion are, using the Flight 93 pilots' suicide mission as proof some things can't be bought.

Brushes off a chat comment framed as propaganda about rising living costs.

Confirms a beta of the Djed algorithmic stablecoin is coming soon via the COTI partnership.

Praises the technical sophistication of Cardano's emerging DEX projects and calls for unified account model and scaling standards among them.

Pushes back on Ethereum's old world computer marketing, quoting Vitalik that early blockchains were never meant as elastic global servers.

Lays out the properties a blockchain application should guarantee: censorship resistance, tamper resistance, accountability, and equal treatment of users.

Uses a provably fair poker game as an example of blockchain as an audit and enforcement layer rather than a place to store every event.

Off-chain layer 2 networks and state channels pair with Cardano's UTXO model to scale without needing a global ordering of every transaction.

Argues this layered design scales to billions of users and stays censorship resistant since no single country can shut down the whole network.

Reacts to the Rick and Morty season finale, mentioning fan and Cardano supporter Justin Roiland.

Analyze the finite curve plotline stripping away Rick's guaranteed victories and finally giving him real stakes.

Reveals the season's true villain is an evil Rick who killed his family, driving the original Rick into nihilistic depression.

Revisits the Froopy Land twist where he wrongly blamed himself as a bad father, when he had actually embraced fatherhood by inhabiting another Rick's life.

Praises the show's writing depth by contrasting it with Star Trek Picard forgetting its own Inner Light episode.

Dig into the twist that evil Morty exposed Rick's own toxic, abusive backstory rather than being a simple villain.

Contrasts Rick and Morty's character growth with the Simpsons coasting on formula for decades.

Speculates about the Jerry and Beth relationship being manufactured to keep producing a certain kind of Morty.

Laughs off criticism that he talks about Rick and Morty more than Hydra, teasing an upcoming Hydra presentation instead.

Defends spending AMA time on non-Cardano topics, pointing out Alonzo shipped on schedule despite being the hardest launch yet.

Names unrealistic community expectations as the most stressful part of the job, since people project promises he never made.

The backlash after Alonzo for not instantly having thousands of dApps live, despite there being no actual concurrency issue.

The criticism never lets up no matter the milestone, and that showing outside interests gets read as neglecting the project.

Reveals early talks with Ben Lamm and George Church's de-extinction company about a Cardano tokenized woolly mammoth project.

Pitches a zoo leasing business model for de-extinct species, similar to how China leases pandas, alongside NFT and fractionalized ownership structures.

Frames species de-extinction as a milestone achievement for humanity, raising ethics questions about resurrecting DNA from figures like Alexander the Great.

Admits a Yellowstone supervolcano eruption would be an extinction level event he would rather not survive.

Denies being anti-vax himself, confirming he is vaccinated.

Expensive NFT art sales can function as money laundering by selling to a linked anonymous account, comparing it to political speaking fee corruption.

Back a national sales tax over the income tax, arguing income tax gives government control over how much people keep.

He checked out of football once it turned political, but still respects Tom Brady's talent and consistency.

Recommends a Haskell book as further reading beyond Learn You a Haskell for Great Good.

Remembers Norm Macdonald's dry humor and long hidden battle with cancer.

Universal basic income only works with a sovereign wealth fund behind it, otherwise it just fuels inflation.

Rebuts a heckler calling Hydra just a worse lightning network, challenging them to explain isomorphic state channels.

Clarifies he is only an amateur mushroom fan, not a true mycologist.

Gives an update on his growing bison herd, now 500 head.

He has not had a soft drink in five years.

Recalls working at a KFC Taco Bell as a teenager and how the extra crispy chicken is fried.

Deflect a question about having kids, joking none that he knows of.

Picks fighting one horse sized duck over five duck sized horses.

The story of a stolen Colonel Sanders statue thrown into an Osaka river during a baseball game.

Dodge a Miami relocation question, teasing more news at the summit.

Send a shoutout to a fan in Malawi ahead of his upcoming visit.

Confirms the samurai suit in his office is a real piece shipped from a Tokyo armorsmith.

Recommends Python as a starting language for beginner programmers.

Promises wallet speed improvements are coming.

Calls California one of the prettiest but politically unsalvageable states.

Mocks a chat troll pushing to burn other holders' Ada for personal gain with a satirical Paint Chip Brigade award bit.

Extends the bit comparing the Ada burning scheme to stealing groceries, gas, or someone's spouse.

Gives an update on the ongoing community contest to name Wellsy the lobster, over 300 votes cast.

Confirms he is very happy.

Critics who call him a sociopath or scammer never apologize once proven wrong.

Jokes about launching his own million dollar NFT series just to spite a molten tar monster troll.

Jokes about being told to get healthy while insisting he feels great.

Invites a former radio host to send a demo for a Cardano voiceover job.

Jokes about mandatory Dead Space viewing before humanity colonizes other planets.

Agrees the Ripple SEC case could move the whole crypto market.

He has not seen Dune yet since it releases in Europe six weeks before the US.

Brushes off radiation concerns for future space colonists, citing new spacesuits and radiation eating fungus found at Chernobyl.

He is not drunk at all, just drinking coffee.

Predicts Magic the Gathering will eventually land on a blockchain as collectible card games embrace the tech.

Quote Reagan on the difference between reading and understanding Karl Marx.

Denies the hard fork combinator centralizes the network, framing it as a temporary step toward community control.

Jokes his tombstone should read that he was eventually right.

He has never met Michael Jordan.

Defends being harsh on bad faith critics, rejecting a safe space culture where mercenary behavior goes unchallenged.

Picks Doogie Howser as his 90s TV show, having also graduated high school early.

Jokes about needing to get in shape, confirming a personal trainer and 10 pounds lost so far.

Calls communism the most evil governmental system ever, blaming it for over 100 million deaths.

Laughs off being compared to a grown up Fat Albert.

Explains why he always carries two pens, for color and redundancy.

He and Gavin Wood were never on great terms but respects his Polkadot work.

Checking his pen for ink leaks before pocketing it.

Confirms he has read Rothbard and Hayek among the Austrian economists.

Confirms his glasses are real, not for effect.

Names his pet giraffe Chips, planning to visit him in South Africa.

Confirms he has visited Stockholm, Sweden.

Confirms IOHK is still hiring.

Jokes that he would be crashing the market if he had that kind of power.

Addresses Novogratz comparing Cardano supporters to anti-vaxxers, chalking it up to a New York bubble mentality.

Jokes that losing his hair is not for intellectual effect.

Questions whether Avalanche's consensus is actually patented, tracing it back to the pseudonymous Team Rocket paper.

Recalls Tezos founder Arthur Breitman published under a pseudonym while working at an investment bank that may have owned his IP.

Explains why patented consensus is dangerous, warning a hard fork could be sued for patent infringement the way Craig Wright could have weaponized Bitcoin SV patents.

Picks the Druid as his Diablo 2 Resurrected class of choice.

The planned video game studio might consider remote employees.

Cardano would survive, maybe even thrive, if he died tomorrow.

Doubts proof of history offers much novel improvement if brought to Cardano.

Closes out the AMA, pushing the usual Kiva microloan segment to the next stream for lack of time.

Riffs on tour slogans for the upcoming Africa stops.