AMA 12/18/2021

Returns from a week long silent meditation retreat in the Colorado mountains and highly recommends reading his blog post about the experience.

Writing the retreat blog post in an effortless four hour flow state right after coming home to 8,000 unread messages.

Owning a Blackhawk helicopter for ranch wildfire response and the multi year FAA fight to get it out of the restricted category.

Recalls having to wear a mask while meditating in silence at the retreat despite everyone being vaccinated and isolated, and learning to let go of things outside his control.

Jokes back at a commenter calling him a soy boy for the state as the live Q&A opens.

Explains why he shaved his beard after the retreat fast, involving a barbecue meal gone messy.

Needing mindfulness practice to cope with the toxicity, unfair criticism, and internet hostility that comes with the job.

Laughs off Twitter users calling him a war criminal over Africa comments tied to his helicopter.

Comments on the Netherlands locking down for Omicron, arguing the milder variant is boosting broad immunity.

Gives an update on full peer to peer networking testing, calling network level changes some of the riskiest work because they must be co-designed with consensus.

Previews 2022's partial delegation and proxy keys for stake pool operators, enabling delegation portfolios and keychains.

Draws out the problem contingent staking solves: today a pool operator cannot refuse or condition a delegation, the way Bob cannot reject Alice's stake.

Details how a special contingent staking certificate would turn delegation into a multi-sig style approval with KYC and communication metadata.

Points to the Conclave paper on federated stake pools that let small SPOs band together and appear as one pool.

Lists his staking wishlist for 2022: contingent stake pools, Conclave, and a higher k parameter through the CIP process.

Predicts a strong 2022 for stake pool operators with new revenue streams from sidechains and layer 2 protocols, aiming for 10,000 pools eventually.

Argues perception lags reality, pointing to transaction volume and dApp deployment as proof Cardano has never been stronger.

Cites being close to disrupting Africa's financial sector through microfinance and the arrival of algorithmic stablecoins on Cardano in 2022.

Reveals he wants to write a book on decentralized governance after talking to more than 50 governance experts in 2021, citing Jeremy Pitt and John Buck.

Cites the sociopath code author and books like Culture and Empire as governance inspirations while admitting he isn't ready to write the definitive work yet.

The JavaScript programming course, the Hoskinson Center at Carnegie Mellon, and finding a new co-author for Mastering Cardano among stalled side projects.

Offline payments via secure chips stalled because the University of Wyoming blockchain lab has moved slowly during covid.

Pushes back on claims that others are moving faster, arguing that price manipulation and vacuous yield farming are the wrong definitions of success.

Compares Cardano's 18 months to ship both a consensus change and smart contracts against Ethereum's seven year struggle to change consensus.

Rejects claims that Plutus is too hard to build on, rating it a six out of ten versus Solidity's four and citing strong Discord and Stack Exchange activity.

Argues PR and marketing, not technology, is Cardano's real weak point, and that it isn't his job as a decentralized project founder to run brand campaigns.

Explains why growing too fast is dangerous, using Myspace versus Facebook as a cautionary tale for managing ecosystem growth in stages.

Makes the case for using Catalyst treasury funds for marketing rather than handing money to a single custodian, contrasting it with EOS's troubled treasury.

Debunks a viral story claiming a critical flaw in every Cardano smart contract, clarifying it's a known coding pattern issue, not a Plutus or ledger bug.

Calls out a blog post misquoting a security researcher who publicly denied saying what was attributed to him, with no retraction from the outlet.

Announces hiring seven new people for community management, developer evangelism, and countering misinformation.

The Cardano Foundation's 25 million dollar marketing budget and frames marketing spend as donations that explain the vision, like the Africa initiatives.

Denies giving SundaeSwap or Meld special treatment, saying IOG has been co-developing with three or four dozen dApp teams ahead of the first DEX launches.

The first wave of dApps like SundaeSwap must launch well to avoid negative press, pointing to Minswap's one transaction per block controversy as a cautionary example.

The path for any dApp developer to get this level of collaboration: talk to the developer programs team, no favorites involved.

Compares Cardano's hands on dApp support to the IRS, explaining why staying neutral like a tax agency would slow Plutus's evolution and hurt users.

The certification program as leverage to get dApp teams to open source parts of their code and accept audits in exchange for support.

Vents about being relentlessly attacked and lied about online, saying the retreat helped undo years of accumulated trauma from it.

Argues IOG is the most qualified entity to advise on Cardano because it wrote the protocol, the formal specifications, and the code.

Admits no dApp is guaranteed bug free or secure, calling security a game of probabilities and inches, not certainty.

Anyone wanting to represent their project to Cardano to go through Catalyst, where the community itself vets proposals through dialogue.

Answers a blind viewer's question on dApp accessibility, walking through disability categories from vision to seizure triggers to mobility.

Cites W3C accessibility guidelines like alt text and screen reader support as standards dApps should borrow from web and app design.

Reflects on designing for your neighbor, not just yourself, citing a meditation retreat compassion exercise for strangers.

The story of a soap dispenser that failed to recognize non-white hands as an example of bias baked into narrow training data.

Gives the Japanese sidewalk tactile paving for the blind as an example of accessible design that's invisible until you need it.

Argues diversity and decentralization across a global dApp ecosystem naturally produce more accessibility focused projects than any single mandate.

Proposes folding accessibility into higher tier dApp certification levels alongside security and correctness standards.

Previews input endorsers as the next scaling step after pipelining, promising more content and beta testing in 2022.

Explains why altcoins fall harder than Bitcoin during dips, describing the whole market as tethered together and needing to decouple.

Responds with empathy rather than anger to a troll wishing him prison, imagining the isolation and unhappiness behind that kind of hostility.

He missed the John Deaton XRP interview on Valuetainment because he was off the grid at the retreat, and asks for a quick recap.

Mocks Justin Sun's announcement about announcing he's leaving Tron to become a Grenada diplomatic ambassador.

A Joe Rogan appearance will happen organically, comparing it to patiently waiting for wild elephants on an African safari.

Trades good natured spelling corrections and jabs with a hostile commenter for over an hour.

Defends video games as storytelling and escapism, mentioning his Crypto Bison game studio and plans around Legends of Valor and Lords of Magic.

Recounts the lore and factions of the 90s game Lords of Magic, including the necromancer villain Belkar and its RTS meets Heroes of Might and Magic style.

Wanting to make an enhanced edition of Lords of Magic with deeper mechanics, better lore, and updated artwork.

Walks through his favorite broken game strategy in Lords of Magic, using air mage chain lightning to auto win every battle.

Finally recalls the name of Culture and Empire's author, Peter Hitchens, and the ZeroMQ inventor he mentioned earlier.

Trades more banter with the persistent troll Auto Otto and jokes about his own ranch goats and pygmy goats.

Waves off a flat earth and moon landing conspiracy question with a shrug.

Banters about Master of Magic versus Lords of Magic as competing old school strategy games.

Reacts to the congressional crypto CEO hearings, saying what he caught looked decent, and flags concern about the IMF following the US's lead.

Wraps up rapid fire chat shout outs and Celtic Heroes banter before the last question of the day.

Opens the final question on biotech and medical applications, describing plans for an anti-aging and regenerative medicine venture built with his physician father and brother.

Warns that competence in one domain, like software, doesn't automatically transfer to medicine, especially direct patient care.

Lays out starting with low hanging fruit like lifestyle and microbiome testing through a concierge medicine model before tackling harder problems.

Building a multidisciplinary wellness group covering genomics, cognitive health, and whole body imaging using cheap gene sequencing from Nebula.

Plans a three to five year center of excellence starting with wound treatment research, including twin studies as a natural control group.

Sees wound healing research feeding into antibiotic alternatives and eventually deeper regenerative work like organ repair by the 2030s.

Envisions AI assisted diagnostics flagging problem areas on scans to catch what a tired radiologist might miss.

Stresses that great medicine is a team sport built on continuous chart review and quality improvement, not any one doctor's pedigree.

Ties the medical venture back to Cardano, citing Nebula's blockchain based DNA data ownership as the model for patient owned records at scale.

Investing in Colossal, the woolly mammoth de-extinction company, and its artificial womb and bioreactor technology as synergistic with the medical venture.

Closes the stream sending love and compassion to viewers, including a good natured shout out to the troll Auto Otto.