AMA 04/13/2022

Kick off the AMA live from the Colorado office, joking about the sunny weather and the weekly cadence.

Recaps a wild week: glow in the dark plants, mammoths and a visit from Colossal bearing a mammoth tooth gift.

Visiting Wyoming and dining with the governor, plus ESG work at the Poland and Ukraine border refugee centers.

Reports June pipelining benchmarks are on schedule and teases a Plutus video covering CIPs 31 to 33.

The release schedule is now predictable and clockwork thanks to agile process, not heroic last minute pushes.

Previews a big June: the hard fork unlocks dApps, and the light wallet gains a voting center, partial delegation, multi-sig and proxy keys.

Looks ahead to input endorsers, Babbage fees and sidechains landing toward the end of the year.

Reflects on distributed systems as a young field of science, barely 13 years old, built on hard won foundations.

Marvels at how Mithril, sidechains, Hydra and Ouroboros research are interconnecting and finally bearing fruit.

Praises WingRiders for launching with staking, TVL and stablecoin support baked in, calling it a refined DEX design.

Expects stablecoins like Djed to arrive once Vasil ships, alongside progress on Plutus Pioneers and Marlowe Pioneers pedagogy.

Announces Marlowe is now live on Cardano mainnet after four years of financial DSL research, with Hydra also improving every three weeks.

Open the floor to viewer questions, greeting a regular and joking about his gourmet mushroom farm with Farmbox Foods.

Rules out DEX functionality in Daedalus since it is a reference wallet, but says it could fit the commercial light wallet.

Recounts a heated debate with a Barbados central banker who insisted printing money does not cause inflation.

Points to local home prices doubling and everyday goods up 20 to 30 percent as proof inflation is real.

Newly printed money reaches the wealthy first, who use it to buy up homes through REITs and hedge funds.

Admits his own ultra high net worth access to Reg D deals lets him profit from money printing while ordinary people lose out.

Calls MMT an academic agenda pushed by people who are either naive undergrads or dishonest economists.

Uses a loaf of bread analogy to argue scarcity is what gives money its value.

Challenges MMT believers to explain why governments still collect taxes if printing money has no downside.

Blames rising homelessness and stagnant wages on the poor and middle class quietly getting poorer every year.

Contrasts a single earner Simpsons style household in 1987 with today's two income families who still cannot afford a home.

Turns to a question on homomorphic encryption, calling it one of the most useful privacy preserving techniques being studied.

Gives a medical records example: mining sensitive health data for research answers without anyone seeing the private underlying data.

Admits homomorphic encryption is still too slow for things like search, citing DARPA's PROCEED program and Microsoft's SEAL library.

Traces the idea back to Stan Larimer's DAO writing that decentralized systems cannot keep secrets, a problem homomorphic encryption could solve.

Offers to look at Melodex and revive his Drunken Dragon style podcast to interview more builders on Cardano.

Acknowledges criticism for tweeting about Catalyst funded projects he has ties to, but says he wants to platform as many builders as possible.

Supports building a community translation and cultural localization network so Cardano content reaches non English speakers.

Orbis's zk rollup proposal as complementary to Hydra, and flag demand for new Plutus primitives like secp256k1 and BLS pairings.

Cites Ergo's rollup design handling 15000 outputs per transaction as proof extended UTXO could make rollups easier than on Ethereum.

Welcomes multiple independent and Catalyst funded rollup research efforts, noting IOG's own Sonic SNARK paper and library work.

Pushes back on treating Hydra as a scaling panacea, crediting pipelining and input endorsers for the bigger near term gains.

Points to sidechains and Cardano acting as its own computation layer as additional ways to shard and scale the network.

Hydra and layer two techniques offload micropayments, NFT airdrops and DEX activity so only a fraction hits mainnet.

Frames Hydra as 2023 technology while pipelining and input endorsers deliver 2022's Basho throughput gains.

Pushes back on cynics who assume celebrity appearances like Snoop Dogg's Twitter Space were paid astroturf.

Value Snoop's 19 million Twitter followers as a low cost way to introduce new people to crypto through conversation.

The music industry as predatory, citing horror stories from artists like the Rolling Stones, Katy Perry and Taylor Swift.

Sees NFTs and metaverse style tools letting artists cut out middlemen and keep provenance over their own work.

Tokenizing a physical asset like gold is easy on Cardano, but the real risk is trusting whoever custodies the underlying asset.

Clarifies Babbage fees remove the need for ADA in transactions but not for governance and ledger maintenance.

Recalls a lively Dubai debate with Kevin O'Leary, saying he remains under educated about proof of stake and Cardano.

VCs living in a bubble that dismisses Cardano as scientific fantasy or an outright scam.

Compares the skepticism to early Bitcoin and Ethereum, when almost no Silicon Valley investors took either seriously.

Credits Naval Ravikant for connecting early Ethereum to a securities law expert, unlike most VCs who ignored the project.

Many VCs will not touch a layer one until it has several tokens worth over a billion dollars, a bar Cardano is still growing into.

The 24 billion ADA staked is excluded from TVL rankings because staking never locks or escrows liquidity like other chains require.

Details input endorsers as a DAG of blocks between key blocks that lets throughput move at network speed instead of consensus speed.

Reports the team is workshopping input endorser edge cases in Edinburgh, shifting the throughput bottleneck from consensus to network design.

Sympathize with a student struggling in calculus 1, calling it the class that weeds out aspiring engineers and scientists.

Breaks down why limits, derivatives and integrals each demand their own pattern recognition skills to master.

Recommends Steven Strogatz's book Infinite Powers for a deeper intuitive feel for what calculus is really doing.

Points to Coursera and Masterclass courses, noting calc 1 is mostly repetitive calculation practice rather than proof writing.

Recalls recording five unscripted hours with Lex Fridman in Austin, admitting he never prepped answers to the questions sent ahead.

Contrasts Lex's analytical AI PhD background with Joe Rogan's curious generalist style built from years of eclectic guests.

Compares Rogan's format to a bar conversation, where his comedic timing keeps a niche topic entertaining for a mass audience.

Sees Rogan's platform as a chance to tell Cardano's story through ESG and financial inclusion instead of an anti bank narrative.

Wants a Rogan appearance to showcase concrete Cardano applications already live, not just abstract promises.

Confirms he still plays Half Life and jokes that Deadliest Catch episodes come out quicker every season.

Picks Augustus as the best Roman emperor, ahead of Octavian.

Walks through the many hydroponics projects on the ranch, from livestock fodder to human food to landscaping trees.

Fodder production for his 500 bison, weighing wet mass nutrition against dry mass mold risks.

Vertical hydroponic farms turning old warehouses and strip malls into cash crop production for cities.

Uses hydroponics to bootstrap tree farms for landscaping species that would not otherwise thrive in the local climate.

A separate contained hydroponic setup exists for GMO crops so they cannot escape into the wild.

Details the four stage mushroom growing process: sterilization, inoculation, incubation and fruiting.

Wants to work with state regulators to grow entheogens like psilocybin for PTSD and depression therapy, citing Johns Hopkins research.

Supports Colossal's mammoth gene editing project while acknowledging the serious ethical questions it raises.

Africa is already the fastest growing collection of economies despite geographic industrialization challenges.

Promises a trustless light wallet built on Mithril, with a reveal planned at Consensus in Austin in June.

Confirms IOHK is still hiring hardware engineers for the delayed open source TPM chip project for offline payments.

Partial delegation now has a written spec and is being implemented at the light wallet level.

Bring up Stuart Russell's book on the AI control problem when asked about collaborating with Ben Goertzel.

Warns that a more intelligent AI species could dominate humanity the way Homo sapiens displaced Neanderthals.

Weighs three approaches to AI risk: capping capability, ignoring the problem, or teaching AI values as Yuval Harari suggests.

Worries today's AI is mostly built for surveillance and defense, predicting autonomous lethal weapons and an AGI led central bank within a decade.

Confirms Hydra preserves composability through isomorphic state channels and universal transaction composition.

Missed comments come from juggling three aggregated chat feeds, joking about a future AI co-host named JJ.

Defends prepping as common sense economic resilience, not the tinfoil hat stereotype, citing Katrina and the war in Ukraine.

Lays out escalating levels of prepping, from a few buckets of freeze dried food to survival training and heirloom seed stockpiles.

Billionaires like Larry Ellison and Richard Branson have taken prepping to the extreme with private island compounds.

His own ranch as largely self sufficient with hydroponics, independent water supply and a bison herd.

Accuse crypto media of dishonestly spinning his prepping answers into doomsday collapse headlines.

Elon Musk is fully aware of Cardano but simply prefers backing Dogecoin.

Points to Microsoft and the Decentralized Identity Foundation as making steady progress toward universal DIDs.

Calls Richard Feynman one of the greatest and most original physicists, recommending his autobiography and lost lectures.

Defends chewing tobacco use among ranchers while urging everyone to learn basic self sufficiency skills like fishing and fire starting.

He and Ripple's David Schwartz are on good terms and think highly of each other.

Teases a stronger opinion and product line on nootropics from his biotech company, with a clinic opening in October.

Deflect a question about having more kids, joking that Twitter seems to know more about his life than he does.

Reflects on the strange experience of being a public figure whose life gets reinvented by rumors he never said.

Argues true freedom comes from self sufficiency, echoing Jocko Willink's idea that discipline itself makes you free.

He is doing well personally, unwinding with float tank sessions and the occasional massage.

Jokes that the Federal Reserve got access to the printing press when asked why 9.2 trillion USDC shows minted on Cardano.

Riffs on JFK assassination conspiracy books, joking the helicopter jump story is the least believable detail.

Mocks how sloppily mainstream media describes firearms, comparing it to how carelessly they cover crypto.

He sees himself as part of an ongoing revolution rather than its leader, tracing his roots back to the 2007 Ron Paul campaign.

Confirms 2022 is one of Colorado's dry years, since odd years run dry and even years run wet.

Admits he plays piano badly and would like to get back into practicing.

Bring up claims the 2012 Ron Paul campaign was a vote count fraud victim, noting Wyoming supporters like Tyler Lindholm never went away.

References his own video on decentralized social media, calling content moderation without central control a genuinely hard problem.

Recommends Ars Technica and MIT Technology Review for staying current on bleeding edge science and technology.

Humans are far from the only species that hoard more resources than they need, pointing to squirrels burying nuts.

Confirms he has played and enjoyed both Final Fantasy Tactics and Chrono Trigger.

Lists float tank benefits: major stress reduction, anti inflammation and mental clarity backed by real science.

Jokes that Logan the lobster mascot is not up for grabs even for consensus attendees.

He does not know Richard Heart or his projects, but would consider collaborating if their work ever overlapped.

Praises Unreal Engine 5's ray tracing, AI assisted audio and lighting, saying it could power a future Legends of Valor remake.

Confirms he is a pilot and describe upgrading his Black Hawk helicopter's engine and APU for fire control use.

Gives permission for a fan project to use his synthesized voice for a game character.

He keeps a stash of THC gummies on hand for guests dealing with jet lag rather than using them himself.

Argues Cardano's spread of stake pools and Catalyst funded research make it resistant to government or corporate capture.

Blast the framing of Elon Musk's open internet push as dangerous, arguing today's unelected platform curators are the real censors.

Jokes he might run into Klaus Schwab at Davos, criticizing the WEF worldview as wanting to dictate how people should live.

Declines to detail his personal fiat on and off ramps and rule out ever running for president.

He is unfamiliar with the ethgate scandal being referenced and asks for more context.

Gives a brief update that his meditation practice is going well.

Reveals IOG offered to help improve Yoroi but Emurgo chose a different direction, so IOG is building its own light wallet instead.

Lists Flint and Nami as other wallet competitors, backing a foundation effort to certify wallets against shared standards.

Compares wallet choice to browsers: if you dislike one, Cardano gives you the freedom to switch to another.

Admits crypto governance and consensus protocol development is genuinely hard, expressing respect for Ethereum's own struggles.

Confirms the paper wallet generator was pushed from Daedalus into the new light wallet delivery pipeline instead.

Sketches out the paper wallet design on a whiteboard: two QR codes, one public and one private.

Lists public key options for the paper wallet: a PGP key, an elliptic curve key, an address, or a YubiKey hardware device.

A proxy address lets the paper wallet delegate and vote from a hot wallet without ever exposing the private spending keys.

Details how the seed phrase gets encrypted on the printed PDF so a stolen paper wallet or a compromised printer reveals nothing.

Shows off animated QR codes like Sonic and Pac Man to demo how a digital wallet backup can hide fun animations without losing data.

The digital paper wallet backup can be stored safely in email when paired with hardware assisted recovery like a YubiKey.

Floats exploring Ledger and Trezor integration, reaffirming a commitment to ship something new in the wallet every three to six weeks.

Clarifies ADA can never be deflationary since its monetary supply only decreases monotonically toward a fixed cap.

Teases a major undisclosed announcement for later in the year alongside longer term work merging Minotaur with the Omega agenda and quantum resistance.

Announces he is opening Nessie's, a Scottish restaurant and whiskey bar near his ranch named for the Loch Ness monster.

Plans three more restaurants: a steakhouse called Proof of Steak, an Italian spot called Geralamo's and an Asian place called Ikigai.

Jokes that DReps share something in common with diapers and politicians before praising a good dry aged cowboy ribeye.

Dry aging steak for 25 to 45 days, plus butter aging and marinades, is the real secret most steakhouses get wrong.

Reveals plans to open source Colin the quant's Python and Anaconda based trading code.

Teases an upcoming video about his recent visit to Poland.

Recaps meeting President Bukele in El Salvador and referring local projects to Alpha Point.

Announces funding a new professional master's degree in computational mathematics at CU Boulder.

Stepping back from a stewardship role someday does not mean leaving Cardano, just handing self determination to the community.

Rules out a Cardano Miami event in favor of a Cardano Cheyenne gathering in Wyoming.

Jokes that Bill Gates funding both GMO mosquitoes and vaccines fits a bored billionaire's new world order reputation.

Confirms an upcoming philanthropy project applying AI and machine learning in Africa.

Calls Rust a perfectly legitimate and fast, memory safe language for cryptocurrency projects, noting Polkadot already uses it.

Rate Cosmos as decent technology, crediting Tendermint's BFT consensus and IBC's growing network of connected chains.

Promises more detail on proof of useful work once the related paper is published.

He holds Bitcoin but has never owned any Ether.

Reacts to 6.7 percent monthly inflation in Argentina as exactly the kind of pain that drives people toward crypto.

Compares a possible reunion with Vitalik Buterin to the Beatles or Pink Floyd getting back together, saying he holds no grudge.

He will likely swing by Oman on a future Middle East trip after visiting Bahrain and Dubai.

Confirms friendly terms with a nearby rancher neighbor despite the distance between their properties.

Walks step by step through the hard fork combinator: the pre Vasil era, the trigger event and the epoch rollover into Vasil.

Confirms cross head and cross shard atomic composability for Hydra is the team's next research paper.

He holds no grudge against Gavin Wood despite pointed comments made about him over the years.

Gives his Black Hawk helicopter's range as about 300 miles on 1000 gallons of JP8 fuel.

Jokes that Everybody Poops is his top book recommendation before naming more serious reads.

Credits intermittent fasting and a ketogenic diet with his current mental clarity and energy.

Confirms he will attend CNFT Con in Las Vegas this October.

Admits a longtime curiosity about astrology, tarot and other esoteric topics despite skepticism about their predictive power.

Recalls strange unexplained experiences on the ranch, built on the site of a historic battle between US cavalry and Native Americans.

Traces his fascination with the paranormal back to childhood nights listening to Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell and George Noory.

Claims Cardano is already bigger than Ethereum in several respects despite the market cap gap.

Promises more ranch stories another day rather than getting into detail now.

Calls Alex Jones the best guest ever for going all in on wild topics like DMT aliens and gay frogs.

Reveals the entire AMA set is a green screen sound stage with about 92 people working behind the scenes.

The ongoing chip shortage is genuinely sad and unclear when it will end.

Sets up the final question by calling out a rival crypto podcast that spent years branding Cardano a scam before inviting him on.

Draws a hard line between fair criticism and libel, saying calling Cardano a criminal enterprise crosses from opinion into slander.

Asks what the critics have actually built, arguing armchair commentary means nothing next to years spent in the arena.

Defends six years of Cardano's published research and community growth as achievements no critic can erase.

Closes the AMA insisting critics have been proven wrong hard fork after hard fork, and the caravan moves on regardless.