Surprise AMA 03/24/2019

Opens from the Turkish Airlines lounge stuck in a flight delay, deciding to do a surprise Sunday AMA with no proper microphone.

Recaps Ethiopia, where the Haskell class graduated with Philip Wadler present, and the students spent February and March 2019 using the Atala software, surfacing usability issues that improved the product.

The April 17th to 18th summit will show Plutus playground demos, and that they met the World Food Program and the Agricultural Transformation Agency CEO Khalid.

Discussions on importing fertilizer and seeds, warehouse inventory control against skimming and adulteration, apiculture, coffee, and over 10 commodities including the teff bread crop.

Plans to hire most or all 23 class members into IOHK in technical and business roles, with HR director Tamara Haasen, and teases a three-hour Cardano Effect episode on Africa.

Graduates will work on Cardano and dapps as IOHK employees, and he is discussing with Crypto Savanna turning four Ugandan students into TAs for a Uganda class.

Answers a Spanish questioner on private blockchains and Hyperledger that an enterprise blockchain product is coming, to be announced at the summit, complementary rather than exclusive.

Cardano is a multi-ledger multi-currency system that will support issuing your own assets, and that he partnered with someone in the security token market to explore STOs and interoperability.

A Munich summit with Lars and Polina will build the scaffolding for a Haskell functional programming MOOC, considering Coursera like the Scala course, EDX, Udacity, or Udemy, refined across three teaching cohorts.

Answers whether he is a libertarian: mostly, with an appreciation for the tragedy of the commons and externalities, holding a do-no-harm principle while recognizing some behavior needs careful governance.

On EOS, says it feels like centralization with no differentiation from Amazon except higher unpredictable cost and lower quality, with no recovery mode when things go wrong.

Applying 1980s technology to blockchain like Fabric gets 3 to 5 thousand TPS but is not innovation, sacrificing transaction validation and Byzantine resistance for a vanity project.

On the proof-of-stake testnet timeline, says the Rust testnet is coming soon, if not in March 2019 shortly after, reflecting big improvements in engineering and estimation.

It is a living system needing stake pool operators, UI feedback, and smart contract users, with the Rust testnet close and Ledger support likely before the summit.

Good code is already used by Daedalus, Yoroi, and Infinito, and on engaging Tone Vays says you must talk to people who disagree without being disagreeable.

Contrasts honest critics like Tone Vays, who shares opinions truthfully, with propagandists like Chico Crypto, who stitch slander into a narrative to provoke a fight for ratings and money.

Rebuts the shady-ICO claim: they did KYC and AML, a recovery and voucher system, and paid-for helpdesk tours over three years, alongside more than 40 research papers, and the sale was low-pressure with no cash changing hands and demographic data proving real participants.

Laments that critics dismiss all the code, science, Daedalus, Yoroi, Tangem, Plutus, Marlowe, the Blockchain Technology Lab at Edinburgh, and the Ethiopia training as a scam.

Says the scam label comes only because Dan Larimer and Chico Crypto dislike him, calls for empathy, and refuses to reward that behavior for viewers' entertainment.

On the developer ecosystem, disagrees it is behind, since functional programmers in Haskell, OCaml, or Lisp have nothing in crypto yet beyond boutiques like Zen Protocol and Tezos Michelson.

A compelling functional community unlocks tens of thousands of experienced developers who tend to be older, in their 30s and 40s, with 5 to 10 years of experience.

Argues serious money, medical, and privacy software needs skilled engineers not script kiddies, so picking a heavy-duty language bootstraps the right ecosystem.

Wadler sits in Robin Milner's chair at Edinburgh, a Turing Award winner, and that going niche first then opening up worked for Facebook and the iPhone.

Government services like property registration and MOOCs will onboard developers to solve IoT, AI, agriculture, and traffic problems, with the K project ensuring interoperability with Java and JavaScript.

Jokes he spotted Craig Wright scowling through the airport and drinking wine at 11am, and took a photo to crowdsource whether it is really him.

On decentralization, says the 1.5 hard fork shipped and the Shelley testnet is almost out for stake pool saturation, with the wallet backend decoupled under Matthias Benkort and Erik de Castro Lopo integrating Haskell and Rust code.

Plans a comprehensive audit likely with Kudelski before the full Shelley rollout, a hard fork where registered stake pools roll over and decentralization proceeds gradually.

The proof-of-stake launch strategy: wait for market distribution to spread and a good Gini coefficient to avoid a plutocracy, then decentralize as the network stabilizes, since a high-price low-hash-rate launch invites 51 percent attacks as happened to recent coins.

Cardano sells no merchandise but the Crypto Supreme store run by an associate stocks t-shirts and paper wallets, and yes fans recognize him in public across more than 30 countries.

Recounts a Hong Kong event by a VC named Mr. Chen that invited him, Justin Sun, and Vitalik, who no-showed, and a cordial macroeconomics chat with a polite and smart Justin Sun.

A company blockchain task force to reach out via the website for Plutus and Marlowe training, noting Emurgo is planning a training academy in India for 3500 people.

All their training material is Creative Commons Attribution and free to commercialize with citation, offering PowerPoints, YouTube videos, and the recorded Ethiopia lectures.

Traveling he never checks his boots or laptop bag since luggage is lost once or twice a year, and clarifies ADA is not a security and pays no dividends.

On using the MaidSafe network, says he knows David Irvine but after 12 years without success MaidSafe needs better project management and scientific realism.

Cardano took two early missteps but pivoted within eight months, now yielding under-10-minute restoration, better testable code, and faster releases, a lesson to reevaluate when an approach is not flourishing.

Training may run in Vietnam with Mongolia under consideration pending government and academic partners, and that after Cardano he would like to return to mathematics.

On liquid democracy, says Voltaire has moved from theory to a plan under Bingsheng Zhang, rolling out a Treasury and CIP process with new product manager David Esser, to be announced at the summit or in the second half of 2019.

A three-stage governance path: get the Treasury and social dynamics right, then optional CIP voting for 40 percent of the system, then in the 2025 to 2035 future compulsory certified clients enforced by formal methods.

Reaffirms proof of stake is mathematically proven and others may use Ouroboros, and praises the Endor predictive-analytics project by Alex Pentland's MIT students, which he advises for privacy-preserving data markets.

Teases his friend Gareth Hayes, CTO of Emurgo Hong Kong, who gave him one of the first Cardano Ledger devices.

Shares that his K-12 education was homeschool and he finished high school early, lamenting states outlawing it when unlimited curated knowledge exists online for building critical thinking.

Reading biographies shows the past world was much like today with its own agendas and uncertainty, so a longer-term view and learning from history help you live a better life.

Stresses numeracy and analyzing arguments amid fake news, using the vaccines-cause-autism claim to show demanding evidence, distinguishing correlation from causation, and trusting meta-analyses over confirmation bias.

Calls confirmation bias the heart of the flat-earth movement, urging homeschoolers to teach critical thinking via Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book and the Great Books, and champions work-life balance over burnout.