AMA 10/30/2021

Broadcasts live from Addis Ababa partway through an extensive Africa tour spanning Cape Town, Zanzibar, and Burundi.

Much he misses the AMA community and the regular dialogue with fans.

Opens the update recapping a successful Cardano Summit with over 100000 registered attendees and hundreds of presentations.

Details the final integration stages of the Plutus Application Backend that will let apps like SundaeSwap and MELD start deploying.

Lays out the Babbage hard fork timeline from November to February, with John Woods leading a performance and throughput optimization workstream.

Runs through planned performance work: raising the k parameter and block size, cutting memory footprint over 50 percent, and UTXO HD hybrid storage.

The Mithril light client workstream for full node security with a lighter footprint.

Parallel epoch validation for a much faster Daedalus, plus light client support coming to Yoroi.

Reports Hydra progress and a target of a good beta by Q1 that commercial partners like DEXes can begin testing.

Mamba, the EVM sidechain adding EVM and Yoroi support, should have a developer beta as early as January.

Catalyst becoming fully recursive so the community sets its own funding parameters each round.

Cardano's shift from a handful of custodial development companies to an open source project with a dozen firms and growing.

Refining the CIP process and on chain voting infrastructure.

Outlines a smart contract certification process to formally verify contracts are correct by construction.

Ties the Atala PRISM identity rollout to incoming FATF and Treasury DeFi regulation that will require compliant identity solutions.

Cites the Ministry of Education and Boost Mobile deals, covering 13 million users, as drivers behind the PRISM integration, plus progress on the dApp store.

The Cardano Foundation's 25 million dollar 2022 budget and plan to staff up to nearly 100 people.

Talks toward a 100 million dollar Africa focused fund from EMURGO alongside IOG's existing 6 million dollar Africa fund.

Reports Catalyst fund 6 funded over 150 proposals, its largest round yet, with fund 7 doubling to 8 million dollars starting in November.

Addresses a wave of post summit social media criticism over price, saying he does not read or engage with it.

Recaps meeting the presidents of Burundi and Zanzibar and strong demand for Cardano's e-governance and identity offerings.

The Africa trip is generating more deal flow than the company has resources to accommodate.

Highlights World Mobile's 40 million dollar nation scale ISP project in Zanzibar built on Cardano, covering 1.8 million people.

Expects the Zanzibar rollout to take 12 to 24 months and says discussions are underway to bring the model to Kenya.

DC Spark, run by Nico and Sebastien, has launched an independent EVM sidechain separate from Mamba, with Solidity code already deploying.

Cites tens of thousands of NFTs issued in two months and over 100 million dollars of related economic activity on the native asset standard.

The grueling pace of the Africa trip: 5am starts and constant meetings while trying to stay connected to Cardano work.

Jokes about keeping up with ambassadors who like to drink and dealing with food poisoning on the trip.

Opens Q&A: gives an update on SingularityNET's ERC20 converter, targeting both the Cardano main chain and Mamba.

The long term goal of a generic ERC20 to native asset bridging tool for projects that want to migrate to Cardano.

Egypt will close out the Africa trip.

Estimates the Plutus Application Backend will go live in November based on conversations with the team.

Reassures Hydra is progressing well and says more teams are being brought on to parallelize the work given its commercial priority.

Hydra is essential to offload the huge microtransaction volume expected from projects like World Mobile once the PAB ships.

Confirms JED is now an independent, community commercialized project that IOG only contributed reference code to.

The strategy of open sourcing reference implementations and letting independent teams build competing commercial versions.

Answers how many people work on Cardano, comparing it to asking how many employees TCP IP has since it is a protocol built by a dozen companies.

Updates on the new light wallet, citing a 4 to 6 week sprint cadence and that it will ship with Mithril based full node security.

Updates on Kiva, teasing an in person meeting in Kenya and a first 150000 dollar microfinance loan pilot.

Corrects the claim that bigger blocks do not allow more smart contracts per block, explaining raw storage directly increases script capacity.

Argues the extended UTXO model is massively parallelizable and that most computation will move off chain and be verified on chain with proofs.

Breaks down realistic TPS targets: 50 to 100 for everyday transfers today, aiming for 500 to 2000 on the core layer with block and network optimizations.

Scaling past a single sharded chain requires layer two solutions like Hydra and side chains, including faster BFT protocols on EVM side chains.

Argues raw TPS is a meaningless marketing metric since trust models differ wildly between use cases like DEXes and oracles.

Confirms paper wallets with staking capability, via proxy keys that separate cold spending keys from hot delegation infrastructure, are a high priority.

Using trusted hardware like Intel SGX or ARM TrustZone to sign proxy transactions, plus a goal of anonymous staking that cannot be linked to spending keys.

Admits he looks tired after a long stretch in Africa.

Recounts a 45 minute call with Eric Weinstein, mostly about math, and hopes for a future podcast conversation.

World Mobile's Zanzibar buildout in detail: a girls school with 340 students, a fish market tower, and a mix of microwave, mesh Wi-Fi, and balloon broadcast.

Ties connectivity to Zanzibar's blue economy, where 60 percent of GDP depends on fishing and only 2 percent of boats are connected.

Envisions cooperative ownership of mesh networks and towers, where users earn equity in the infrastructure they use, like Google's Project Loon balloons.

Flags political friction with Tanzania, which controls Zanzibar's broadcast spectrum and monetary policy, complicating any local CBDC.

Revives the old ARENA recursive internetwork architecture idea as a natural fit for the network infrastructure being built in Africa.

Fires back at a heckler claiming there are no smart contracts on Cardano, noting they are already live.

Talks watches as a hobby, praising Jaeger LeCoultre, Vacheron Constantin, Jaquet Droz automatons, and Piaget's ultra thin Altiplano.

Reminds the community that he runs IOG, not Cardano itself, and has no formal relationship with projects like SundaeSwap or Yoroi.

Over 300 independently funded Catalyst projects exist with no commercial relationship to IOG.

Gives an update on the Nervos relationship and Force Bridge, plus account abstraction work on extended UTXO by Mutual Knowledge Systems.

Explains why burning ADA is not actually possible without forcibly confiscating and destroying someone's coins, unlike changing a monetary policy parameter.

Compares an ADA burn to slashing Bitcoin's 21 million cap, arguing it would destroy the social contract built over years of purchasing decisions.

Insists the only ways to burn ADA are voluntary self destruction of funds or theft, calling both advocacy for stupidity.

Reiterates that ADA's fixed monetary policy is a social contract that cannot be changed without a constitutional amendment style process.

Responds to being called rude, saying he gives honest answers rather than protecting feelings.

Ergo, an independent cryptocurrency, presented at the Cardano Summit and has built useful infrastructure like ErgoDEX.

Plans for a certified Plutus application developer accreditation, building on the Plutus Pioneers cohorts that trained over 3000 people.

Hiring eight development companies to stress test the PAB while also building up a pool of solutions providers for hire.

Previews another Plutus Pioneers cohort after Babbage and a new Haskell developer class launching in Ghana in January, the largest yet.

Weighs in on Michael Saylor's Bitcoin maximalism, saying it spreads a false narrative about proof of stake despite Saylor's genuine belief.

Argues Bitcoin maximalist toxicity discourages curious newcomers like Lex Fridman or Eric Weinstein from engaging with crypto at all.

Everyone from Mike Novogratz to Tim Draper to Mark Cuban talks their own book, and encourages betting on Cardano's roadmap instead.

Frames Cardano's Africa work, bringing billions of unconnected and unbanked users onto a purpose built ecosystem, as the long term bet worth making over Bitcoin's stagnant technology.

Points to Cardano's 1.4 billion dollar community controlled treasury and rapid transaction growth as proof of the ecosystem's momentum.

Contrasts Cardano's collaborative, formally reviewed, multi paradigm development with Bitcoin's passive buy and hold culture.

Highlights ADA holders and stake pool operators doing real social good globally, from feeding kids in Argentina to electrifying homes in Kenya.

Reminisces about early Bitcoin evangelism, like Roger Ver's relentless merchant onboarding, versus today's more toxic culture.

Calls out obsession with price and meme coins like Doge and Shiba reaching the top ten, retelling Bitcoin's wild price history.

Quickly the crypto top ten rotates over time, arguing lasting value comes from projects with a real mission.

Uses Facebook's rebrand to Meta as a launchpad to introduce the spatial web, tracing computing's evolution from PCs to mobile to the cloud.

The spatial web as merging people, places, and things into a semantically aware internet accessed through AR and VR interfaces.

Predicts the metaverse will be worth more than the physical world by 2050, with most humans working digitally as physical jobs automate.

Explains why NFTs and cryptographic identity matter for the metaverse: they create scarcity, uniqueness, and portable avatar identity.

Warns the AR and VR control layer will either be centralized dystopia or open and free, just as past web transitions have been.

Argues Cardano already has the pieces, Atala PRISM DIDs and the native asset standard, to build a decentralized spatial web protocol stack.

Warns that without blockchain, a single company like Meta would own everyone's digital identity and property rights with no election.

Introduces RealFi as DeFi plus regulation, identity, and metadata, aimed at bringing unbanked populations into crypto through microfinance.

Cites Ethiopia's 30 percent inflation and interest rates up to 600 percent annually as the real world problem RealFi and MFI partnerships solve.

Frames blockchain protocols as competing to offer a philosophy for the world, warning that without vision the future defaults to Facebook, Apple, and Google.

Jokes that the way to get value by doing nothing is to go work for the government.

Banters about Chrono Trigger having the better soundtrack over Chrono Cross.

Dismisses pure proof of stake marketing claims of no forks and super low fees as just marketing, since every network forks.

Confirms a Cardano Web3 wallet connection is coming via Rosetta, upcoming ISO standards, and Mamba's EVM compatibility.

Confirms formal proof systems for Plutus contracts are coming as part of the certification chain, tying back to his 20 million dollar Lean investment.

Names Burundi as the most receptive African country so far, despite only 11 percent electrification and 2.6 percent internet penetration.

He would love a long philosophical conversation with Jordan Peterson once his health allows it.

Confirms interest in working with Helium and Dish through Freedom Fi and KBI to build the telco of the future.

Calls Prague, the city of clock towers, one of his favorite cities he has visited.

Discusses whether Hydra heads should route through the base layer or a synchronized layer two protocol, likening it to block relay networks.

Addresses succession, noting he only runs IOG, not Cardano, and that the ecosystem kept building fine during a two week vacation.

Recalls nearly crying at the Wyoming Cardano Summit speech realizing the ecosystem has outgrown anything he could personally lead.

Argues his own imperfect, abrasive personality has actually helped decentralization by pushing the community to build independent leaders like Fred Gagard.

Fires back at Alex Gladstein's accusation that his Carnegie Mellon donation promoted a scam coin, calling the claim baseless.

Lays out the Hoskinson Center for Formal Mathematics mission: mechanizing math so every proof is machine checkable and AI assisted within 30 years.

Connects the mathematics mission to blockchain as a potential marketplace for deduction, name checking the QED manifesto and Bill White's Qeditas project.

Shares his best life advice: stop paying attention to critics, because ignoring the message makes it fade away.

He will eventually write a magnum opus book laying out his full vision once everything is done.

Answers a height question: six feet tall.

Explains why the Burundi relationship is still just an MOU, noting a full government to consumer partnership typically takes three to seven years to formalize.

He cares about the people of Burundi, not its leaders, drawing a contrast with North Korea's cult of personality.

Frames blockchain and e-governance as just one tool among many, alongside health care, water quality, and education, for improving the human condition.

Runs through each country's distinct priorities: Zanzibar's blue economy, South Africa's social justice concerns, Burundi's infrastructure, and Ethiopia's deregulation push.

Reflects that lifting millions out of poverty through this work is the most meaningful thing he could do with his life.

Answers how to prevent totalitarian abuse of crypto by comparing it to preventing Zuckerberg from abusing the metaverse, a structural problem.

Gives a shoutout to a fan's brother Dane in the community.

His private guided bison hunts, calling it the most ethical way to source meat without slaughterhouses.

Gives a 24 year old fan three pieces of life advice, starting with active listening, a lesson he learned late from his chief of staff Tamara.

Second piece of advice: master time management with tools like Getting Things Done, deep work, and Pomodoro to reclaim years of free time.

Third piece of advice: train flow states and mindfulness through meditation and Zazen to stay calm and focused.

Teases a South America and Colombia tour for 2022 and confirms plans to visit the Ghana graduation class.

How, at his wealth level, luxuries like the ranch generate more income than they cost, so he effectively lives for free.

Insists he is not flashy personally, wearing Walmart jeans and Lucchese boots, and treats expensive watches and artifacts as things he is custodian of.

Shares a wealth mindset framework: always find ways to monetize idle capabilities, like chartering a private jet when not using it.

Jokes that buying luxury goods actually supports middle class jobs, and that inflation will make many people billionaires eventually.

The story of a fan from Slovenia gifting him a Kurent mask, saying moments like that are why the AMAs and community matter to him.

Gives a Crypto Bison Ranch game update, saying the team and project keep growing.

Jokes that he does not bother with beard oil despite people suggesting it.

Gives a shoutout to the Cheeky Crypto YouTube channel.

Jokes that he barely speaks one language, English, when asked how many he knows.

A joke: ducks are the natural enemy of doctors because ducks call them quacks.

He will eventually do the Joe Rogan podcast once some prerequisites are handled.

Confirms he is double vaccinated with Pfizer, has had eight COVID tests while traveling Africa, and jokes about booster paranoia.

Confirms he was once offered membership in a secret society and turned it down.

Previews the Kenya trip's Kiva microfinance rollout with a 150000 dollar loan program.

Announces buying a ruggedized Chromebook laptop for every girl, over 300 students, at the Zanzibar school World Mobile connected.

Previews a lot more MFI innovation with Cardano throughout 2022, hoping Kiva can be part of it.

Closes the stream thanking the community and signing off from Ethiopia.