AMA 09/26/2020

Broadcasts live from Colorado after driving down from a wildfire choked Wyoming.

Tour the IOHK lab at the University of Wyoming and meet Governor Gordon at the blockchain stampede hackathon.

Pays tribute to his dog Bambi, who died of congestive heart failure after years of epilepsy.

Gives an update on the Bittrex wallet fix: a huge push in September 2020 on performance benchmarking and UTXO cleanup.

Frames Goguen as a three phase delivery: transaction metadata, multi asset tokens, then programmability.

Transaction metadata already shipped into the node and wallet, now powering the Georgia credential verification pilot and BeefChain.

Move from a single asset ledger to multi asset, with an ERC20 converter to help Ethereum projects migrate over.

Split programmability into Plutus, a general purpose language, and Marlowe, a DSL for specific use cases.

Subsidize Newton, a project exploring an imperative, JavaScript like flavor of smart contract language.

Hire marketing lead Lisa and video producer David Orr to build out product marketing.

Plans systematic product marketing that walks through every Cardano component: where it came from and how it works.

Plans comparison marketing against five permissionless rivals like Algorand, EOS, Tezos, and Polkadot, plus two permissioned ones.

Beyond the next 90 days, campaign marketing will court aligned stakeholders into the ecosystem.

Catalyst's Ideascale has passed 2000 active participants with vibrant back and forth discussion.

Explores sociocracy and holacracy concepts for Catalyst governance, plus auditing and oversight of fund usage.

Gives Catalyst six months to move from a prototype into a fully working governance stack.

Rants about YouTube scam giveaway videos impersonating him, forcing an 'I will never give away ada' banner.

IOHK's relationship with the United Nations: work together only where it fits IOHK's values and mission.

Rules out taking IOHK public, preferring to stay a private, mission oriented company.

There is no IPO exit strategy planned; would rather hire a CEO and collect dividends someday.

Speculates on how a nuclear EMP or solar flare would affect crypto and decentralized systems generally.

Confirms that stablecoins on ada are being actively and aggressively pursued.

Stay neutral on SPACRE, welcoming more stake pool operator representation and diversity of leadership.

Gives an update on Endor: stepped back from advising after they scaled back paid roles.

Polymath's Polymesh chain chose Parity Substrate instead of Cardano, so involvement there has faded.

Kraken's new Wyoming bank charter blows his mind, a huge milestone for a hundred percent reserve crypto bank.

Gives a brief reply to renewed criticism about lack of marketing, pointing back to an earlier answer.

Recaps meeting Brock Pierce in Wyoming, then defends Amy Coney Barrett against personal attacks over her adopted children.

Cites the Wyoming wildfire response, where the federal government blocked ranchers from fighting the fire, as proof of political dysfunction.

Questions why unelected, unaccountable judges are trusted with effectively legislative power.

Declares he will never vote Republican or Democrat again and will always back third party candidates.

Argues governance should focus on solving problems, pointing to Voltaire's Catalyst challenges as the model to follow.

Praises Andrew Yang's substantive policy pitches over Brock Pierce's refusal to run negative ads.

Predicts a contested, illegitimate 2020 election outcome followed by unrest and lawsuits in every state.

Warns that pandemic emergency powers rarely get rolled back, citing the Department of Homeland Security precedent after 9/11.

Criticizes social media fact checking as an invitation to censorship controlled by a handful of organizations.

Ties politics back to crypto's purpose: building alternative money, voting systems, and property rights.

Cites New York's BitLicense as an example of incumbents using regulation to strangle competition.

Laments doctors leaving medicine over bureaucracy and the politicized hydroxychloroquine debate.

Gives a staking update: over 1200 registered stake pools with roughly half the network delegated.

Blue zones, places where people live unusually long, healthy lives.

Admits to gaining fifteen pandemic pounds despite good intentions to get in shape.

Talk garden and greenhouse plans, plus RTX GPU upgrade envy after buying a 2080 too early.

Cardano community doctors and nutritionists regularly send unsolicited health advice.

Is happy with Goguen's progress, stressing a weekly release culture over raw commit counts.

Advises learning general problem solving and getting to the root cause before proposing any solution.

Recommends the Haskell Book as the best resource for learning Haskell.

Recommends Vacuumlabs, Atix Labs, and Cossack Labs for Cardano app development.

Suggests exposing the VRF so stake pools could act as cryptographic randomness beacons.

Jokes about his Massey Ferguson tractor getting mocked by John Deere loyal Wyoming ranchers.

Shows off garden gnomes and fairies brought inside for winter, soon getting glow in the dark paint.

Atala and Cardano work in Ethiopia is going quite well.

Gives an update on the African farmer voucher program: lost the primary bid to a local underbidder, now pursuing a subcontract.

Vents fury at channel hijackers running fake ada giveaway scams and the death threats that followed.

Complains that DMCA takedowns can't keep up with bot generated scam accounts, and blames YouTube's inaction.

Plans to update the security lecture video, maybe as a multi part series, after finishing offensive infosec courses.

Gives a BeefChain update and plans to showcase a different ecosystem partner in every product update.

Cardano's formal verification relies on existing tools like Agda, Isabelle, and Idris rather than custom built ones.

Predicts a deep recession or possible global depression from the coronavirus response, with double digit unemployment.

The most exciting part of 2021 is Cardano becoming an end to end system once Goguen and Voltaire are both live.

Calls SpaceX and Tesla sister companies doing some of the most meaningful work happening anywhere right now.

Uses 'what should I know as a developer to build on Cardano' as a case study for how nuanced good marketing personas must be.

Get excited about Filecoin and Juan Benet's IPFS work, open to borrowing good open source ideas.

Meeting Ben Goertzel through a mutual friend and flying him out to Wyoming for a six hour talk and interview.

Outlines David Orr's role making explainer videos on eUTXO and Ouroboros as part of the product marketing push.

Sees strong potential for blockchain integrated video games on Cardano once Goguen ships, mentioning his own game studio.

Confirms Shelley was the hardest development phase and say Cardano will never have to go through that again.

Jokes about wanting to be on the Lex Fridman podcast after Goguen ships.

Loyalty is to the mission of economic identity, not to any single platform.

Explores a meta stable token backed by a basket of fiat backed stablecoins to avoid custodial risk.

Pitches rebuilding central bank infrastructure with a CBDC tied to universal basic income for smaller economies.

A sovereign wealth fund backed UBI would work, citing Norway's nearly two trillion dollar fund.

Legends of Valor development is on hold since Cardano always takes priority.

Rant about Wikipedia editors deeming Cardano non notable while a video game he owns keeps its own page.

Play along with the joke that Neal Stephenson could secretly be Satoshi Nakamoto.

Closes multi party computation and threshold signatures are to widespread adoption.

Speculates on potential biological chemical markers found on Venus and what they would mean for the Fermi paradox.

Catalyst votes matter because they steer millions of dollars, unlike political votes which don't.

Jokes that he never changes the oil on his Lamborghini himself, it is too delicate a machine.

Advises beginners to learn JavaScript or Python rather than Java or C# if they have the choice.

Explains why TypeScript is worth learning after JavaScript, tracing its history against Google's Dart.

Teases a book recommendation on synesthesia, promising to tweet the title later.

Admits Go was never his favorite language, though he knows plenty of people like it.

Debates whether Chuck Norris could beat Bruce Lee, and whether more years of training always wins.

Refuses to pick sides between Kraken and Avanti, calling both great, safe organizations.

Recalls the 1997 Macworld video of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as a lesson in what good CEOs do.

Retell the story of Bill Gates getting hit with a pie in the face in the late 1990s.

Teases that his upcoming Joe Rogan interview is going to be really fun.

Predicts critics will go quiet again once smart contracts and multi asset ship and transaction volume keeps climbing.

Criticizes flexing wealth online, contrasting empty status symbols with Elon Musk's tangible achievements.

Suggests Celsius could simply move over to Cardano for better interoperability.

Play along with the 'Two Pen Charles' bit about tucking pens into his collar.

Pitches a full plan to fix Star Wars under new ownership: an R rated Vader film, an Old Republic trilogy, and decanonizing the sequels.

The Symphony of Blockchain video series will get revived one of these days.

Microsoft's Bethesda acquisition and where Elder Scrolls 6 development stands.

Predicts Epic will lose its legal fight against Apple.

Confirms Legends of Valor has a written ending, though he isn't happy with the draft yet.

Rant about Wizards of the Coast destroying the Forgotten Realms setting in Dungeons and Dragons fourth edition.

Jokes about a hypothetical five hour Joe Rogan style episode getting edited down by Spotify.

Shows off a new eagle statue that just arrived at the office.

Praises a crypto YouTuber for good, credible reporting and marketing sense.

Georgia's prime minister publicly wrote about Cardano, contrasting it with Wikipedia's notability rejection.

Declines to publicly debate Vitalik Buterin, preferring to spend time on productive work instead.

Advises infosec minded community members to get involved in Catalyst's Voltaire fund for security work.

A long, friendly relationship with Andreas Antonopoulos, calling him a great communicator.

Names the smartest people in blockchain: Silvio Micali, Aggelos Kiayias, Duncan Coutts, Greg Maxwell, and Terence Tao.

Confirms he still talks with Gavin Wood periodically about Cardano.

Explains why IOHK avoids growing its own stake pools, to not pick winners and losers among operators.

He lost interest in the NFL over politics, reflecting on losing a bonding ritual he once shared with his father.

Envisions restaurants using Cardano for food provenance storytelling via a QR code at the table.

Wraps the three hour AMA, promising to answer remaining questions another time.