Some Musings about the Roadmap

Opens April 5th 2021 from Colorado on a new Rodecaster audio setup to walk the roadmap, noting the Alonzo hard fork date comes end of April at Cardano 360, Plutus Pioneers is underway, and native assets are surging with 18460 already created.

Peer-to-peer arrives in the second quarter of 2021 and Ouroboros Genesis via an HFC around September 2021, then Voltaire, then the open question of 2025, with the chief scientist, CTO, and community holding agendas and a major consulting firm pulling the roadmap together.

Introduces Ouroboros Omega, recalling that the research agenda proved proof of stake secure with the Ouroboros Classic paper in 2016 as a theoretical artifact not meant for a production cryptocurrency.

Traces the lineage Praos in 2017 running now, Genesis from 2018 coming in 2021, plus Ledger Redux, Ouroboros Chronos, Ledger Combiners, and industry work like Nakamoto proof of stake.

Omega is the capstone rolling all this into one paper matching and exceeding proof of work: semi-synchronous 51 security, bootstrap from genesis, 1.6 million times more energy efficient, up to 1000 TPS on the base ledger, plus fast finality, side chains, no external clock, and graceful 51-attack recovery toward Omega plus plus.

The Omega paper with a prototype should arrive in 2021 before the Cardano 2025 announcement, rolling up Redux, Chronos, and Ledger Combiners alongside industry research like Algorand.

Turns to light clients, easy with trust assumptions like Yoroi where a server gives you a view of the system you cannot fully verify.

Cites Mina as a promising protocol using recursive SNARKs to prove your coins exist and were not double-spent in a proof they aim to shrink to 22 kilobytes, without holding the blockchain.

Reveals the Mithril protocol for the first time, using stake pool operators and following bulletproofs, with a paper and hopefully a prototype in 2021 for a light-client-by-default trust model.

Wallets like Yoroi or Daedalus would start in light mode getting a proof coins exist and were not double-spent, needing new authenticated data structures and crypto worked on since the 2018 proof-of-stake sidechains paper.

The goal is to make light-by-default the industry standard wallet model, with Daedalus upgrading to a full wallet in the background for instant use and a lighter footprint.

Turns to side chains where the main chain CSL is settlement and side chains CCL are computation like EVM and Yella, wanting Catalyst and WebAssembly as side chains with rules to add and retire them plus an economic model to pay for maintenance.

Proposes a resource model where locking or staking ADA refines fuel for networks like the EVM or Yella, unlike Ethereum's single gas, with per-domain tokens whose fuel can expire via demurrage or be fixed to a guaranteed cost, so Cardano could even be a Plutus side chain of itself.

In 2021 they will propose a CIP, likely the first the community votes on, for an HFC to update monetary policy with incentives to run EVM, Yella, and Catalyst side chains, drawing on Cosmos and Polkadot parachains.

The side chain CIP adds Ethereum and Yella compatibility, brings Catalyst into the system, and enables moving between permissioned and permissionless, having joined the Hyperledger Foundation to propose a permissioned Cardano.

Turns to Prism layer-2 DID embedding with lots of deal flow, powering authenticated wallets, KYC and AML scenarios, and regulated DeFi where a DID gates access without a central authority.

Prism enables the long-promised human-readable addresses via a Daedalus friends list that adds someone's DID, giving point-to-point perfect forward secrecy and guaranteed correct signed addresses for sending money.

The Hydra prototype team presents in April 2021, deep in the second of a four-paper agenda with papers three and four plus a prototype in 2021, a graft-on layer-2 SPOs run for micro-transactions and high throughput, with Prism built free into every dapp.

Hydra, Prism, Mithril, and Omega together beat ETH2 with a better side-chain resource model, a light-client payments experience, fast finality, high throughput, and regulatory future-proofing.

Quantum resistance is a 2025-scope research agenda needing a quantum-resistant VRF, zero-knowledge crypto, and signature scheme plus modeling a quantum adversary, while community members already inject quantum random numbers into the network.

Turns to governance, unifying Catalyst which handles treasury with Voltaire which handles protocol updates through 2021 into 2022, formalizing the HFC system under Voltaire with a bicameral voting model, liquid feedback, and expert ballots.

Proposes DAO as a service so any Cardano dapp needing voting reuses the Catalyst and Voltaire voting systems by assigning voting rights to a token, adding preference and quadratic voting as a reusable library.

Launches a research agenda to move from the plutocratic ADA model to a hybrid ADA plus proof of merit, a 2025-scope idea where reputation and identity grant different power with checks and balances.

Recaps the huge scope of quantum, state channels, Prism, ledger rules, and side chains, noting the EVM model can be updated so ETH2 becomes a subset of Cardano, thanking Vitalik.

Wants to move from a Haskell reference client to a polyglot approach with a Python reference plus Rust and commercial clients, and a formal core in Agda or Idris for testing plus a certification process proving implementations correct.

Cardano can embed its own version control so a core developer is a democratically authorized DID, with reference code self-hosted by the blockchain as its own GitHub so no one is shut out.

A DCF priority alongside the Cardano 2025 announcement is developing the client ecosystem for checks and balances, and that Alonzo already shows hundreds to thousands of independent developers and commercial migrations just getting started.

The DCF brings focused directed effort to keep the platform competitive and enter new markets, complementing Catalyst's organized chaos of hundreds of millions invested across thousands of community projects.

Over 30 people across IOG, the Foundation, and Emurgo work on the new roadmap plus 100-plus on Cardano 2020 delivery, with IO Global spending at least 15 million dollars on R&D via new labs, postdocs, and eight-figure Africa scaling.

Closes that they are here to play and win, offering Babel transactions, DAO as a service, and identity services, seeing a government forming and shifting from can-it-be-done to how-to-refine mode while borrowing sensibly from the industry.