AMA 04/03/2020

Open the AMA broadcasting live from quarantined Colorado on April 3rd, promising Corona updates and other news.

Breaks down the marketing divisions across IOHK, EMURGO and the Cardano Foundation plus three external PR and commercialization firms.

Recaps an intensive three day PwC workshop in London just before lockdown that set delivery, execution and marketing priorities.

April Six's PR work on sentiment analysis and building relationships with independent journalists.

Recaps a rocky history with McCann before praising today's brand and campaign presentation as considerably improved.

Announces a full Cardano.org rebuild as the flagship entry point for investors, developers, governance and stake pool operators, timed to launch with Shelley.

Lists the product marketing work ahead: explaining extended UTXO, Marlowe, the multi asset system, governance voting and a rewritten Cardano Docs.

Gives a Daedalus Flight status update: 27 support tickets, a memory leak fix, and another release cut coming Monday.

Byron reboot remediation and the RuntimeVerification audit report should both wrap up by April 17th.

Details why Cardano's novel cryptography, from VRFs to a modified Ed25519 scheme, requires deep specialized auditing.

Credits an internal IOHK audit group from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute alongside external auditors for catching issues early.

Previews a busy week planning the Shelley Haskell testnet rollout and details the weekly to biweekly release cadence across components.

Shares that the ITN post mortem surfaced 269 areas for improvement plus extensive community feedback on UX and APIs.

Reveals talks with Bison Trails and a signed Ledger agreement for multi-sig and cold staking support.

Nearly a thousand live attendees for the monthly product update crowdcast and tease a virtual conference for the Shelley launch.

Previews presenting original Kachina and Sonic zero knowledge research at the zkProof Summit on April 20th.

Open a coronavirus update noting an employee tested positive and warning US deaths will mount for weeks.

Points to over 100 active clinical trials and new rapid Roche testing as reasons for optimism by end of April.

IOHK remains financially and operationally unaffected, even faster, while acknowledging friends and family touched by the virus.

Warns that pandemic response risks a dramatic, lasting expansion of government surveillance and authority.

Argues humanity beat past pandemics like polio and smallpox without permanently surrendering privacy and freedom.

Position IOHK's identity, voting and supply chain tracking systems as solutions to failures like states not knowing ventilator inventories.

Suggests zero knowledge proofs could enable privacy preserving contact tracing without compromising personal data.

Predicts emergency powers won't be relinquished quickly and warn of hyperinflation risk from massive money printing.

Flags Hungary's power grab and China's cover-up scrutiny as early signs of lasting geopolitical fallout, even a new cold war.

Compares the likely coronavirus fallout to two decades of post 9/11 war and eroded civil liberties.

Urge the community to ship Shelley and Goguen quickly and use decentralized technology to propose solutions before centralized powers do.

Shares that his father and brother are doctors treating Covid patients while reaffirming the need to protect civil liberties.

Praises the Johnson & Johnson vaccine candidate and the government's unprecedented at-risk manufacturing deal targeting Q1 2021.

The danger of antibody dependent enhancement in vaccine design and why J&J's proven platform reassures him.

Lays out the case for a Wuhan lab leak, citing a nearby coronavirus research facility studying bats far from their native habitat.

SARS-CoV-2's asymptomatic spread differs from SARS-CoV-1 and made this outbreak a pandemic.

Estimates the true death toll and case count are two to three times official figures due to unreported mild cases.

Debunks the false claim that HIV is spliced into the coronavirus and that vaccines will contain RFID chips.

Refute 5G coronavirus conspiracy theories by pointing to bad outbreaks in low 5G penetration countries like Iran and Italy.

Shares his own vaccine history and argue vaccines are net positive tools, not part of a depopulation conspiracy.

Distinguishes real, non-secret power structures like OPEC and banking cartels from imagined grand conspiracies.

CIA drug trafficking as pragmatic off-books statecraft funding rather than a hidden conspiracy.

Explains why Hydra prototyping is outsourced to a third party as a specification, keeping room for competing implementations.

Argues diversifying critical infrastructure providers matters more for Voltaire than rushing Hydra, since demand doesn't justify it yet.

The ITN snapshot already closed and outline the staged path from the Shelley Haskell testnet to a balance check testnet to main net.

IOHK will build a hardware chip with the University of Wyoming but won't compete with Ledger and Trezor on wallets.

Confirms ITN rewards stop once the balance check testnet launches to lock in accurate balances.

Confirms he pets his goats for stress relief.

His mother was a Jimmy Buffett fan who grew up in Florida.

Promises an announcement soon about expanded Plutus development resources beyond the playground.

Confirms plans for apiculture and aquaculture alongside a hydroponics setup on the farm.

Picks Massive Attack's Teardrop over Tears for Fears.

Staking ADA will be as easy as the incentivized testnet experience.

Farm animals aren't sanitized before petting and recount anthrax's history as wool sorters disease.

Praises Tara's growth into a phenomenal communicator and chief of staff who fixes stalled projects.

Praises Aparna, senior Cardano product manager, for unifying the product team's design philosophy.

Thanks a Boulder artist for a painting commission.

Confirms alpacas are joining the farm in 2020.

Names the Conan O'Brien era Simpsons seasons three through nine as the golden run.

Side with Xbox over PS5, calling Microsoft's console execution excellent.

Jokes about prion diseases like mad cow and kuru syndrome from cannibalism in Papua New Guinea.

Praises South Park's recent seasons for staying vulgar yet elegant.

A farm irrigation and sprinkler upgrade to boost hay and alfalfa yields.

Declines to speculate on the Tiger King husband feeding story, though he knows of a real Philippines case.

Clarifies he's a farmer, not a rancher, continuing a multigenerational family farming tradition from Montana.

He's holding off on Westworld season three until it fully airs to binge watch.

Picks Vitalik over Dan Larimer in a hypothetical cliffhanger rescue.

Names David Hilbert as his favorite mathematician, with Emil Artin as a close second.

Confirms plans to install solar panels in 2020.

Denies any wingsuit base jumping plans off the Tetons and dismiss a fake parody news article.

Picks the Mustang as the best muscle car, giving Dodge's Charger an honorable mention.

Pay tribute to musician Bill Withers, who died at 81.

Confirms owning a 1980s John Deere tractor and praise the Camaro.

Praises the 600 horsepower Shelby GT500's price to performance.

Names Hibiki as his favorite whiskey.

Confirms taking vitamin C to boost his immune system.

Breaks down why Daedalus sync times vary from five to ten hours depending on CPU, memory, disk and network.

Details ongoing work fixing Haskell's Windows performance gaps to match Linux and Mac sync speeds.

Sets a target of under an hour for full node sync while pointing to Yoroi as the faster light client alternative.

Clarifies Daedalus needs only a few gigabytes of storage and can run a full node on a Raspberry Pi.

Confirms taking 1000 milligrams of vitamin C and name Koenigsegg as a favorite car brand.

Admits he never got around to writing an International Women's Day blog post.

Confirms IOHK extensively uses QuickCheck property based testing, with less emphasis on fuzzing so far.

Jokes he'd rather drive his own Huracan than go to a track to drive another Lamborghini.

Confirms the Haskell testnet will update weekly, matching the Rust testnet's cadence.

Jokes that Bernie Sanders has neither dementia nor communism, then pick white for his next Lamborghini.

Confirms canceled Japan and Africa travel due to coronavirus lockdowns.

He's lost interest in the NFL since Tom Brady left the Patriots for Tampa Bay.

Confirms he's a lifelong Denver Nuggets fan from the George Karl era.

Gives a status update on the Ethiopia project's feasibility study, delayed by coronavirus disruptions there.

Jokes about Arnold Schwarzenegger's mini donkey and dodge a Bruce Willis Demi Moore question.

Confirms travel to Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone, joking about Freetown's history.

Calls McLaren the worst cars ever built and comment on Tesla's Cybertruck design.

Reacts to Binance acquiring CoinMarketCap as pretty cool.

Confirms he owns a pet giraffe in South Africa, a gift from the president.

Cardano Foundation educational handouts for community outreach are coming in June.

The planned pygmy hippo acquisition in Uganda stalled after his Africa trip was canceled by coronavirus.

Shares favorite steakhouses in Osaka and Tokyo, including one run by a Cardano fan.

Praises Alex Chepurnoy's Ergo project built on Scorex for its sigma protocols and puzzles.

Confirms he still has ten chickens despite their knack for getting themselves killed.

Names Yamazaki as a favorite whiskey alongside Hibiki.

Revisits the Harmony $50 Twitter bet on Shelley shipping, confident it's close given the Byron reboot's progress.

Explains why he won't commit to a fixed Shelley date since integration work is unpredictable, though internal roadmaps have been accurate.

His Pink Floyd painting sits on the floor for lack of office space next to the Klimt piece.

Dismisses a hypothetical Chico street fight, describing him as a struggling, unwell person, not a threat.

Jokes that a certain celebrity is not in his league.

He preferred the Bee Gees over Earth, Wind & Fire in the disco era.

Argues Cardano's lower trading volume reflects real exchange activity versus inflated numbers on other chains.

Reveals hiring a quantitative financial mathematician to model stablecoin design and market structure.

Confirms his ranch spans 50 acres, a comfortable size for coyote hunting.

IOHK is hiring while other companies lay off staff amid the pandemic.

Sets Ledger cold staking for the Shelley timeframe, given a roughly twelve week integration.

Jokes that Ethereum is named after a World of Warcraft item Vitalik liked.

Deep sea fishing for swordfish is fun, but catfish is his favorite catch.

Confirms cold staking rewards will match regular staking, just via a different mechanism.

Dismisses fears that large stake pool coalitions could censor the network, citing the k parameter's design against cartel control.

Jokes that tuna is nearly extinct off the coast of Maine.

Circulating supply and decimal placement have no real bearing on a token's value.

Recounts Bernardo Magri's path from IOHK graduate researcher to tenure track professor, with Sandro now leading MPC research.

Weighs in on a poker player and picks a handgun over a rifle or shotgun.

Predicts Cardano will be the best platform for issuing security tokens given its multi-asset standard and DSL.

Welcomes a volunteer offer to translate Cardano material into Portuguese.

Calls Tone Vays a friendly rival, saying they disagree without being disagreeable.

Lists his handgun collection, including FN 45 tactical and Glock models.

Jokes that mathematicians turn coffee into proofs, admitting to drinking coffee all day.

Predicts Cardano will be the best voting system once Voltaire ships.

Shares his bulletproof coffee recipe with Kerrygold butter and MCT oil, dismissing coffee blood pressure worries.

Argues people over-focus on individual factors like coffee or salt instead of exercise for long-term health.

Jokes there's no Vitalik reunion, comparing it to the permanent Beatles breakup.

Reassures there are no delays and life is good.

Hopes a new Andreas Antonopoulos style advocate emerges organically from the Cardano community.

Wishes a medical student well on finals, chatting briefly about clinical years.

Declares extended UTXO a far better smart contract model than Ethereum's, bar none.

Lays out an energy policy combining nuclear, wind, solar and carbon capture to fix climate change without a Green New Deal.

Names gravity based storage and fourth generation nuclear as his preferred grid scale technologies.

Recommends geothermal heating for homes and dismisses fears about it as unfounded.

Defends the ITN against a misleading quote from an early tester, saying it was taken out of context.

Traces the claim that Cardano is a gambling platform to an out of context 2016 clip about early commercial plans.

Calls AOC and Bernie Sanders communists who would nationalize industry given the chance.

Predicts Maduro's regime could fall within three to five years amid US sanctions and a bounty on him.

Reiterates his belief that Biden shows clear signs of dementia.

Confirms Cardano will get faster as needed.

Back building thorium reactors.

Criticizes Democrats for passing over Tulsi Gabbard in favor of an unprepared Biden nomination.

Draws on his family's history with dementia to argue Biden's decline mirrors his grandfather's Alzheimer's.

Explores universal basic income through Norway's sovereign wealth model, contrasting it with debt funded UBI risking inflation.

Argues vocational training beats college for raising earnings and question nationalizing education costs.

A value added tax could fund UBI with less inflationary harm to the poor than sales taxes.

Argues UBI as a dividend from a sovereign wealth fund is compatible with capitalism, unlike UBI funded by nationalization.

Laments the US turning a 2000 budget surplus into a national debt spiral in twenty years, criticizing Bloomberg.

Confirms he believes in a deep state, defining it as an entrenched, powerful bureaucracy.

Wraps the two hour AMA thanking moderators and the community, closing with a Chinese zodiac joke.