2020-03-15 · timestamps by Eric Czuleger
AMA 03/15/2020
- Charles hosts a Sunday AMA during the early COVID 19 crash, arguing the crisis exposes an unsustainable financial system and that crypto will benefit once bank runs or restrictions eventually hit.
- Confirms Shelley mainnet is on track, tracked via two week sprints and confidence intervals, with the Byron reboot shipping first as proof of code quality.
- Walks through the full roadmap beyond Shelley: Goguen smart contracts with Plutus and Marlowe, Basho scaling with Hydra, and Voltaire treasury and governance, plus what is deliberately out of scope for 2020 like Halo, recursive SNARKs, Yella and post quantum signatures.
- Explains why he believes ADA technically surpasses Bitcoin thanks to extended UTXO, smart contracts and far lower energy use, and defends single shard Ouroboros plus Hydra as enough scale without sharding.
- Angrily and at length debunks the recurring claim that Cardano was originally conceived as a gambling or gaming platform, pointing to years of voting, property rights and supply chain work in Ethiopia, Argentina and Mongolia as proof.
- Closes with an extended personal reflection on five years of 60 to 80 hour weeks, handling online cynicism and criticism, and why he still believes in Cardano's mission despite the toll.
67 entries
Predicts Biden will win a rigged Democratic primary over Sanders and speculates Bill Gates as VP pick.
Teases that Shelley mainnet is coming sooner than people think.
ADA's low price as a symptom of the whole market being down, expects recovery to take years.
Confirms a Daedalus fix for macOS Catalina is in progress, blocked by an Apple issue.
Jokes about trying a ketogenic diet and fasting to protect against coronavirus.
Argues a recession has already begun as the US cuts rates to zero and warns the financial order is unsustainable.
Predicts panic buying and bank runs will eventually push people into crypto once banks restrict withdrawals.
Criticizes the McCann marketing pitch as underwhelming after months of work and expects a revised pitch.
Daedalus support for multiple cryptocurrencies is still being worked on.
Speculates Biden will pick a young female running mate after committing to it during the debate.
MakerDAO's DAI troubles do not affect Cardano but show how hard it is to build a stable algorithmic stablecoin.
He would love to visit New Zealand, Fiji, Tuvalu and Tonga once travel opens back up.
Explains why formal verification matters even though it does not guarantee good software, recommends Practical TLA+ and Leslie Lamport's videos.
Expects Cardano to be listed on a new major exchange in 2020.
Explains why sharding is unnecessary since single shard Ouroboros already hits visa scale average throughput, with Hydra for further scaling.
Recalls tracking coronavirus warning signs since January through John Campbell and contacts in China before going into pandemic mode at IOHK.
He will avoid carnival cruise stock given travel risk despite a possible government bailout.
Clarifies he is Italian Catholic with no Jewish ancestry.
Blames delayed Daedalus Mac wallet updates on Apple being slow to issue new developer certificates.
Confirms Hoskinson is indeed an Italian surname despite not sounding like one.
Details Shelley readiness through tracked sprints and confidence intervals, says the Byron reboot shipping first is proof of code quality.
Warns Shelley's launch alone will not massively move ADA's price and pushes back hard on people who call Cardano just a wallet.
Argues ADA will surpass Bitcoin because extended UTXO matches Bitcoin's security while adding smart contracts, layer two and far less energy use.
Confirms the K framework research with Grigore Rosu is still active and explains IOHK's philosophy of backing researchers with decades long track records.
Explains why Phil Wadler was brought in to design Plutus as the culmination of his functional programming career.
Dropping the Yella computing model for extended UTXO alone after the 2018 price crash cut the budget, hopes to fund Yella research again with Runtime Verification later in 2020.
Quantum computers threaten public key crypto more than proof of work, describes work on hash based post quantum signatures like XMSS with Peter Schwabe.
His longest personal fast was around two weeks.
Muses that outside Cardano he would resurrect the Kwaidan QED project, a marketplace for mathematical proofs, and become a computational logician.
His farm and getting into controlled environment agriculture with hydroponic and aquaponic greenhouses.
His Yamaha digital piano modeled on a Bosendorfer and Yamaha grand.
Halo and recursive Starks are not in scope for Cardano's current roadmap but could be funded in a future development phase.
Reflects on his year as a Polymath advisor helping shape their commercial strategy on Substrate before the consultancy wound down.
He prefers pumpkin pie over apple pie for the texture.
He is 32 turning 33 in 2020 and starting to see white hair.
ADA's price does not bother him personally since success means leaving behind a process that outlives any single founder or cult of personality.
Dismisses obsessing over daily price given how manipulated and thin crypto markets are, says user population matters more.
The PwC and Emurgo Ohio workshop in London that produced a unified commercial strategy for Cardano.
Shows off the caboose whistle he is wearing around his neck.
Jokes about creating a Captain Cardano NFT collectible and praises Black Hawk and Red Rocks in Colorado.
He just picks whichever AMA questions catch his eye.
Recommends learning Haskell for now to understand ADA smart contracts.
IOHK is funded as a commercial entity doing contract work and consulting.
Argues speed comparisons to Hedera Hashgraph miss the point since Cardano already has fast finality and can scale to 100 million users when needed.
Highlights Zcash's Halo paper as inspiration and says IOHK built its own superior recursive SNARK called Sonic.
Walks through the roadmap phases: Byron reboot finishing, Shelley decentralizing, Goguen bringing Plutus and Marlowe smart contracts, Basho scaling with Hydra.
Voltaire's treasury and voting system will fund ongoing maintenance and lists post quantum signatures and one shot signatures as future treasury funded research.
A diverse multi vendor development ecosystem, not a single contractor, is the point of decentralized governance.
Confirms he would be glad for IOHK to keep working with Cardano for many years under the treasury system.
Confirms IOHK is building an SDK for developers on both the wallet and light client sides.
IOHK's Covid response as a naturally decentralized remote workforce that halted non essential travel.
Denies a rumor that Shelley is being postponed.
Praises the stake pool operator introduction video campaign as a way to showcase the diverse governing class running Cardano.
Praises his chief of staff's growth from culture officer to HR director to chief of staff and their joint speaking events.
Pool saturation as a defense against Sybil attacks from large ADA holders creating many pools, floats future proof of merit research with Oxford's Elias Koutsoupias.
In a total economic collapse his company would be the least of his worries, framing rule of law as what lets civilization focus on higher pursuits.
Breaks down coronavirus mortality by severity and predicts the pandemic will accelerate rapid testing tech and a longer term shift away from the dollar as reserve currency.
Shares troubling reports of US ammunition stockpiling and predicts elections in Italy and the US will be reshaped by anger over pandemic response.
Angrily debunks the persistent Tezos community claim that Cardano was originally conceived as a gambling or gaming platform.
Cites years of work in Ethiopia, Argentina, Mongolia and Africa on voting, property rights and supply chains as proof Cardano was never built as a casino.
Compares the persistent gambling platform lie to anti vaxxer conspiracy thinking that no amount of evidence can dislodge.
Reflects on turning 30, attending his grandmother's funeral, and realizing how quickly time and family age.
Five years of 60 to 80 hour weeks sacrificed for Cardano, insisting he never signed up for a get rich quick or Ponzi scheme.
Laments rising cynicism in society, contrasting his grandfather's era of optimism with modern cynicism exemplified by Star Trek Picard.
Criticizes cancel culture using Thomas Jefferson and Elon Musk as examples of flawed visionaries torn down instead of celebrated.
Admits Cardano has made missteps like releasing software out of order but insists the team never wavered on its principles.
Closes by describing planting trees in Bulgaria and teaching Wyoming schoolkids about consensus protocols as proof the community's optimism is thriving.