Product Development and Commercial Success in Tough Markets

Opens under the weather wanting a fact based conversation about the budget, since product decisions are about how you compete in a broader ecosystem.

You do not spend money for its own sake but to chase a vision of how you win, like Apple with iPhone or Google with Android.

Cardano must compete against SUI, Aptos, Ethereum, and Solana for one pool of liquidity, TVL, DAPs, and users, and the budget should reflect that.

Competitiveness is a moving target: forking Bitcoin was enough early, then Bitshares, Ethereum, and NXT built bespoke systems, and 2025 is a different headspace again.

The DREP approved roadmap organizes work into scalability for the future, processing billions of transactions via state channels, rollups, Leios, and Mithril.

Usability covers Plutus, Plinth, Aiken, identity, privacy, and Babel fees, while interoperability and partner chains keep projects like World Mobile in orbit.

Research sets a 3 to 5 year vision, with continued investment in governance, workshops, and node diversification across REST, Go, and TypeScript nodes.

Says what kills any company is taking a composed product vision and tearing out pieces with no understanding of why they are there.

Uses a smartphone as an analogy: a composition of camera, CPU, antennas, glass, and battery you could never build by committee, swapping tungsten for copper with no reason, which is what bureaucracy does.

The proposal reflects what IO thinks Cardano needs to stay competitive, and cleaning up the node also makes it easier for others to build competing nodes.

You are funding the IO vision, roughly 150 FTEs plus scientists, and has no interest in a bare time and materials developer proposal, since he will not work on things that fail.

The price is the price, likely a loss if ADA stays stagnant, and the alternative of building the iPhone in public like Linux took 30 years of slow conservative work.

Winning against competitive protocols needs an agile fast moving roadmap, and decentralization can be funded separately by fully approving Pragma.

A larger NCL gives DREPs optionality in reconciliation to make multiple bets: an IO bet, a Pragma bet, a commercialization bet, against the 1.7 billion ADA treasury.

Says what is not an option is breaking the package open, taking two or three pieces, and paying only for those while his engineers sit idle.

Cherry picking Leios but not the rest downsizes an elite research team to a commoditized time and materials shop, which is why it is a package: vote no, but do not open it up and fight it.

Compares it to his construction company choosing between a hospital, a house, or an Air Force base by where resources are best spent, which nobody calls immature.

An elite team long working uncompensated offers interoperability and scalability, and you are buying IO's presence, strategy, and fight for Cardano.

Leaders like Lisa Su at AMD, Steve Jobs at Apple, and Satya Nadella at Microsoft show up with a vision and tell you what they need to make it happen.

He is not asking for 5 percent of the ADA supply or a 50 billion dollar Musk pay package, just to cover his engineers' expenses with a little profit.

The roadmap is never finished because scalability in 2025 differs from 2020, and IO has had no revenue for Cardano code since its TGE contracts expired in 2020.

He has a paternal desire to see Cardano succeed and will implement Leios regardless to sunset Basho, alongside a strategic investment in Midgard.

Decentralization does not mean nobody decides: it means endowing a person or institution with authority you can later revoke.

IO earnestly tried a decentralized product function with Intersect, but the same people complaining now complained about Intersect's bureaucracy, and it pushed CDC to fund a coalition so others can rise up.

The regulating mechanism is not the NCL but DREPs doing their job, and 72 percent voting decided a reasonable 350 million ADA window that sour grapes keep litigating.

Obvious non serious proposals like the husky cash grab do not reflect the serious work, and DREPs must fit real proposals into 350 or less then live with the vote.

He is a vendor now communicating the price of IO's participation as an innovation and venture studio, not a time and materials shop, and you decide if the juice is worth the squeeze.

Decentralized governance means no founding entity and no Genesis keys, and the very ability to say no proves it is decentralized, but it must be a real choice.

Contrasts Cardano's adulting with other ecosystems' eternal paternal foundations whose unelected boards decide while holders sit as passive speculators.

As an ADA holder you have a front row seat and a voice, and IO's obligation is to tell you what it needs and participate in the process.

Cardano is on the verge of being crypto's largest AVS system because of Midnight, and tens of millions of his own money wired Cardano native assets into the broader space the founding entities ignored.

The budget is the engineering cost to build good foundations so Cardano grows year by year in users, transaction volume, TVL, and price.

Forcing vendors to work at a loss means nobody bids except crooks, recalling African bidders who lowballed 10000 then re-evaluated to a million to knock IO out.

Twitter is not reality and there has been unnecessary viciousness and derangement, with people using the process to settle scores.

The goal is always more decentralization, more use and value, and more resilience, and the network has never collapsed in nearly a decade.

Cardano has the best consensus, liquid non custodial staking, and 50 percent Byzantine resistance without the 80 million dollar daily hacks others suffer.

The value creation from pulling this off would be in the tens of billions, potentially 3, 5, or 10 dollar ADA, so it is not a grift.

Asks what a new developer is sold on choosing Cardano, and who the custodians of those USPs are, pointing to TXpipe, DC Spark, or Input Output.

People act in political learned helplessness because modern democracies do not really let them choose leaders or policy, so they respond with cynicism.

He sees duplicity when people tweet support but structurally guarantee IO works for free, and at this stage of life he has nothing left to prove.

Input Output is a venture studio building his Gillette Wyoming clinic, anti aging products, glowing plants, and the dire wolves, all with an opportunity cost of time.

After 10 years and refusing to work free forever for others' financial benefit, he did not sign up for unlimited unrestricted abuse.

Dates his frank opinion April 25 2025, says the net change limit passed with 72 percent, and urges building the budget in reconciliation and a better process for 2026.

The DREPs were elected by holders through liquid democracy, not appointed by him, and if you dislike them pick a different set.

He wants to keep making Cardano his life's work and is telling you as a business what it costs, so vote yes or pick another person and satoshi your founder.

Draws a line in the sand after 5 years working for free: for his employees, his business integrity, and self respect, this is what IO is and you decide if it is sufficient.