AMA 12/22/2018

Shares a personal update: moving from a two-bedroom apartment to a 50-acre ranch, regrowing his beard, and posting a giraffe photo for the holidays.

Announces the IOHK Case Summit moves from a private January event to a public gathering in early Q2 2019, with special announcements planned.

Gives a research update: papers moving through peer review and new cryptographic engineers being hired to build out SGX and multi-party computation protocols.

Epochs and slots work under Ouroboros, and the difference between winning a slot as a block producer versus running a stake pool.

The upcoming Daedalus delegation center, where stake pools register on-chain and delegators pick a pool based on performance and philosophy.

Cold wallets and hardware wallets will be able to delegate a staking right without ever exposing the spending keys.

Security tokens as regulated assets, where compliance rules like accredited investor restrictions can live partly on-chain.

Automated dividend payments and provable, non-repudiable message delivery to shareholders using blockchain addresses.

Weighs whether security tokens should live on a separate side chain with different rollback and control rules, or inherit Cardano's own immutability.

Argues that weakening cryptography with a government backdoor is dangerous, and prefers a threshold backdoor triggered only by open social consensus.

Discusses whether cryptocurrency can help political activists who get banned from PayPal or denied bank accounts over their views.

Weighs when a private platform like eBay, Airbnb, or YouTube becomes enough of a social utility that deplatforming someone starts to resemble censorship.

Proposes decentralized protocols as a neutral third option between unaccountable private censorship and full government-regulated utilities.

The tradeoffs behind address size, why collisions must be avoided, and the plan for human-readable alias names like a domain system.

A decentralized alternative to trusted multi-sig coordinators like Copay, where friends lists and identity live on-chain instead of a central server.

Gives poker via Kaleidoscope as an example of a social protocol that uses an on-chain friends list to coordinate off-chain gameplay.

Explains that Daedalus wallets stuck at 0 percent sync usually have a corrupted block database, points to antivirus or old hard drives as culprits, and promises a repair utility.

Brushes off a request about an unrelated coin called AOS and thanks the audience for the Christmas well-wishes.

Confirms staking is planned for the Yoroi mobile wallet, tied to a January delegation spec summit with EMURGO and other wallet developers.

Recounts the frustrating history of investing in Ethereum Classic, from a rejected treasury proposal to accusations that IOHK was solving a problem no one had.

Calls the Mantis client the best Ethereum Classic client ever built despite the community calling it unnecessary as IOHK pulls back funding.

Warns that an insular ecosystem that treats alternative teams as threats instead of opportunities will slowly become irrelevant.

Lays out two schools of thought for porting Ethereum projects to Cardano: a costly but better rewrite in Plutus, or interoperability through Yella.

Solidity code can already run on Cardano's KEVM and Yella testnets today via Truffle and Remix, with major 2019 upgrades planned.

Reveals plans for Daedalus to become a one-click dApp store, similar to Google Play, hosting wallets, explorers, and applications for multiple chains.

Using containerization and trusted hardware enclaves inside Daedalus so developers can add DRM-like features without an Apple or Google gatekeeper.

Compares crypto to credit cards, noting the legacy financial system works brilliantly for most people but excludes the unbanked and cash economies.

Argues that as payment processors like Mastercard deplatform people for their politics, cryptocurrency becomes the backup cash everyone can still rely on.

Argues good decentralizing ideas are impossible to put back in the bottle once people are exposed to them, comparing crypto's spread to the historical rise of democracy.

Points to the internet's disruption of journalism as a preview of how competition will erode the legacy financial system's centralized control.

Demos the Tangem NFC card wallet and describes negotiating a low-cost Cardano version sold as a spending and recovery card pair.

Introduces the Cardano Foundation's new interim board under chairman Nathan Kaiser, alongside financial expert Domingo.

The interim board's first job is cleaning up past mistakes and rebuilding community programs like ambassadors, meetups, and podcasts.

The foundation's regulatory outreach to unlock natural resource wealth in Mongolia and partner with Ethiopia's cryptographer prime minister.

The Guardians of Cardano and the new board exist to stop the foundation's funds from ever being used for personal gain again.

ADA's 45 billion supply is an arbitrary decimal point choice with no effect on price, unlike gasoline you can't just burn half the supply to raise value.

Contrasts PBS-style donation begging with an on-chain treasury where ADA holders directly fund proposals like a government budget.

Argues on-chain treasury voting gives ADA holders real accountability and influence that Bitcoin holders never get, which helps prevent community forks.

The plan for Plutus hackathons and why targeting experienced Haskell developers first beats chasing existing mass-adoption languages.

Argues expert Haskell engineers write safer smart contracts than bootcamp JavaScript developers, citing the DOW hack as a cautionary example.

Details plans to train 10,000 developers worldwide through open-source Haskell courses run in Athens, Barbados, and an all-women's class in Ethiopia.

Fires back at critics who claim Cardano has no smart contracts, pointing to three live testnets already running Plutus, EVM, and Yella contracts.

Shows off an ancient Babylonian clay tablet complaining about copper quality as proof that internet trolling is nothing new.

Contrasts Cardano's peer-reviewed specifications with competitors who just forked Ethereum or bought companies to fake legitimacy.

The decision to relocate IOHK operations to Cheyenne, Wyoming for a friendlier US regulatory environment.

Criticizes China's social credit system as incompatible with Enlightenment values and argues the US constitution still offers the best foundation for freedom.

Fixing problems at home, like blockchain-based property registration and voting, comes before criticizing other countries' systems.

Wraps up the AMA, thanking everyone for participating and wishing them a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.