UPD 01/28/2023

Open a video from Colorado explaining Cardano's architecture to clear up recent questions and misinformation about the network.

Traces the story back to the 2016 Why Cardano essay, which introduced the settlement layer and computation layer concepts tied to side chains.

Lists the settlement layer's core properties: safety, determinism, and the extended UTXO accounting model.

Points to Plutus, custom DSLs, and the native asset standard as what give the settlement layer enough expressiveness for most DeFi and NFT use cases.

Acknowledges some use cases are incompatible with Cardano's design choices and would need to trade determinism, decentralization, or upgradability for speed or bleeding edge features.

Mocks the notion of a perfect God protocol, insisting every blockchain design involves trade-offs between decentralization, safety, upgradability, and throughput.

Contrasts Bitcoin maximalists, who refuse to ever touch the core protocol and tell everyone to use a centralized layer two instead.

The alternative of accommodating diverse needs through a toolkit, the way Polkadot uses parachains and Cardano uses side chains.

References the July 2022 blog post introducing the Cardano EVM sidechain as part of that side chain strategy.

Survey existing blockchain toolkits, starting with the Scorex framework built with Alexander Chepurnoy, now part of Hyperledger and used by Ergo.

Compares Hyperledger Fabric, used by Maersk and Walmart, against Cosmos, currently the most popular toolkit for spinning up custom blockchains.

Clarifies Cardano itself was never built as a generic modular framework, but as a safe, deterministic, self-healing system written in Haskell for reliability rather than developer convenience.

Rejects spending 18 to 24 months turning Cardano into a generic framework, since it would not make the chain safer or faster, only more accessible for side chains.

Most developers will not choose a Haskell side chain when token free toolkits with years of track record and better SDKs already exist.

Cites World Mobile as a project that deployed on Cardano for its safety and determinism, while needing bespoke infrastructure for government relations, trusted hardware, spectrum licensing, and privacy.

Lays out two options for such a project: fork and rewrite Cardano's ledger logic in Haskell, or attach an open toolkit like Cosmos as a computation layer connected by a bridge.

Open toolkits like Cosmos ship with no built in governance or security, only programmable infrastructure, and he encourages others to build their own side chains the same way.

Walks through the staking reward curve, which declines over roughly a hundred years so most Ada rewards front load into the first decade.

Argues side chains sustain stake pool revenue over time because they pay Ada plus their own tokens to SPOs and delegators for the security Ouroboros provides.

Frames a diverse ecosystem of custom parameterized side chains as good for Cardano, each keeping its own traffic while sharing the main chain's security and liquidity.

Recaps six years of consistent side chain work, including the Mamba side chain case study and the Scorex framework built with Alexander Chepurnoy.

Insists the future is multi-chain and multi-infrastructure because design trade-offs make a single universal chain impossible.

Traditional finance as inherently centralized and regulated, needing bridges between trustless and trusted infrastructure rather than a Bitcoin style refusal to engage.

Telecommunications is centralized by nature of government owned spectrum, so even fully decentralized intentions still need bespoke bridging infrastructure.

Rejects putting unelected bureaucrats in charge of decentralized infrastructure, proposing side chains with bespoke logic as the compromise that preserves self-sovereign identity and privacy.

Laments six years of the same disinformation resurfacing whenever a new concept like Midnight or World Mobile gets introduced.

Calls this transparent, peer reviewed, open source approach the Cardano Way, and urge the industry to grow up rather than punish honesty with constant criticism.

Warns that toxic reception drives away professionals willing to do good work and ends up hurting the whole industry, not just Cardano.

Expresses excitement over the Cosmos and World Mobile partnership as two ecosystems making each other better through open, absorbable infrastructure.

Pushes back on the narrative that this partnership proves Cardano is broken, calling it a generational mindset of permanent cynicism.

Restates the three pillars of third generation cryptocurrency, scalability, interoperability, and sustainability slash governance, closing with welcome to crypto.