AMA 11/10/2020

Opens the stream live from Colorado, testing a new RODE Procaster microphone and noting the date.

Predicts an optimistic 2021 as the Pfizer vaccine's efficacy should mean a return to work and travel.

Reports tremendous commercial demand for the Cardano platform and growing interest in PRISM as an identity service.

Teases upcoming major Africa deals potentially reaching millions of people, still working through timing on Africa time.

Confirms Ledger and Trezor hardware wallet support is moving to Daedalus mainnet within one to two weeks.

The coming Ledger update carries multi-staking functionality, with the broader multi-staking push planned for Q1 2021.

Current engineering focus on multi-asset support, extended UTXO, metadata improvements, and multi-sig.

Outlines the backlog after multi-asset: hybrid wallets, partial delegation, then smart contracts, with the product update possibly shifting to Ada Lovelace's birthday.

Highlights that Cardano stayed the top cryptocurrency project for GitHub commits all year despite the holidays.

The ideal paper wallet design: a public key QR code plus a PGP-encrypted private key QR code to defeat printer buffer attacks.

Hybrid wallets letting users stake from a cold paper wallet while a hot HD wallet in Daedalus manages the staking keys.

He is a Lex Fridman fan and will eventually appear on his podcast once a bigger audience base of 'Rogan after Gogan' is built.

Updates on the rebrand from IOHK to IOG and the product marketing model being built out for Ouroboros.

The a0 and k decentralization parameters, with k rising from 150 toward 500 then 1000 in Q1 2021.

Gives a Mantis and Ethereum Classic update: on schedule for testnet, with a treasury hard fork proposal or IOHK stepping away from ETC entirely.

A Daedalus mobile app will probably happen in the future.

Agrees to appear on the Ada Angels podcast, pointing the requester to his executive assistant to schedule it.

Responds to a Goguen timing jab by confirming multi-asset minting is close but held back pending final vote certification for monetary policy.

On a possible satellite network, says it would only happen through Catalyst funding once Cardano reaches Ethereum-level scale, with SpaceX open to it.

Declines to comment on Coinbase listing rumors, saying major exchanges will list ADA when the time is right.

On using blockchain for anonymous mental health counseling, argues blockchain helps with anonymous payments but not the personal act of therapy itself, while speculating about AI-assisted companion therapy.

Gives an update on Runtime Verification and the K framework, teasing a showcase at the upcoming product update.

Updates on the Litecoin partnership, noting a Litecoin Improvement Proposal is needed for a wrapped-asset mechanism.

Compares the difficulty of blockchain versus game development, arguing blockchain needs distributed systems, cryptography and incentive design while games need narrative, entertainment and gamification, and most games fail commercially.

Decentralizing education through decentralized credentialing that breaks colleges' monopoly on credentials, a trend accelerated by pandemic-driven online education.

Gives an update on the Haskell education program, having just finished a fully digital Mongolia class after prior in-person classes in Ethiopia, Barbados and Athens, describing the admissions and hiring pipeline.

Wants to run another Ethiopia Haskell class and make considerable investment in the country once a pending deal closes.

Argues blockchain-based credentials from credible issuing organizations make resume fraud harder, not easier, unlike hard-to-verify traditional degrees.

Jokes about his hairline being big for a 33 year old.

Updates on the peer-to-peer networking layer, with two engineers working on the P2P governor and policy, targeting completion before the decentralization parameter d hits zero.

Names his favorite Monty Python skit, the joke so deadly it kills whoever hears it.

He takes Lion's Mane daily along with Alpha Brain as nootropics.

Confirms the AMA is being simulcast live on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Argues objective moral values are grounded in discoverability, using a thought experiment about the Bible being lost forever versus gravity being rediscoverable, and the cyclical rediscovery of knowledge through history.

Proposes finding a discoverable moral reality by comparing which social structures across cultures tend to be more stable and sustainable, noting shared norms like property rights arise independent of religion.

Distinguishes macro societal morality from micro individual morality, warning a society can be stable and prosperous while still being terrible for the individual.

Grounding values against reality through trade-offs, using war and killing as an example of how moral hierarchies get tested.

Dismisses the USPS blockchain voting patent filed in February 2020 as nothing special, just a metadata storage mechanism.

Clarifies the Cardano Foundation has no cash flow from the Cardano protocol itself, just as Bitcoin and Ethereum foundations don't; the foundation is an accelerator, not a requirement for the protocol.

The Wyoming microchip hardware project was largely halted by COVID and hardware being hard, with work resuming in 2021.

Calls for blockchain-based e-voting with preference and ranked-choice voting, starting at the municipal and state level before pushing federally.

Argues people only question election fidelity when their candidate loses, and pushes back on abolishing the Electoral College given the US is a union of semi-autonomous states.

Lists requirements for secure e-voting: end-to-end verifiability, paper backup, auditable registration rolls, fully open-source software, resilience against exploits, and forensic accounting checks like Benford's law.

Argues some fraud occurs in every election, but the real 2020 problem is public trust in the system's legitimacy rather than the technical outcome itself.

Applies game theory to Trump's post-election tweeting, arguing he has no downside to claiming fraud since it preserves a loyal media and political coalition for a 2024 run.

Most of his wealth came from Bitcoin rather than Cardano, and criticizes the EOS SEC settlement and Blockstack's fundraising struggles despite doing things by the book.

Atala PRISM could support voting by pairing eligible voters with verified real identities, effectively serving as a national ID system.

He plans to stay sober rather than pick a first drink for when his dry year ends.

Clarifies Ethereum 2.0 launching in December 2020 is only the first stage of a multi-year rollout, and expresses confidence Cardano's own upgrade path is at least as well planned.

Makes a joke about the office rug tying the room together.

Confirms he is working between back to back meetings, including a zero-knowledge cryptography meeting, during his lunch break.

Shares his math background in analytic and additive number theory and integer factorization at CU Boulder, and plans to eventually finish a PhD in AI and computational logic, exploring homotopy type theory.

Compares Cardano to Hedera Hashgraph, Algorand and Polkadot, dismissing patented Hashgraph, respecting Algorand's tech despite little commercial traction, and calling Polkadot derivative but solid.

Names Fullmetal Alchemist as his favorite anime.

Adding Monero-level privacy to Cardano via zk-SNARK research like Sonic, noting a private proof-of-stake design exists but would add one to two years to development.

He doesn't practice breathing techniques as much as he should, recommending the books The Oxygen Advantage and Breath.

Targets end of November or early December for the first Mantis and Ethereum Classic update.

Recounts doing a three week water fast, feeling horrific by the end and recommending no more than two weeks.

A side AI project with Colin Edwards, planning to have him appear on a podcast and possibly open source the models later.

Argues technology alone cannot stop governments becoming techno-tyrants; only the political process, checks and balances, and avoiding socialism can prevent that.

ADA is already supported by dominant hardware wallets Ledger and Trezor, and mobile wallet support has recently become much easier to add.

Advises someone with a financial windfall to pay taxes first, put half into an irrevocable trust for asset protection, live off the interest, and diversify the rest.

Defends Ben Goertzel as legitimate with a real math PhD and an interesting OpenCog framework, while saying he isn't familiar enough with Hanson to comment.

Names Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl as his favorite philosophy book.

Gives an update on his Lion's Mane mushroom cultivation, working through FDA supplement rules with a live-in mycologist and planning a dedicated greenhouse to grow hundreds of pounds a month.

A specialized in-memory database doesn't make sense for Cardano, but a long-term distributed RAM disk could help shard UTXO state if it grows too large.

Greets a viewer tuning in from New Zealand.

Confirms he has read Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

He already sees ADA as the best cryptocurrency, and once the first roadmap iteration is done he'll stop thinking about crypto and target the world financial system instead.

Praises Nassim Taleb's Antifragile for applying ecological resilience concepts to financial and social systems.

Greets an Abu Dhabi viewer and says he isn't aware of a civil war in Ethiopia, noting things looked fine last he checked.

Names Glenmorangie Signet as a good drinking scotch, distinct from shelf whiskeys like Macallan 30.

Wraps up the AMA as his lunch break ends, thanking everyone for joining.