Happy Voting

Back from the UK on May 22 2026, he makes a final pitch for the Input Output voting proposals after X spaces and retail marketing, calling them the best transition for the ecosystem.

Building a decentralized product is hard, unlike a regular product with a hierarchy, KPIs, and a roadmap like Byron, Shelley, Goguen, Basho, and Voltaire.

Cites Midnight's execution: over 9 billion in trading, a 2025 Binance listing, and a mainnet launched exactly as planned by hundreds working to a common vision, crediting Stevie and Bob.

Midnight is one team having fun with StarStream and NightStream on the horizon, and the Night Force broadcasts recall the good old times.

Cardano stopped being fun as every attempt to stay the course descends to the lowest common denominator, especially since decentralized governance turned on.

He cannot win: blamed if there is no marketing or roadmap, and accused of overstepping if he provides them, told by people who never built a business whom to hire and fire.

Recounts cutting the budget in half and letting good friends go and splitting the omnibus into 10 sub-proposals, while people still demand more splits without knowing what they vote on.

The elegant vision underneath, Leios, Hydra, partner chains, and Bitcoin DeFi, puts Cardano on the precipice of being the best, most decentralized cryptocurrency.

The bets on liquid non-custodial staking and UTXO were intentional, rebutting Andrew Westberg's line that the 250 papers were somewhat implemented and wasted.

Nine and a half years of Thursday chief scientist meetings solved the hardest problems, from getting the VRF to work to giving Ouroboros a finality it was never designed for.

Building this way is hard because it takes so long to unify people, and governance pained him with over a billion in treasury ADA untouchable for businesses that needed funding.

The lack of executive function made the budget process a bloody mess that turned people deranged, so you cannot disagree without being cast as an attacker.

People who abstained on the Midnight Ambassador set got death threats, and a small minority of rabble-rousers owns the Cardano governance process while 99 percent of holders do not participate.

Years of being attacked leaves wounds that make you bitter and hollow, dragging yourself out of bed for yet another fight, worst when nice people become monsters on Twitter.

The IO proposals will decentralize development so that within a year many companies build multiple implementations, with the Haskell node spun out of Input Output and Leios turned on.

Decentralizing the research function is remarkably hard since you cannot vibe code a security parameter, so the independent labs may get individual treasury funding in 2027.

The foundational research must be done to prepare Cardano for the ZK, abstraction, and quantum revolutions so there is still a reason to buy ADA.

Over 11,000 DAOs have been created and most failed, so he must review them and add privacy to the Cardano ledger for DRep and proposal voting to stop intimidation.

Calls for an elected budget committee instead of direct democracy free-for-alls, and someone accountable for proposing a roadmap, since the decentralized roadmap is madness.

Executive function is also needed to manage KOLs, marketing, and branding, since KOLs who worked free for years are told AI can replace them.

Becoming a DRep with his ADA would soften the dialogue but is only a stopgap, since taking power back contradicts decentralization.

DReps to vote against IO if they see no value, insisting it is not a threat, and holds up a flash drive to argue you cannot expect a manufactured product for free.

IO offers the last miles of decentralization as a service, and he dislikes subsisting on annual treasury fights that cost the company its soul and its people.

Few have the rare skill to build a top-10 chain that survives a decade, noting 50 million tokens and 18,000 blockchains exist and CZ is richer than Bill Gates.

Asking builders to work for free or an ever-diminishing pie while being blamed for everything is not how entrepreneurship works, so the structure must change.

The vote is a Rorschach test where supporters see a case for structure and haters see unbridled narcissism and the greatest threat to Cardano.

Asks what happens the morning after he is gone, since a successor gets no founder ADA distribution and would remember how every builder was punished.

The ecosystem punishes builders like JPEG Store, Book.io, TapTools, Midgard, SundaeSwap, IO, and Midnight, kicking people while they are down.

Asks what holding ADA even means without being fastest or largest, since at least a roadmap offers hope of leapfrogging with something new.

Laments that the peer-reviewed science coin is now debating firing its scientists or turning them into part-time grant writers explaining research to laypeople, not the NSF.

It is popular in 2026 to burn down anyone in authority, from Elon Musk to any big CEO, so an anti-greatness environment leaves you with no expertise.

Passing the proposals buys breathing room to finish decentralization, after which the willing can rebuild governance to make it fun and useful again.

Nearly 40, he will not spend another 10 to 15 years if the only reward is being called evil and sociopathic for fighting to avoid laying people off.

His two rules are a return to civility and that the work be legitimately interesting, refusing to spend his best years just maintaining and managing decline.

You win by relentlessly executing a vision, not by committee, noting Cardano was worth four times as much as the century-old Honda within four years of launch.

PoGan is a Bitcoin mirror not a bridge, reflecting Bitcoin into Cardano tax-free with fees paid and received in Bitcoin, a trillion-dollar market Cardano is best positioned for.

RealFi can build a decentralized HSBC for the unbanked after a decade of fighting through Ethiopia, Africa, Argentina, El Salvador, and Guatemala, giving people a wallet and a digital ID they own.

The RealFi team includes people who grew up in refugee camps and are unbanked, passionate because they see their families' faces in the product.

The Bitcoin DeFi team is tired of Satoshi's vision stalling under founder deification, having found a path to add what Bitcoin should have had and unlock a trillion dollars.

The Midnight team knows the consequences of violated privacy and the danger of weaponized government CBDCs and digital ID if privacy is not on every phone.

Asks what Cardano's passion is outside of the Twitter mob addicted to the social credit of being right, counting scores, and celebrating failed projects.

As the biggest firm with the most employees and influence, defunding IO is a repudiation of direction and an embrace of chaos with no plan to succeed.

Accumulated decisions over 10 years created a permanent Charles-hating constituency, so he starts every idea at minus 20 or 30 and must climb just to reach zero.

He would take the hits to bank two to three billion people or give everyone privacy, but not to make ADA 2 dollars for speculators who will dump it.

He wrote the first white paper, hired every scientist and engineer, and took Cardano on a 10-year journey through razor blades and US government lawsuits by sheer force of will.

After this budget period, governance must change by moving discussion off Twitter, like Midnight's happy Discord and the agentic Midnight City, and adding executive function.

No one has lost more than his 2.5 billion, and December 2024's promised comeback brought Trump coin, Binance, and 1010 nonsense instead, forcing him to sell and shut things down.

Cardano cannot be only about price, there has to be a reason the world is better if it succeeds, so he urges the community to win the vote and reset.

Frames the vote as deciding whether Cardano still wants a vision, a roadmap, and a founder, calling it growing up, and warns that one-way doors do not reopen.