AMA 10/17/2018

Open the AMA broadcasting live from a Toronto hotel and apologize for the shaky Wi-Fi.

Plans to work through news items first then answer over 200 questions submitted to the AMA thread plus live audience questions.

Addresses the Cardano Foundation dispute, insisting it will not slow protocol development though it has hurt community growth.

Details a multi pronged plan to rebuild community management by salvaging existing structures and standing up a new team at IOHK.

Highlights Sebastian's new 14 lecture educational series and plans for infographics explaining Cardano concepts.

Plans a multi host Cardano podcast modeled on Let's Talk Bitcoin, with hosts from Emurgo, IOHK, and the Guardians.

Wants to spotlight grassroots adoption stories, like a fan planting a gingko tree and a Spanish hotel accepting ADA.

Calls for civility toward Foundation figures Michael Minelli and Michael Parsons even amid the commercial dispute.

Praises the Guardians of Cardano for pushing transparency and accountability while asking critics to tone down hostility.

Weighs whether the Lightning Network and Liquid lead to centralization, comparing them to Bitcoin's concentrated mining power.

Outlines plans to build Cardano's own off chain micro payment channels that settle on chain after Shelley, leveraging stake pools.

Points to a new RapidChain sharding paper and older research on block propagation limits that bound how large blocks can practically be.

Defends the timing of the public break with the Foundation, describing two years of private diplomacy before going public.

The Guardians of Cardano privately investigated Foundation affiliations and sent a list of questions before going public.

Recounts how foreign media in Korea and Japan misreported the Foundation dispute, forcing corrective statements to protect the ADA price.

Reflects on engaging heads of state and foreign ministers, an unplanned but rewarding part of the job that grew out of the Foundation's inability to lobby.

Explains why developing countries see blockchain as an equalizer that lets them bypass distrust of local institutions to access global capital.

Interest in zero knowledge based compliance systems that let people control their own data instead of banks.

Credits John O'Connor's Africa outreach and Emurgo's Asia outreach for diversifying government relationships ahead of a wave of 2019 pilots.

Pass along thanks to CFO Geoff Bullock, praised as one of the best he's worked with, for offering help growing Cardano UK.

Denies that Michael Parsons is stealing ADA, noting the funds remain Foundation property that he would go to jail for misusing.

Confirms early research into a dynamic transaction fee system that responds to ADA's price rather than a fixed fee.

A warm relationship with Hyperledger, floating Ouroboros BFT contributions to Fabric and joint research with IBM.

Confirms native tokens will live on the settlement layer as first class citizens, paying fees in the token itself rather than ADA.

The Foundation's ADA simply sits unused if it never reforms, since Cardano is already decentralized enough not to depend on it.

A blockchain land registry could store title history and prevent the same property being recorded twice.

Argues immutable land records protect against corrupt regimes rewriting history, citing Zimbabwe, Rwanda, and Holocaust era land theft.

Tying payments directly to land titles so resource royalties and property taxes could be collected automatically.

Cardano's technical role as anchoring off chain land records by hashing them into the public blockchain, similar to Factom.

Envisions peer to peer micro lending against land collateral, like a fifty dollar loan to an Ethiopian coffee farmer.

Envisions farm cooperatives eventually tokenizing output as security tokens traded through Marlowe contracts to raise capital.

An ADA debit or credit card was originally a stalled Foundation responsibility that Emurgo and IOHK are now pursuing.

The double spend problem with offline transactions and how trusted hardware enclaves can prove a key was erased and unique.

Expects trusted hardware enclaves to be ubiquitous in phones and laptops by the mid 2020s, and floats open source enclave alternatives.

Confirms developers can bring their own currency and consensus mechanism through the control layer while staying interoperable with Cardano.

Contrasts proof of work mining as a puzzle contest with proof of stake leader election, stressing that stakers still only get paid for doing the work.

Floats a future reputation factor that could bias staking rewards toward good network citizenship rather than stake alone.

Points to the incentives paper with Elias Koutsoupias projecting over a thousand stake pools and roughly five percent annual inflation.

Compares the K framework to a set of skis built for programming language semantics rather than any one blockchain.

Semantics based compilation could let Cardano support many programming languages for smart contracts with little upgrade friction.

Daedalus evolving into a decentralized app store with one click installs, an idea dating back to early Ethereum days.

Argues EOS's four billion dollar raise is no guarantee of success, comparing it to Microsoft outspending Google without winning market share.

Cardano competes for different customers than well funded rivals, chasing developing world adoption in Africa and Asia rather than the West.

Considers publishing a regular community report with key metrics on Cardano network health and growth.

Praises Dfinity and Dominic Williams for funding peer reviewed research even where they compete with Cardano.

Open a question on complex event processing with a smoke and fire analogy for how humans piece together unrelated signals.

Uses a hacked news Twitter account and fake White House attack tweet to show how algorithmic trading reacts instantly to events.

Uses a credit card fraud detection travel pattern example to illustrate complex event processing.

Concludes Cardano should not natively support complex event processing, leaving it as a business opportunity for DApp and oracle providers.

Praises the Joe Rogan and intellectual dark web long form podcast format for reaching audiences mainstream media ignores.

Wants to save a major podcast appearance for after Shelley and smart contracts ship so he can point people to working software.

Details what follows Cardano 1.4, using Ouroboros BFT as a bridge protocol while decoupling the wallet backend into its own product.

Lists the parallel Shelley workstreams underway, covering delegation, Ouroboros Genesis, new ledger rules, and the extended UTXO model for Plutus and Marlowe.

Reaffirms the goal of ADA becoming the first trillion dollar cryptocurrency by functioning as a genuine financial operating system.

Jeremy Wood's behind the scenes co-founder role handling the company's highest stakes, least visible problems.

Clarifies IOHK does not work directly with DARPA, though its researchers sometimes receive joint NSF and DARPA funding for papers.

Confirms plans to visit India in 2019.

Confirms stablecoin research is underway though nothing is ready to announce publicly yet.

EOS could technically attach itself to Cardano's computation layer and flags the Mad Max paper exposing flaws in Ethereum's gas pricing model.

Confirms plans to visit Australia and New Zealand, noting several IOHK staff already based there.

Responds to a longtime critic who still calls Cardano a scam even after Shelley, joking about their history together.

Rejects the idea of a guaranteed IOHK contract renewal, insisting future funding should go through community Treasury votes.

Lays out the path through Cardano Improvement Proposals and Treasury funding for whichever stewards prove most useful over time.

Ledger hardware wallet support was delayed by Cardano's elliptic curve choice, with firmware support planned via Icarus before Daedalus.

Gives an update on talks with Sirin Labs about their blockchain phone with a built in hardware wallet integrating Cardano's code.

Closes with a joke about Colorado's decade of legal cannabis and Canada being late to catch up.