AMA 03/31/2019

Opens the AMA live from Colorado after apologizing for stream software trouble.

Gives a progress update on Shelley decentralization work, the Haskell specs, the Rust node, and weekly wallet backend releases.

Highlights Rock Pi single board computers as a cheap, low power, open hardware reference for running stake pools.

The Shelley testnet is weeks away and will roll the stake pool task force into hard stress testing.

Confirms cold staking support is coming for hardware wallets, letting a staking key sign delegation while spending keys stay offline.

Declines to comment on a possible Coinbase listing, calling it off limits.

Jokes about needing a haircut after a 23 day world trip.

Updates on the consulting relationship and next contract phase with the project formerly known as nCash, now Horizon.

Explains why Ouroboros has no slashing, so poor performance just reduces rewards instead of destroying stake.

The stake pool task force question and answer set is being turned into public content once the summit marketing crunch eases.

Targets a smart contract capable platform by end of 2019, with Goguen running as a parallel research track to Shelley building Plutus and Marlowe.

A long standing goal of an app store style experience called Adapter for discovering and installing decentralized apps.

Wants the wallet and a decentralized app browser merged into one seamless client instead of separate communicating pieces.

Warns that letting apps talk to each other creates privilege escalation risks, recalling scammers who shipped fake Ledger binaries right after Daedalus updates.

Frames the stack as layers, smart contracts then developer experience then platform, and settles on Electron as the near term client foundation.

Confirms Ledger integration is coming and explains that key management always stays on the hardware device regardless of which client accesses it.

Plans to make Daedalus a light client by default that verifies a compact cryptographic proof instead of syncing the full chain.

Hiring more engineers will not speed research up, citing the classic critical mass problem and IOHK's move away from waterfall processes.

Previews the upcoming Ouroboros Kronos paper and a dishonest majority result rounding out the single chain research, alongside quantum resistant checkpointing.

Introduces Ouroboros Hydra, combining parallel chains and side chains research for sharded scaling without giving up decentralization.

Is scaling up the team compiling Haskell to JavaScript and WebAssembly to make Plutus contracts easier to deploy everywhere.

Jokes about his choppy webcam, explaining he is stuck on a 4G connection while his co-founder gets gigabit fiber in town.

Ethiopia as a flagship market, connecting fifteen million smallholder farmers among its 106 million people.

Ethiopia's Agricultural Commercialization Clusters group farmers for collective bargaining and shared standards.

Proposes a blockchain supply chain tracker to stop fertilizer bags from being adulterated or stolen on the way to farmers.

Sees ACC farmer records becoming a reliable identity kernel for loans, citing a 2014 voucher program with a 100 percent repayment rate.

Is exploring stable coins, security token marketplaces, and sports team tokenization across Africa, teasing an announcement in Jinja, Uganda.

5G health concerns fall outside his expertise but admits they give him a little pause.

Introduces contingent settlement, arguing pushed payments strip away the commercial story and consent behind a transaction.

Uses an ATM withdrawal story to show how swapped metadata can make an innocent transaction look suspicious or vice versa.

Walks through hashing a donation contract so both parties sign off, plus delayed settlement escrow that allows refunds.

Envisions a friend system in Daedalus where two wallets exchange contracts out of band and only settle once both consent.

He likes his steak medium with salt.

Reflects on wanting to pursue art and mathematics later in life and hopes IOHK eventually runs itself as a DAO without him.

Would love a Joe Rogan appearance but wants to wait until Shelley ships so the pitch is proof instead of promises.

Confirms he has been bitten by plenty of mosquitoes growing up in Hawaii.

Compares proof of work mining to a lottery where hash power buys tickets and consolidates control around whoever owns the hardware.

Proof of stake makes block creation an endogenous, built in choice instead of an expensive external contest.

Argues stake pools build reputation over time, unlike mining pools where members cannot fire an underperforming operator.

Proof of stake gets more efficient over time like a smartphone chip, while proof of work always burns more power as value rises.

Calls Justin Sun a product of China's copy first, legitimize later business culture and stays neutral on a Tron partnership.

The goal is not marketing hype but inspiring people with the underlying philosophy, the way the Ron Paul movement grew from principle.

Warns that Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung will always favor their own wallets, so only a philosophy driven movement can compete with their network effect.

Jokes that Chris Pratt should play him if the Ethereum books being written ever become a movie.

Names Albert Camus over Marcus Aurelius and calls Tulsi Gabbard the least offensive of the Democratic field.

He will go on Ivan on Tech's show once his packed travel schedule frees up.

Won't say whether he owns 52 identical shirts.

Laughs off being called evil by some YouTube critics and confirms he is a Yoroi fan.

Names Boston as his favorite band and previews Steve Miller Band and CCR playing the IOHK Summit.

Reveals a proof of work research effort codenamed Minotaur meant to be a major step forward for the mining world.

Rates Game of Thrones season six a masterpiece and season seven weak, and wants George R.R. Martin to finish the books.

Likes the idea of naming community meetups after Fight Club.

Reveals he bought the Jinja Hippos soccer team in Uganda despite knowing little about the sport.

Talks pen habits, growing his own hay on 50 acres, and choosing yaks and alpacas over cattle so he never has to slaughter them.

Teases that several known companies have shown interest in building games on Cardano.

Plans a Brazil trip for engineering director Bruno Barbieri and notes the team includes cryptographers like Mario Larangeira.

Confirms Ledger Nano X support is planned and that he personally likes the device.

Explains why his ranch raises yaks instead of bison and shares a story about betting on yak versus bull fights in Mongolia.

Looks forward to Caitlin Long speaking at the IOHK Summit and collaborating with her on the future of regulation.

Debates the merits of rival Pink Floyd tribute acts booked for the summit after the real band declined.

Quips that Cardano is what Ethereum would have become had he stayed.

Wants to watch a movie about the man who killed Hitler and Bigfoot.

Agrees the Nexo spokeswoman is likeable, joking it helps with markets and demeanor.

The IOHK and Atala butterflies represent cascading disruption, where small changes ripple into big societal impact.

Shelley addresses will be about half the current size, with human readable addresses to follow via a partnership or in house work.

He is never having kids.

Doubts Vitalik Buterin would do well on Joe Rogan's show, saying some people are not built for that format.

Keeps his LinkedIn profile intentionally incomplete just to annoy LinkedIn trolls.

Calls Tezos more complementary than competitive, praising Michelson while criticizing how its foundation handled its raise.

Muses that Trent Reznor could be the best electronic musician alive if he focused on it, citing his Social Network film score.

Details plans for geothermal HVAC on the ranch, five times more efficient than gas heat and paired with radiant driveway heating.

Recalls glow in the dark research plants tagged with jellyfish genes and imagines a bioluminescent night garden.

Doubts flying cars will ever happen but likes the paraglider fan packs used to commute in remote Alaska.

Confirms Cardano will integrate with both Interledger and Lightning Network, with Rob Cohen presenting at the summit.

Recommends Paul Stamets and shares his own habit of drinking mushroom coffee and taking lion's mane.

Mycelia linking trees into a communication network nicknamed the wood wide web.

Points curious viewers toward the Voynich manuscript and the devil inspired Codex Gigas.

Calls Haskell one of the best industrial functional languages and lays out the theory heavy route to learning to program, from lambda calculus to Turing machines.

Points to the book Nand to Tetris as the practical route, building a computer and its software up from a single logic gate.

Recommends Python and Scala as the most productive starting languages for a young programmer.

Reserves OCaml, F#, Agda, and Lean for mathematicians and safety critical work like aerospace or medical software.

Rounds out the language tour praising Rust, Go, Dart, and TypeScript before wrapping up the AMA.