AMA 03/25/2020

Broadcasts live from his quarantined Colorado home during the COVID lockdown.

Announces a live product management update for March 31 with an open Q&A session.

Points to the newly launched Byron reboot explainer video on the IOHK YouTube channel.

Details the rolling Byron reboot launch, a command line node first for exchanges then a GUI, plus new Hydra content.

Considers adding a Daedalus Canary fast track release channel alongside the stable build.

Reports three new whitepapers published, bringing IOHK's research output to 62 papers, with more still in peer review.

Work on new networking research, praise the Poldercast protocol from the incentivized testnet, and negotiate to bring its original 2012 author on board.

The delayed post quantum hash based signature scheme for block signing, and the remaining work on a post quantum VRF and updated security proofs.

Recaps steady progress on Voltaire, Hydra, and smart contracts, noting the team is moving faster despite the global pandemic.

Gives his read on the US COVID response, arguing officials knew the risk in January and February but coordination between states and the federal government lagged.

Weighs in on hydroxychloroquine, saying the French study is too small and unsafe to call it a proven cure while more trials are pending.

Predicts localized city lockdowns rather than a full national quarantine, citing doubling rates and his physician father's case count in Wyoming.

Calls the trillions in COVID stimulus the world's largest premine, printed with almost no oversight, and brand the Fiat system corrupt.

Points to the global ventilator and PPE shortages as proof the world still can't coordinate on collective problems without blockchain style trust.

Argues blockchain is fundamentally about consensus, trust, and coordination rather than just money, and see a huge opportunity for the industry after the crisis.

Envisions rapid airport testing and bio passports that verify health status before travel.

Cardano's PRISM identity product, built on the W3C DID standard, as the way people can own and control their own medical and personal records.

Pushes for online and blockchain based voting, starting with Wyoming state elections, after senators couldn't vote remotely during COVID.

Summarizes three COVID lessons, unlimited money printing, poor global coordination, and a coming wave of innovation, urging the industry to respond with solutions rather than cynicism.

Lays out the Wikipedia dispute, arguing Cardano's scale and track record justify an article that keeps getting removed.

Accuse a small group of biased editors of a decade long pattern of erasing crypto articles, citing Bitcoin's and Ethereum's early treatment on Wikipedia.

Calls on the whole crypto industry to demand accountability from Wikipedia and float building a blockchain based encyclopedia alternative.

Single out the removal of Phil Wadler's Haskell and Plutus work from his Wikipedia biography as a blatant example of censorship.

Cardano has Wikipedia pages in other languages and say the team will keep pressure on Wikipedia after Shelley ships rather than get distracted now.

Unpack the Steem versus Tron takeover as social consensus overriding computer based consensus when a community rejects a hostile takeover.

Argues decentralized systems let communities intervene and self correct, since a network's value always comes from its people, not just its code.

Contrasts Cardano's Ouroboros consensus, custom network stack, and extended UTXO accounting model with Tezos, saying the two projects only share surface level similarities.

Credits Tezos as a worthwhile on chain governance experiment but stresses Cardano's peer reviewed academic foundation, noting Tezos has no major published research to match Cardano's 62 papers.

NIPoPoWs, the non interactive proofs Cardano pioneered for trustless light clients, and blame Bitcoin's resistance to change for stalling proof of work interoperability.

Revisits the old Cardano SL and CL side chain vision, saying Ouroboros BFT permissioned ledgers can natively bridge to Cardano much like Polkadot or Cosmos.

Confirms Ledger hardware wallet support already exists in Daedalus code but isn't switched on yet, pending wallet accounting model upgrades like multi currency.

IOHK has low overall staff turnover but acknowledges accountability driven changes in product management after delays.

Recounts funding two parallel smart contract research tracks, formal K framework verification and a from scratch Plutus virtual machine, after deciding Ethereum's EVM was flawed.

Scaling back Runtime Verification funding after the 2018 market crash while keeping a good relationship with Grigore Rosu for a possible Voltaire era return.

Jokes about looking sixty years old since starting the project.

The Wyoming Blockchain Lab's trusted hardware chip, embedded in goods like the New Balance shoes, that proves authenticity via a challenge response signature.

Lays out the engineering hurdles for a tamper resistant, low power authentication chip and highlights the one shot signatures paper for block signing security.

His whiskey collecting hobby, aging bottles a year at a time, and naming his favorites like Hibiki and Macallan 30.

Tell the story of Gerolamo Cardano, the Renaissance polymath the project is named after, and explain naming ADA after Ada Lovelace.

Pass on discussing spiral dynamics theory in depth, saying he is still reading up on it.

Lays out the first pillar for a cryptocurrency's long term survival, a decentralized, faceless research brain spread across universities like Tokyo Tech, Athens, and Edinburgh.

Names sustainable treasury funding as the second pillar, predicting Ethereum will struggle long term for lacking one, unlike Zcash and Cardano's own coming treasury.

Healthy, inclusive community dynamics as the third pillar, contrasting Bitcoin's inability to pivot with a community that can absorb crises and work with rivals.

The team is finalizing a virtual conference vendor for the Shelley launch event, weighing a VR component and a parallel hackathon.

Proposes running two annual Cardano conferences plus a rotating quarterly Plutus Fest hackathon series.

Announces Cardano's documentation is being completely rewritten, targeting a major improvement by June.

Traces how university credentialing drifted from noble leisure learning to a vocational stamp during the British Empire's civil service era.

Argues employers increasingly favor short vocational and nanodegree programs like Udacity over four year degrees that don't teach real critical thinking.

Blames student loan subsidies for runaway tuition inflation and predict a coming shakeout of bloated universities, while praising free resources like the Santa Fe Institute's Complexity Explorer.

Shares that his brother, a physician in Gillette, Wyoming, is bracing for COVID patients among an older, high risk population.

Encourages a viewer writing a bachelor's thesis on a decentralized IPFS app, noting the Plutus Playground is getting a big upgrade.

Closes with a preview of the March 31 live event, the imminent Byron reboot, and the two phase Shelley Haskell testnet leading to Shelley mainnet.