AMA 05/20/2019

Recaps a rough trip through New York and Mongolia, catching a stomach bug that forced him to skip Eurocrypt in Germany and head home to recover.

Plans to stop traveling to conferences after July to focus on closing IOHK's backlog of deals instead of building new relationships.

Rainy Colorado weather, building a chicken coop, and getting geese to keep raccoons away from the chicks.

Is excited about SASA, a new blockchain explorer just released by EMURGO.

Recaps The Cardano Effect episode 30 and the newly reskinned roadmap website broken into Byron, Shelley, Goguen, Basho, and Voltaire stages.

Targets a June Shelley testnet, with the wallet backend switching databases on June 7 and a command line only test net arriving before the GUI catches up.

The stake pool task force survey gathering operator details to build the candidate set for the first beta testers.

Confirms Kudelski Security will begin a full audit of the reimplemented Shelley codebase now that specifications have stabilized.

The formal methods team has already moved on to Goguen research and future work like Ouroboros Chronos.

Flags a coming 1.5.1 hot patch to tweak the OBFT implementation, the last expected change before the switch to Shelley code.

Praises the engineering team and previews monthly public feature demos once product marketing figures out the format.

Introduces David Siegel, the product consultant behind the new roadmap, and thanks the Cardano Effect hosts for having him on.

Cardano was engineered from the start as a multi asset ledger, distinguishing fungible tokens like ERC20 from non fungible items with unique histories.

The regulatory axis to the token taxonomy, defining a security token as one wrapped in compliance terms tied to securities law.

Cardano will support a security token standard, but the real challenge is that securities laws are jurisdiction bound and do not travel across borders.

Expects IOHK's securitization work to focus on its own operating domains like Mongolia, Ethiopia, and Uganda, such as bonds backed by natural resources or transit revenue.

Sees Polymesh as better suited to traditional securities markets, while Cardano stays focused on the emerging market verticals it already operates in.

Points to common DNA across token systems, like identity and contract DSLs, and reiterates that Ethereum holders migrating to Cardano is ultimately their own business decision.

Pushes back on the idea Cardano is his last shot, arguing it is already a top ten project earned through years of research, code, and community building.

Argues the only way rivals can compete with Cardano is to become like it by adopting peer review, formal methods, and higher software quality, framing the race as win win rather than a fight with Vitalik.

Predicts Cardano will bring tens of millions of new users into crypto through deals like Ethiopia and Mongolia, growing to rival Bitcoin's impact.

Solo staking: anyone can register their own stake pool on chain for little more than the transaction fee, with no enforced minimum.

Envisions stake pool operators evolving into an infrastructure as a service layer once bridges, computation services, and lightning style nodes arrive.

Runs through IOHK's US academic ties, funding Pramod Viswanath's Dandelion research and papers with Andrew Miller and Alex Russell after early talks with Cornell and UIUC didn't turn into a lab.

Explains why most academic partnerships ended up in the UK, Switzerland, and Greece instead of the US, citing Edinburgh's much lower overhead than the Ivy League schools IOHK approached.

Argues Cardano's smart contract model beats Ethereum's because it understands the on chain and off chain split natively instead of bolting it on as an afterthought.

Uses a decentralized Airbnb style app to show why photos and other bulky data must live off chain, requiring infrastructure the ledger itself has to be aware of.

Decentralization mainly matters to the side getting shut out by regulation, like renters facing hotel lobbies or drivers facing taxi medallions.

Contrasts patchwork frameworks like Web3 and OpenZeppelin with his goal of a single language that natively models what runs on chain versus off chain.

Compares the strategy to Ruby on Rails: a batteries included, opinionated experience aimed at getting to 100 truly great dApps before opening things up further.

Confirms interoperability work like KEVM and WebAssembly support is coming, but only after the first wave of flagship dApps ships.

Blames the DAO hack on sloppy Solidity code rather than a systemic Ethereum flaw, and wants formal methods to keep Cardano developers from facing the same reputational damage.

Expects permissioned Atala components to work alongside permissionless Cardano in pilots like Ethiopia's air quality project, giving other builders a blueprint for the same pattern.

Outlines coming decentralized infrastructure like sidechains, Ouroboros Chronos timekeeping, and a random beacon service that dApp developers can plug in instead of rebuilding.

Early talks about Step Group and Korea's TrustChain tokenizing Mongolian real estate, with hopes they eventually build on Cardano.

Jokes about the Pink Floyd poster in his basement and insists he is not a fake Steve Jobs, just Charles Hoskinson.

Shares his hobbies: taekwondo and horseback riding in his youth, and a return to playing piano on a new Yamaha Clavinova.

Confirms horseback riding is real exercise, joking you never see a fat professional dressage rider.

The story of Lamborghini starting as a tractor maker before its founder, annoyed by Ferrari, decided to build supercars instead.

He has stuck with jiu jitsu rather than following his employees down the Joe Rogan fuelled rabbit hole into it himself.

Would love Beefchain to launch on Cardano, praising founder Tyler's Wyoming ranch and the planned University of Wyoming meeting.

Sees beef supply chain traceability as valuable for Mongolia and Ethiopia too, since proving antibiotic use and quality is what currently blocks access to US markets.

Mongolia's cashmere industry shipping unprocessed fiber to China for pennies on the dollar instead of processing it locally for far more value.

Jokes that Craig Wright is not Satoshi, expecting to get sued for saying so.

Previews his July trip to Uganda for a presidential event, contrasting Uganda's smaller, more navigable market with Ethiopia's sheer scale and complexity.

Dismisses Hedera Hashgraph as no threat, arguing any patented system is centralized and therefore not a real cryptocurrency by definition.

He has no idea what Dfinity is building, noting they unsuccessfully tried to poach staff and no longer talk to him despite Dominic Williams' early rapport.

IOHK's Scala development is centered in its Buenos Aires and Poland offices, with roots also in Chile.

Confirms hardware engineering runs out of Israel and previews a Tel Aviv community meetup during his June visit.

Lays out the wallet roadmap: Daedalus becoming a universal, one click wallet for ETH and other assets once priority features like multi sig, hardware wallet support, and light client bootstrapping ship.

Wishes he had been asked about Babylon and Mesopotamia, showing off cuneiform tablets he owns, including one used for ancient calculations.

Reflects on how little society considers its deep roots in vanished civilizations like the Babylonians, whose base 60 math and flood myths still echo today.

Worries humanity is on an unsustainable path of overpopulation and waste, and asks whether it can reach a steady state instead of the usual rise and collapse cycle.

Most questions he gets are about getting rich or life advice, and treasures the rare ones about deeper meaning and where humanity is headed.

Predicts a future of brain computer interfaces and collective intelligence outpacing any individual genius, using Game of Thrones fan theories as an example.

Wraps the short AMA, heading off to a meeting in seven minutes.