AMA 01/16/2021

Open the AMA broadcasting live from the Colorado ranch, poncho on for a good the bad and the ugly themed January 16 2021 stream.

Previews the upcoming Mary hard fork combinator event and pushes hard for hybrid wallets and partial delegation in Daedalus.

Reports the first devnet report is in and plans weekly or biweekly videos on devnet progress going forward.

Gives the Catalyst Fund3 update, twelve funded proposals in Fund2 including a mystery entry from a stake pool guild.

Highlights Goguen progress with native multi asset arriving in Mary, already tested with over a hundred tokens on the Mint testnet.

Previews the Plutus devnet, the last of three devnets nicknamed the ocean the pond and the island.

Plans to bring in outside firms to hammer on Plutus contracts as a red team style dev audit of the tooling and docs.

Announces a partnership with Runtime Verification to spin the K framework into an independent foundation as a universal specification language.

Gives an update on Mantis, IOHK's Lunatec team productizing it to run the full Ethereum Classic network with the planned treasury system.

Reports Sonic zero knowledge proof work entering an optimization phase, faster than zcash style SNARKs, with plans to blend it into Atala PRISM.

Folding PRISM identity into Cardano over time to support travel rule and FATF compliance for regulated businesses.

A meeting with the Lexon team, who are transcribing real human contracts into computational law.

Answers how the lion's mane mushroom factory is coming along, converting shipping crates into clean room grow modules for spring.

Gives an approximate smart contract timeline: the February HFC, then heavy benchmarking on the Plutus devnet ahead of the final hard fork.

Explains why Goguen rivals Shelley in significance since it moves to the extended UTXO model with accompanying Plutus scripts.

Clarifies the treasury is unstaked, sitting in a special protocol controlled account rather than held by any person.

Africa government partnership announcements are being saved for a dedicated Africa special.

Gives a reading path for a newcomer: the Princeton Coursera course, Digital Gold, Tapscott, Mastering Bitcoin, then Solidity tutorials and the Haskell book for Plutus.

Targets Q2 for KEVM to become a proper linked side chain, which needs an CIP for inflation based incentives.

Sketches the remaining 2021 hard fork combinator roadmap, including a rollup HFC for leftovers like Wars Genesis.

Looks ahead to 2025 as a much bigger broadening of scope, pulling in alien tech like Hydra once it is ready.

Targets the second half of 2021 to propose the IOG development contract extension alongside a wider federation of actors.

Stresses wanting strong voter turnout on the contract extension vote so it reflects real consent of the governed, not a vanity vote.

Praises the Cardano Foundation and Fred's communications work, noting they have plenty of dry powder to deploy in 2021.

Gives no firm date yet for a Daedalus voting vote, calling the voting center a high priority ticket alongside hybrid and partial wallets.

Emurgo is also building its own voting center across Yoroi, mobile and command line tools.

The props filling his office background are real historical items collected over the years, not a green screen.

Gives no major AGI news beyond the Blue Skies social media video, with a joint interview with Ben Goertzel planned soon.

Reiterates Goguen ships across three HFC events: Allegra in December, Mary in February, the final Plutus hard fork sometime in Q2.

Surrounding infrastructure like tooling, QA tools, standard libraries and app stores will trail the third hard fork.

Plans to enable peer to peer networking around the February HFC window, likely landing in March after heavy simulation work.

AGI has not been ported to Cardano yet, with a signed decision memo to move its logic to the EVM devnet first, then to Plutus once native assets support advanced token logic.

Gives no concrete plans on a Cardano phone, just a pitch someone brought him the day before.

Decentralized social media has never been used to plan terrorist attacks, unlike Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Lays out a two step approach to safer decentralized social media: onboarding into a de-radicalizing culture, then incentive aligned information architecture with decentralized moderation.

Add a governance layer using the same Catalyst style voting tools as the third ingredient for safer social media, avoiding the need for platform bans.

Predicts legacy social networks are fragile monopolies that could shatter within 24 to 36 months, with more to say about Cardano's own play in 2022.

Welcomes Gary Gensler's SEC nomination as a competent choice who understands the industry from teaching at MIT.

Points to the Ripple SEC lawsuit as proof regulators need better enforcement tools short of declaring a token itself a security.

Dismisses Polkadot as a competitive threat, calling the comparison a red herring.

Recommends cognitive behavioral therapy as the best tool for beating addiction.

A Litecoin collaboration LIP still needs writing since the intended author stepped back to take time off, so a new engineer has to be found.

Plans a Japan visit once vaccination rates make in person travel sensible again, likely the second half of the year.

Walks through the vaccine rollout: four platforms, Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson and AstraZeneca, expected to reach the general public around April to May.

The more infectious UK and South Africa coronavirus variants and expect herd immunity worries to ease by around June.

A proof of human concept for on chain gaming, random puzzle challenges combined with DIDs and bonds to keep bots out.

Praises the book Creativity Inc for how Pixar's culture shaped both the studio and Steve Jobs.

Recounts visiting the Amazon and wanting to try a tribal bullet ant glove ritual using self hypnosis for pain relief.

Cites Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning and the foundation of logotherapy.

Argues believing in alien life is statistically reasonable, then use the Gates, Jobs and Bezos back door analogy to explain finding overlooked paths in life.

Confirms reading Nietzsche, name checking The Antichrist.

Says if starting over he would study computer science with arts and music minors and finish the PhD, calling it the best available degree.

Calls Anunnaki alien god theories bunk while showing off his Babylonian and Sumerian artifact collection, including a base 60 counting tablet.

Learning piano again and picking up the shakuhachi flute.

Confirms using Signal alongside WhatsApp.

He could still finish the PhD but it needs years of uninterrupted 12 to 16 hour days he cannot spare while building Cardano.

Reveals the Wish You Were Here Pink Floyd poster in the background as a favorite album.

Getting a hyperbaric chamber and an experimental exosome treatment as early steps toward a future regenerative medicine company.

Predicts mRNA advances from the pandemic will transform cancer therapy within 20 years through personalized cancer vaccines.

Cites the two day mRNA vaccine design turnaround and predict hospital side modular mRNA manufacturing within 20 years.

Reassures the community Cardano needs neither him nor IOG to survive, since the system is decentralized enough to continue undisrupted.

Outlines the three duties of a CEO: sustainable profit, handling existential threats, and succession planning.

Building a bench of strong senior executives so the company survives if he is gone, expecting decades ahead at 33.

Debates who is the greatest computer scientist, floating von Neumann, Shannon and Knuth while noting greatness is hard to rank across eras.

Waves off the World Trade Center 7 conspiracy question with a laugh.

Frames all religions, including the Baha'i faith, as useful social programming as long as they help rather than isolate people.

Confirms his Instagram account is fake, he does not have one, so any Instagram claiming to be him is a scam.

Zoroastrianism and Judaism are probably contemporaries rather than one predating the other.

Riffs on the Zhuangzi butterfly dream question with a smile.

Reveals the poncho came from Amazon while the tractor hat came free with his Massey Ferguson tractor.

Recommends the Telluride area for a three to four night Colorado backpacking trip.

Teases that some part of Hydra ships in 2021 once the head, tail and routing papers and prototypes are finished.

Confirms owning a Lamborghini Huracan, a courtesy add on from a consulting deal.

Debunks the central clock point of failure claim as discredited propaganda, noting a paper already solves the theoretical concern even though it is not needed.

Dismisses Hedera Hashgraph outright over its patents, refusing to engage with any patented protocol regardless of claimed merit.

He has not met Jordan Peterson yet but admires his work for giving people meaning and purpose.

Lists his car collection: trucks, Cadillacs and the Lamborghini, passing on Tesla over inconsistent build quality.

The poor stream quality comes from a 4G farm connection 30 minutes from Denver International Airport while waiting on Starlink.

Duck the if Vitalik were a fruit question with a laugh.

Reports the Yellow EVM sidechain work is on track for production readiness around June.

AI will augment programmers rather than replace them, just as it augmented rather than replaced photographers.

Confirms being raised Catholic, quarter Norwegian and quarter Italian, not Jewish despite people often assuming otherwise.

Wanting to revive an old automated theorem proving project renamed Hilbert with a token called Noether, blending homotopy type theory with machine learning into a conjecture engine.

Names Dave Chappelle and George Carlin as favorite comedians.

Names Arthur C Clarke and Philip K Dick as favorite writers, Denis Villeneuve as favorite living filmmaker, and The Big Lebowski as his favorite non sci-fi movie.

Dismisses 5G danger rumors as coming from people pushing an agenda.

Recalls doing judo as a kid in Hawaii among bigger Polynesian classmates.

Gives better than even odds Kamala Harris takes over the presidency sometime during Biden's term, maybe 2022 or 2023.

His father and grandfather were doctors, not mathematicians.

Hopes to eventually interview Ron Paul, who is 85 and recovering from a stroke.

Jokes that being a billionaire explains being a babe magnet.

Predicts optimistic rollups become a big deal within 24 months.

Riffs on private jets, praising the Gulfstream G650 and joking about upgrading to a Boeing Business Jet.

Jokes about eventually going on the Joe Rogan Experience once Goguen ships.

He keeps chickens for fresh farm eggs but no cows for milk.

Confirms watching adult cartoons like Rick and Morty, South Park and Family Guy.

Praises Ramanujan's raw mathematical intuition and laments that moving him to England likely hastened his early death.

He likes the Ergo team, former colleagues building a project that has a right to exist.

He enjoys all of Lagrange's theorems, not just the multipliers.

Predicts psychedelic mushroom therapy gets legalized within 10 to 20 years and call it a moral obligation given how well it treats depression and PTSD.

Compares depression to a physical wound, arguing society dismisses it despite it having wounded presidents like Nixon and Bush and often lasting longer than a physical injury.

The poncho is a Clint Eastwood style cape from the Dollars spaghetti western trilogy.

Names Arcanum as his favorite video game of all time for its steampunk and magic world building and dialogue, with a goal to remake and sequel it someday.

Suggests reading the Gottman relationship books to work through a marriage where a wife is being mean.

Names Silvio Micali as probably the smartest person in crypto, alongside Dan Boneh.

Jokes that his ex left before the bull run, so crypto turned out to be wife changing instead of life changing.

Astronomy is his favorite science today but expects that to shift to geology after a planned 2025 spaceflight.

Names Richard Feynman as his favorite physicist.

Tim Berners Lee never replies to invitations, unlike Vint Cerf who showed up to the Shelley summit.

Confirms 250 kilowatts of solar installed across his 50 acre property.

Defer answering the dead or alive dinner party guest question to a future AMA.

Riffs on League of Legends balance complaints and losing lane to a relentless 12 year old Korean player.

The company makes money like any software company, charging for services and products.

Addresses a longtime Twitter critic calmly, saying anyone has the right to be part of an open ecosystem even though that does not guarantee funding or collaboration.

Predicts that within five to ten years even competing top ten projects will build on Cardano while still publicly criticizing him, just as Gavin Wood does with Ethereum.

Estimates the company headcount at around 300 employees, having stopped counting precisely a while back.

Shares his burnout prevention routine of meditation, isolation tanks, exercise and staying cheerful.

Names Gal Gadot as the hottest woman in the world.

Recommends the Calm app and a zen koan, the slow way is the fast way, as an entry point into daily meditation.

Names Michael Fassbender as the hottest man in the world.

The hyperbaric chamber is still being installed, going into the other house not this one.

Deflect a comparison of his own programming skill against a colleague's.

The Soviet car joke about a ten year wait and worrying whether delivery lands in the morning or at night.

Confirms having only one Waterhouse style painting so far, with another commissioned piece coming.

Confirms the Tibetan mask on display and having visited Tibet.

Bob Lazar seems to sincerely believe his UFO claims, whether or not they are actually true.

Defines love as wanting someone to be part of your daily life, so much that you miss them when they are gone.

Jokes that the new house is located over the rainbow, next to a gay bar he would rename accordingly.

Closes with a live Vedic math trick, multiplying 23 by 13 using a line intersection counting method.

The base 10 place value system underlying the trick, with digits counting hundreds, tens and ones.

Unveil an oil painting gift from fan artist Albert von Galen and pledge three months of stake pool revenue as thanks.

Closes the AMA thanking the community as family and signing off for the night.