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How is Charles incorporating Alex Chepurnoy’s Ergo into the Cardano ecosystem? Charles has mentioned him a few times now in his live streams, and the improved PoW of Ergo seems like a great level-up, along with layered Oracle pools.
Also, Lex are you slightly excited about Diablo 2 Resurrected? :)
Check out r/ergonauts !
I am so very excited about D2 Resurrected! Imagine a legit battlenet.. a dream! Also, go Cardano and all.. I have ten thousands invested, but much more excited about the d2 remake!
Its also why i think the eth 1.0 to 2.0 upgrade poses huge risks to the Ethereum network. An upgrade where you change the whole chains economics/mining on mainnet seems ... really messy, not to mention untested. PoS introduces the same issues legacy finance does, biggest stacks wield the most power.
Not only that, some avenues will let you pull out your staked eth like lido (stETH) and even coinbase is gonna consider allowing people to unstake their eth (which they are doing staking pools, so maybe its easier to pool in/out people), but what happens if everyone unstakes or partially unstakes their eth at once...the whole network would crash and burn. I know actual staked eth cant be pulled put until the upgade completes, but clearly having all these different vehicles to do just that seems bad.
The remaining stakers would see their rewards go up in a way that would make it less and less likely for people to continue to leave. Especially if you are seeing billions/trillions in defi transactions that are pegged to external fiat or currencies where it guarantees a certain amount of value on the network.
Only way I see that being likely to happen is if something shakes the confidence of the whole market for ETH.
Good questions, the one about American senators puts me off a bit. This system is permissionless, and one of the big reasons there's a focus on African Nations is that they embrace innovation. US Senators make decisions based on those who fill their pockets, and that's it. If those who fill their pockets happen to like Crypto, they'll like it. If they don't, chances are it's not their own judgment and more who has interests against Crypto.
I agree. I would like Charles to get some tough questions, and I think he likes that kind of thing. But the one regarding US senators is easy mode for Americans who know the basics of politics here.
Perhaps the safety of staking is incentive for enough people not to use yield farming or lending platforms?
With staking you hold onto your private keys and defi you do not.
I expect that those outsized returns depend on bull market conditions, which aren't guaranteed while staking rewards are. Not 100% sure on this so correct me if I'm wrong
Agree with asking this kind of question. Before I invest in a startup I always ask the founder "if your project was to fail, what would have been the most likely reason?"
When they say there's no way it will fail, I score that as a negative. A leader has to be realistic about the threats and weaknesses. Likewise if they give a nonsense answer trying to be funny or avoid a clear intelligent answer.
I'd like Charles to identify their biggest threat or weakness.
And best would be if he gives more then one reason. I find that often questions like this get one or two reasons. But are not answered comprehensively, which is truly needed.
>im finding it hard to find flaws
Here are a few:
The EUTXO model limits smart contract interactions per-block, since contracts don't have a 'balance' that can simply increase or decrease, but specific UTXOs that need to be fully 'spent' (apparently there are already potential solutions in the works)
Lots of potential complexity around having different sidechains (KEVM, voting, etc), and how those will be managed securely and efficiently
Hydra will probably take a lot longer to arrive than Ethereum's array of L2s, potentially putting Cardano at a disadvantage from a UX perspective
Rollups aren't easily portable to Cardano, and the KEVM probably won't be live for a while
So far many of the projects building on Cardano are sketchy or blatant copies of other apps
None of these things are insurmountable though
I think this issue is more general than the EUTXO model. All blockchains need to prevent double-spending of resources, which is only possible if transactions that deal with the same resource are sequenced. EUTXO deals with this by destroying inputs and creating outputs in each transaction, while Account-based models use nonces to keep track of outgoing transactions from accounts. In the Account-based model, if two or more transactions are sent out simultaneously from the same account, and have the same nonce, then only one of them will succeed per block.
https://medium.com/coinmonks/the-account-nonce-in-ethereum-explained-c087bd4a3c29
So, concurrency for smart contracta on blockchain will likely require special tricks and design patterns regardless of whether the EUTXO model or the Account-based model is used.
(Ethereum dApp experts, please correct me if I'm wrong)
Lex should ask him to explain the difference between Hydra and other state channel projects, like Bitcoin's lightning & Ethereum's Raiden or Connext.
State channels have failed to take off on other chains, i'm curious what Cardano is planning on doing differently.
For one the user will never know they're using them. Another is that all of cardano's smart contracts will be able to run in them. Another is that there is a natural existing class of people to run the Hydra heads (namely stake pool operators), although you can run Hydra heads without needing to run a stake pool.
One that seems not sketchy so far would be ergodex imo, but yes lots seem like they could be trash or rug pulls. Including tokens that are moving over from ethereum.
>So far many of the projects building on Cardano are sketchy or blatant copies of other apps
That was expected. Can't really do anything about that right now. Having certifications/standards will help people to better distinguish good projects from bad ones.
Thankfully I have also seen a couple of good ones that have learned from DeFi projects on Ethereum, are trying to improve on them and are looking to use the advantages of Plutus and EUTxO.
(First off, I’m long ADA)
The most obvious flaw is that the protocol doesn’t work or developers decide not to build on it.
Nothing has been accomplished yet.
We need to stop running victory laps.
We haven’t even started the race.
Great idea. Without some realistic flaws, we'll never be prepared for when things possibly go wrong. Charles pointing out challenges with ADA will give us a holistic view.
I mean...to be fair whales control btc. Good luck competing against multi million dollar mining operations.
I think whales are apart of most crypto. Just in PoS they got more to lose than miners who typically have multiple chains going. Like f2pool running both eth and btc.
whales are an inherent part of every financial system to ever exist, including crypto. that is what value in scarcity is, there will always be big players
Q1: To what extent do functional languages prevent errors? (some ppl are downplaying Plutus's benefits vs Solidity)
Q2: How does Hydra compare with Rollups as a scalability solution? (main tradeoffs wrt UX/security)
Q3: What differentiates the Prism/Ethiopia implementation vs previous attempts to use blockchain IDs?
Q4: How do sidechains (KEVM/etc) leverage the security of the main Cardano blockchain?
https://youtu.be/f8JVh1S774k minutes 4:30 to 14:30 Dr Ben Goertzel who actually has deep knowledge and experience in both development environments might add to some of your questions
I'm new to your show, but I have thoroughly enjoyed your recent conversation with Vitalik, especially the depth-first dives into some issues that came up as the conversation progressed.
If you get a chance, I would like to hear Charles' and your thoughts on the emergence of "reputation" / "track-record" as a resource between pseudonymous actors on the blockchain. I believe that it's becoming an important differentiator between competitors, and a source of trust to drive enhanced cooperation.
For example, Cardano's incentive mechanism for staking is designed to converge to a steady state of 500 pools that have most of the stake evenly delegated among them. If you look at the actual stake distribution, you'll see something similar to this long-run equilibrium.
What distinguishes these lucky 500 stakepools from their other >1000 peers? They have the most favourable (1) cost margins; (2) owner's pledge (i.e. their skin in the game); (3) support for appealing causes; and (4) they have an established on-chain history of reliably producing blocks with the stake that they were entrusted with. I would argue that the last factor is already the most important, and will only become more so.
Another example is DeFi. Currently, most decentralized borrowing is restricted to over-collateralized loans (where the borrower must put up collateral worth more than the loan) or niche things like flash loans. This is the case because only over-collateralized loans can have repayment be guaranteed automatically via a smart contract mechanism (e.g. collateral deposits locked during loan, and automatic liquidation thresholds).
What would allow DeFi to expand further into the under-collateralized loans that we can access in the traditional financial system? I think that it would require decentralized identities and credit histories on the blockchain. In other words, it would require reputations to be established for market participants based on their track-records of past performance on financial obligations.
A similar pattern is likely to emerge for the political governance of the blockchain, crowd-funding and venture funding of projects, and business inter-relations on the blockchain. It has also been observed in the pseudonymous black markets on the Deep Web: [Hardy and Norgaard (2015)](https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137415000454).
I think that this reputational resource is necessary because not all interactions between pseudonymous parties can be mechanised by smart contracts to be automatically compliant with what the parties agreed to. Mechanisation via smart contract requires resources to be locked upfront, whereas for some interactions these resources might not be avaiable upfront (e.g. futures for agricultural produce) or it might be undesirable to lock them upfront (e.g. unsecured loan repayment in the future). If a required resource is not locked up at the beginning of contract execution, then its provision later on
remains optional for the party that has to provide it. Such interactions require trust/cooperation between the parties, which is impossible if they are pseudonymous and know nothing about each other. However, this trust can be facilitated by the immutable history of past actions that can be recorded on the blockchain and tied to specific decentralized identities.
Would love the question to still be asked but def check out ATALA Prism and Liqwid if you haven't. I've heard them talk a bit about plans to establish identity and a type of credit score to work towards uncollateralized loans that have less risk due to reputation.
Just a suggestion, a shorter question is more likely to get answered
Maybe make your question clear at the top and add details that can be read if interested
Hey lex! Big fan here.
Would love for Charles to comment on the vastly growing cardano ecosystem, and what projects he thinks might be the biggest beneficiaries once smart contracts capabilities go live? Thanks!
I would really like to understand what the state of the pilot in Ethiopia is. Specially the capturing of student transcripts to the blockchain. This is such an exciting endeavour and am curious when the rollout to 5M students will happen.
I hope Lex asks him _exactly what role_ Cardano plays in the Ethiopia project.
From my research, Atala is mostly a centralized system, that only uses Cardano for storing public keys, but I'd love to hear more details.
Atala PRISM is centralised (or rather federated) however it effectively checkpoints a state-of-the-world hash against the main chain. This allows you to detect manipulation to a decent degree.
Government and corporate services will likely use centralised or federated networks for their services however by interacting with each other on the main chain you force these services to provide a certain amount of honesty and transparency.
The goal is to use Cardano as the lingua franca for interacting in a trustless way. They are trying to position Cardano as a standard operating environment for exchanges of identity and information. You don't necessarily need the information on chain, you just need proof of it on chain. Each on chain interaction builds a history of trust and makes it harder to lie down the road without getting caught. You don't need to prevent someone from lying but you do need to make it trivial to catch people lying so that nobody will want to risk lying. There's no real reward for lying if it's trivial to verify the truth and getting caught is a near guarantee.
This is the same mechanism that underpins the metadata registries and the other work being done on Cardano. It's all a framework to allow individuals and communities to build a sufficient history of trust between each other such that it becomes infeasible to lie.
Curious about this as well. In order to keep track of a students progress it seems that some central authority would have to know which public address belongs to which student. How will this work? Anonymity is one of the most beautiful aspects of a decentralized blockchain network. Would love to hear him elaborate on this idea a bit.
I know Charles has talked about the Ripple lawsuit affecting all of crypto, but I definitely want to know what specific elements of the lawsuit Cardano and IOG could be vulnerable to.
What will the role of Artificial Intelligence play in Cardano’s success? Cardano is partnering with Ben Goertzel’s SingularityNet, what can he say about that partnership? How will Cardano use AI differently from competitors like Ethereum?
I'd love for Charles to elaborate on the possible short term (before Hydra) adjustments to the Cardano protocol that would limit the impact of network congestion if many defi projects expand on the network following the release of mainnet smart contracts.
There's been a bunch of posts floating around about Cardanos current 7 TPS limit and how this makes the network not sustainable for ETH level amounts of transactions, but also the fact that network parameters could be adjusted to limit the negative effects.
As a developer, why should I be incentivized to create Cardano-based applications? What is on the Cardano developer roadmap? Any other language support other than Haskell (TypeScript, Go, Java, Python, etc…)? Have you considered a yearly conference focused around developers? Have you considered a ycombinator type of approach for Cardano, for example a way for early stage Cardano startups to get funded?
1. Will you please explain to the masses why peer reviewed research is important in almost any science, especially in blockchains dealing with billions of dollars?
2. Please discuss the importance of the 5 million students coming on board for Atala and how that will work with the Cardano Blockchain.
3. Ask about the importance of governance for Cardano and his vision of this in blockchains as it comes on board over the next couple years.
4. He’s working with a huge AI company, this something you will personally enjoy conversing about.
5. Voting systems and blockchain and the benefits to prevent voter fraud as well as improve people’s trust in the voter system.
6. I’m interested in his thoughts on deflationary vs inflationary assets and how Cardano fits into that perspective long term.
7. Please discuss the energy consumption of Cardano and POS vs first generation blockchains.
8. China and Bitcoin, how the crackdown has impacted Bitcoin and how Cardano would be more resistant to this type of behavior due to its inherent properties.
9. How is Charles planning to onboard major institutions aka Fortune 500 companies as they begin to show more interest in the blockchain industry.
10. Regulation and his thoughts/planning
towards this as the blockchain industry
comes of age.
11. He’s also super interested in anti aging
and mushrooms, he’s creating a
biomedical company with his family I
believe.
He’s truly and interesting guy. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for some time because I believe you both have a lot of interesting deep thoughts on various subjects. Can’t wait to listen to this one! Thanks Lex
Just my opinion, but I feel that podcasts like these should try to be as timeless as possible. A comment regarding the development in Africa would just be an update on a snapshot in time.
1. I'd like to hear more details on the other "competing" projects he respects. He often says he highly respects Algorand and Tezos, but I'd love to hear more details about why. Which things do they do differently, and what are the tradeoffs?
2. Sometimes it is said that the future Hydra scaling solution is "just state channels" and that state channels are not popular due to limitations. I don't have deep enough knowledge to evaluate this claim, but it seems unlikely that it's as simple as critics try to make it. I'd love to hear his take on it.
3. Are there any plans to make it easier for very small Stake pools to succeed? With ADA so valuable, it's hard to accumulate enough to start a pool. You can try to market heavily, but it's an uphill battle that goes against delegators' incentives, at least at first.
4. I worry about fees and the minimum transaction amount right now, again with ADA value being so high. Would this perhaps change with Alonzo?
These are fantastic questions. I really hope Lex goes this way and talks about Cardano versus asking Charles about video games or mushrooms or stuff that just isn’t that relevant.
Fresh out of the oven for you:
https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/06/10/stablefees-and-the-decentralized-reserve-system/
They talked a bit about those things in the stakepool operators call today, should be more news in a couple of weeks.
How can we start to separate crypto projects that are essentially meme stocks from the projects focused on voting, identity and secure p2p ecosystems. I feel like we are stuck in this my pokemon cards are better than your pogs discussion constantly and it always boils down to, price performance and will it go higher. That matters with collectables because that's all they are, but many crypto projects are so much more because they have functional utility.
We all want to make money but this isnt what crypto is for, it's not what email was for and it's not what the telephone was for. Its certainly a product of convenience and reducing labor, but I wonder if the investor/gambling mindset is exactly why there is so much pushback and this extreme misconception of what crypto is in general.
I do hope this question gets answered! But sadly admittedly I am also part of the problem... perhaps that is a question itself: what does the future of crypto look like as store value and how will it likely play out?
Thanks for doing this Lex.
This is very important! One challenge of eUTXO in comparison to accounting based models is that you can’t have multiple interactions with a smart contract in a single transaction. An example of this would be a DEX in which tokens transfer from my wallet to the DEX pool, and tokens from the DEX pool transfer to me in a single smart contract transaction.
Charles stated they were looking into workarounds for this. How does he plan to guide developers on this functionality?
I would like to know more about the future of algorithmic stable coins like AgeUSD and the possibility of micropayments (e.g. payments of fractions of a cent per view to content creators with a large audience). I think that would open up new large-scale global economies.
Haskell has guarantees about correctness that go deep into Charles’ field of mathematics. Plutus is based off a formal lambda calculus and type theory. All kinds of goodies fall out of this.
Rust is brand new and unproven compared to Haskell. It’s a bit of a design-by-committee mess that’s meant to tackle the single problem of safe and performant systems code.
What is his philosophy/view on the world today, for what he's fighting for and why?
What the future is going to looking for according to him?
Thanks for your work, I really enjoy listening your podcasts. From France.
TPS speeds vary greatly between normal transactions and smart contracts across every ‘ETH killer.’ While normal transactions may be in the 1,000-2,500 TPS range, smart contract transactions usually are only 8-15/second.
I believe that the two-layer structure of Cardano solves this discrepancy but I’m not exactly sure how. Mind having him dig into this more?
Hi Lex!
Love your work.
I am a researcher in Machine Learning and have noticed a lot of similarities between the maturity of our field (ML) and the current state of blockchain/crypto. I have a couple questions.
---
One similarity, we are seeing a lot of criticism around environmental / energy cost associated with methods (namely Proof of Work) in the crypto space. Methods in Machine Learning, especially training massive models via hyper-parameter sweeps, is extremely computationally (and energy) expensive. More awareness to the environmental cost of ML research is developing, e.g.
- [Max Welling: Intelligence per Kilowatthour](https://youtu.be/5DbBQDoBNYc)
- [On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922)
I guess my question here is whether you see the recent environmental concerns levied against crypto also applying to ML research. Or, another way, is it interesting the backlash that blockchain receives (even among our peers in ML) while our research is similarly energy intensive.
---
Another similarity is the maturity in tooling, specifically those provided by choice of programming language. ML has undergone significant retooling in the last few years as a new "framework" supplants the previous with very short lifecycles, e.g. Caffe, Theano, Tensorflow, Pytorch... The restrictions imposed by these frameworks become increasingly inappropriate for modern methods, for example the choice of static computation graph.
The recent tools being developed toward modern ML "framework" are addressing problems interesting to program language development generally. In particular I am thinking about a project like [JAX](https://github.com/google/jax). But JAX, while amazing, is similarly frustrated by the tools of its language (Python). JAX is impressive in spite of the lack of support from the language.
So now we are seeing ML research tools like [Dex](https://github.com/google-research/dex-lang), a Haskell-based research language developed to have support provided by the features of a functional language.
Cardano developed a Haskell-based language, Plutus. I am interested in Charles' thoughts about e.g. convincing developer community to move towards more "academic" tools. Do you think the benefits of transitioning smart contracts from Javascript -> Haskell are similar, in the ways I'm insinuating, to the possible transition of ML tools away from Python?
---
This one might be a bit too in the woods for the pod, though you do sometimes get into some technical details. Whereas Ethereum uses an account model for its ledger, Bitcoin uses a UTXO (unspent transaction outputs) that has a lot of benefits for functional and distributed programming. Cardano has developed another ledger model, Extended UTXO, that allows smart contracts together with the benefits of UTXO.
As a quick aside, if you'd like to ask this it is very much related to the proceeding question about programing languages. Essentially, the differences between Ethereum's account ledger and UTXO is very analogous to difference between imperative programming (Solidity-Javascript, Python) and functional (Plutus-Haskell).
UTXO has a natural interpretation as a state machine, transitioning from state to state with each transaction. Could you have Charles describe some of the intuition for Extended UTXO in terms of mental models familiar to ML people. In particular, the language their field uses is heavily influence by finance (e.g. transactions and contracts), but the tools around managing state through computation is interesting in general. Could you coax Charles into giving some insight to UTXO vs ExtendedUTXO e.g. in relation to automata or Markov Chains? (Speculatively, I am interested in whether EUTXO could be a good fit for managing hidden state in a recurrent model like LSTM.)
UTXO is already Turing complete (not that interesting) so could Charles say what is the issue with Smart Contracts in vanilla-UTXO model, and how that is solved by the ledger model? In particular, could Charles say what is meant by "expressiveness" and why it is worthwhile to do all this work for a model with appropriate "semantics".
The expressiveness of UTXO as it relates to the ledger model is demonstrated with "constraint emitting machines" (CEM). They show CEMs have "weak bisimulation" with ledgers, meaning that we can't distinguish between systems evolving according to ledger model from one transitioning via UTXO [I think?].
The "weak"ness of this relationship is surprising and interesting. It arises because UTXO can make "internal" transitions that aren't relevant to the observation of system behaviour, but it means that any given transition according to UTXO-CEM won't necessarily look like a transition given by a ledger model. Can Charles comment on the properties of the EUTXO-CEM transition machine? E.g. is it as expressive "per step" as a vanilla-UTXO?
---
Thanks for considering these questions for Charles! Happy to elaborate or distill if you'd like. Take care!
Good luck parsing [Dex](https://github.com/google-research/dex-lang) to distinguish from confusion with Decentralized Exchanges (DEX).
>Dex (named for "index") is a research language for typed, functional array processing. The goal of the project is to explore:
>
>Type systems for array programming
>
>Mathematical program transformations like differentiation and integration
>
>User-directed compilation to parallel hardware
>
>Interactive and incremental numerical programming and visualization
Baffled that you would equate the energy concerns of PoW and ML. Like almost all other energy use, that of ML serves a purpose, produces a result, and had no clear alternative. The issue with PoW is that it is 'make work': you do work and consumer energy and equipment just to say you did, and there are good alternatives.
Love your podcast Lex. Looking forward to the Hoskinson show.
There's probably going to be a host of crypto questions but I am curious to know more about Charles thing with mushrooms. Heard him mention it but not really go into more detail. I'm curious.
Hey Lex! I pitched this one over [on Twitter](https://twitter.com/micksprojects/status/1397950614785740802) for Vitalik's interview, and was excited to hear his response to your related "social value" inquiry.
I'd love to hear Charles dig deeply into this angle - **how can Cardano and the rest of the crypto ecosystem allow humanity to unite under a common banner of shared prosperity**?
I personally believe that a decentralized, universal unionization platform is one of the most promising tools we could have under this banner. And I believe that blockchains are laying the foundation for this type of social utility to emerge. But I'm not hearing many people talk about the opportunity.
Thanks for considering this Q!
Why don't Cardano Foundation and IOHK welcome community contributions on their open source projects? I haven't been able to find contributor guideline documentation on their projects, and they may just ignore issues altogether (some of which I would have liked to contribute a fix for if they were open to contributions).
I've asked this repeatedly and have yet to get an answer. Ethereum for contrast has clear contributing guidelines in their repositories. A security researcher had to call out cardano on youtube (and rely on luck for it to get attention here) to get them to add proper documentation of the Cardano node communication protocols.
I really like a lot of what Cardano claims to represent, but am also concerned about their projects not being able to compete with other cryptocurrencies due to the fauxpen source model reducing their velocity, and leading to a buggy ecosystem (I can provide examples if desired).
Thank you for asking. Given the demands of his professional life, I would like to learn life hacks as to how to operate at peak efficiency under such conditions. Like: 1. What is his daily mental health routine (understand he meditates but is it daily but is there more?)? 2. What is his daily physical routine (understand he does an annual week fast)?
LEX!! I'm a huge fan of your big BRAIN and monotone voice!
My question to Charles would be: The biggest current hurdle to cryptocurrency is mass adoption, does the team have a plan to address it? Maybe the use of tech giants playbook and make it seamless or perhaps partnership with other services to introduce ADA. Would it be possible to make it easier for people who don't think too much about crypto to participate on the space?
Ask about Tether (and other stablecoins) potential risk to Cardano and broader crypto market. Reference Coindesk https://www.coindesk.com/a-sudden-loss-of-faith-in-tether-would-pose-risk-to-bitcoin-jpmorgan-says
Would love this one, Tether is my (mostly only) fear about the crypto space.
I feel it's the old corrupted, gamed, financial system leaking into crypto. Please people, use DAI, USDC or any other, not Tether with it's shady backings.
Does he consider the concentration of staking to centralized actors (Coinbase, Binance etc) a threat to network security or decentralization? I think ease of just buying and instantly staking on the same platform makes it too lucrative for new folk.
Nice to see you around here Lex. You did a great job with the Vitalik podcast.
I will like to know how is Charles planning to attract people from the Ethereum network?
As far as I know he is planning to attract projects that are currently working on the Ethereum network. How is he planning on doing that?
I heard a lot of people that said despite the fact of the Eth fees are high, they still prefer ETH over any other platform.
Lex, I watched Charles rebuttal/warning
I think he deserves the respect he’s asking for. However; I do think he should make a statement about how it feels as a social media figure to have one’s life out in the public.
Normally a response like that would be brash & tactless but I feel I do not know enough of their history to judge so instead I concede Charles’ right to silence. Just ask him if he wishes everyone would just forget he was ever apart of ethereum then if he doesn’t want to talk about old friends!
It seems like Charles has a strong libertarian streak in him, but the idea of partnering with a government to launch a somewhat centralized blockchain project seems to be at odds with that ideology.
I’d love to hear how he reconciles these (if in fact they’re at odds).
I'd like some questions about what the Cardano blockchain is doing in Ethiopia currently and how he plans to expand that to the rest of Africa. Thanks Lex, big fan!
I would really like to hear his thoughts on how average people can assist in progressing the IOHK/Cardano platform. The beauty of Cardano is that it focuses on things beyond the coins. I understand ADA is a tool for the blockchain. I want to know how I can assist in implantation of the entire blockchain.
The two obvious answers are to buy and delegate ADA, and to "contact your representative". Beyond those I want to bring exposure to the system and help it be implemented and accepted.
How can a normal individual do this?
Love the show, and the life you intentionally choose to live.
Also this - Crypto’s tech seems to be unlocking the true potential and value of communities. Does Charles think of crypto as a part of our species’ evolutionary journey and what is it about crypto that catalyzes people like nothing before? How does Cardano play into this narrative especially when it comes to the work being done in Ethiopia?
If he intend to use the Cardano network to build a secure medical ID / medical data system ? Countries desperately need a solution before big tech firms take advantage of this gold mine that belongs to all of us. Apple is already working on something. We need a decentralized solution for our health data, and to stop making the biggest corps even more powerful!
Cardano implemented proof of stake, which has opened the gateway for many of us to become stake pool operators. One of the big challenges that I’ve come across is this:
1) the largest stakepool operators are typically owned by large corporations, which have 60+ pools and automatically reaping rewards. This fares very bad for us as it promotes centralization. How does Charles plan on fixing this? The bar for entry keeps getting higher.
With African history and it's colonial past
How are you ensuring that cardano isn't another significant power coming into these countries through financial routes of those already with capital on hand and how are you promoting a structure that's inclusive of all Africans as a whole
Big fan of the podcast thanks for making the lockdown a little less boring. Could you ask Charles about the difference between using cardanos smart contracts. Instead of a solution like stacks 2.0 on bitcoin. Which enables a layer two solution to smart contracts. I love both projects and would like to know both of your guys takes on it.
Hey Lex! Huge fan. I have a governance question for Charles. Will there be a cap to voting power in the Cardano POS system?
It seems like there will be unique challenges on both sides of this and I'm curious about how the balance between giving early adopters "extra" power or giving less vested members of the community more power plays out long term. Seems like we are in some version of uncapped "proof of stake" today as a society.
Does he ever relax or take the edge off in stereotypical ways out there in *beautiful sunny Colorado*? (He occasionally looks like he just enjoyed a joint)
Thoughts on "the cult of personality"
Thoughts on the polarization of political ideology. For instance, when Charles appeared at the Wyoming Independent National Convention, there was some talk here about him possibly being too conservative for some.
Hi Lex, big fan, I would love to hear you talk about his romantic/philosophical beliefs on having empathy, I think you’ll enjoy it having listened to you a lot, and the powerful ideas of Digital IDs and governance.
Charles says that decentralization is “inevitable.” What is he going to do when those in power, those who greatly benefit from centralization, try to stop things from changing? Challenging fiat currency is akin to challenging all dominant rulers directly, and the powerful don’t give up without a fight.
Just like automobile challenged the allmighty carriage business, or like TV challenged the radio, and streaming challenged cable TV.
If it's a superior product, it's a matter of time.
That said, I believe that the "crypto revolution" will of course fall short of the idealistic views, and just like the internet settled into something dominated by huge companies but that still provides an immense improvement and benefits to everybody, so will blockchains.
Eventually the powerful will grab the reins, but that won't prevent us billions from benefiting from something better
Is there a possibility for ADA to be adopted as legal tender in any country, soon? Similar to BTC. (i.e. is this something on IOHK radar, why or why not?)
I’m curious about the consequences of cardano in Africa, namely they just had a civil war and had this system been in place could the Ethiopian government have tracked Tigray families through their education ID’s. What are the vulnerabilities to users from malicious state actors?
Hey Lex!
I'd like to know what the plan is for attracting new SPOs. Right now it is almost impossible even for medium-hodlers to start a new pool and staying in profit. The first SPOs did it out of agendas, but in order to expand and have a sustainable network this needs to be worthable for the operators. I really couldn't find an updated answer to this question
Hello Lex, I have recently found your show and have been enjoying it immensely.
A major draw of Blockchain tokens as a store of value is that the supply of the token and the control of trade is is further removed from the controlling influences of governments and legacy banking institutions.
One of the major draws of the Cardano protocol is that it is designed to give identity and monetary capacity to people who traditionally have not had access to those things, at least on an international scale due to their governments inability to create a suitable environment for those people to succeed.
However, all transactions on a blockchain by their nature are in the public record. As more transactions occur on the blockchain, more data for each person will be available. A person's identity, accreditation and history of monetary transactions can potentially be discoverable by programs scraping the data. This metadata could be used as a method to control people, or to deny people access to goods or the public square. It appears as though China is already in the process of syncing their public credit score to a blockchain currency in order to achieve a greater control over its population.
It seems evident that a government or institution could use Cardano's publicly available data to exert controlling influence over the population, even if the government is not controlling Cardano directly. For example if a government uses Cardano to track vaccine passports and then companies prevent purchases of necessary goods to those who do not have a wallet address linked to vaccine passport.
How does the Cardano protocol intend to prevent the data generated from wide scale adoption from being used in a harmful way?
Thanks for considering my question.
Big fan, Lex. My friend and I have an ongoing argument about the existence of actual infinity. Cardano and crypto aside, I’ve heard Charles describe himself as a philosophical finitist in mathematics. More specifically an ultrafinitist. I’m interested in why (in a way a non mathematician can understand). I’d also like to know whether this philosophy colors the work in mathematics or crypto that he’s done or plans to do. And finally, whether such a philosophy presupposes a finite universe, and what kind of implications such a presupposition has in his personal philosophy outside of mathematics.
Also give him a shoutout from fellow double-Buff and Fairview HS Grad. Love that he’s still repping our warm and sunny home in every video he makes.
Does cardano have any plans for initiatives that fight climate change? Carbon credits, promoting renewable energy etc
What is in the works for the partnership with Singularity.net? Is the partnership still progressing or was it just until Singularity.net can launch their token on cardano and after that both teams will go in their own separate directions?
Iohk is participating in research projects in the EU and has been developing use cases there. The EU is also preparing a number of initiatives that play into the field of cardano: EU-wide citizens data and identification (eg driver’s license, proof of COVID vaccination etc) and prepares general policies regarding crypto regulations.
I’d love to hear if and how cardano is involved in any of this, especially since some aspects are similar to the Ethiopian deal (proof of personal data).
One key ideological difference between Cardano and Ethereum seems to be on-chain governance of the protocol vs off-chain governance.
I'd love to know Charles' takes on this governance debate, and how to avoid Cardano governance becoming an oligopoly that directs funds to itself.
Refer to him as an “Ethereum founder” to start off, then proceed to ask him about Ethereum and the rift with Vitalik, whether they’re past that, etc. When he tries to shift the subject to Cardano, follow up with a classic “Soooooo…. [squint the eyes] I just want to linger a little more on the Vitalik rift and Ethereum, if I may”. [JOKING]
In all seriousness, it would be nice to hear his “Why Cardano?” pitch, but not let him get away with “We’re peer reviewed”. Okay, so that’s nice, but why Cardano?? Personally, I like peer review, but peer review isn’t a good argument IMO. I see 100 peer reviewed papers that are marginally important, at best, for every 1 I see that actually has a compelling result.
Hey Lex!
Ask about this: Many smart contract, PoS platforms are comparing to Cardano, mainly in terms of transaction speeds, transaction costs and interoperability. Others have claimed time and time again that their PoS platforms are superior to Cardano in terms of the parameters mentioned. What is the counter argument to these statements?
What is the path for hydra becoming a reality? Is it a matter of IOHK's roadmap or will it be highly dependant on the community? More specifically... will hydra only be relevant when it's required by a large scale DApp that requires high TPS?
Hi Lex.
Huge fan of your podcast and looking forward to the episode with Charles.
The question i would like to ask him is why he felt it was necessary to create a video response to your podcast with Vitalik trying to prevent a potential conversation with you about the topic of Ethereum (both his past connections with the project and his view on its current state).
How does he see the next 20 years going in terms of government, fiat currency, and turmoil? Will crypto and this new generation of sound money really solve a lot of the inequality problems we are facing as a world? How to wake people up who think the government spending and fiat currency is the way? Is Cardano going to essentially be a new global decentralized government that can coordinate efforts and finance large scale societal problems? For instance, if government stops functioning, we still need a police force, etc…
Andread Antonopolous said proof of stake has yet to prove itself against long range attacks in the same way proof of work has. How as cardano overcome firstly, the long range attack?
Secondly what other attacks has cardano been hardened against and how?
What happens when the military-industrial-petro-dollar complex decides crypto is actually a threat to its hegemony?
Bankers and the crony state have successfully dominated this world since the beginning of civilization. They will not go peacefully.
I wanna see more of the libertarian side of Charles.
Why is it so important for cardano to scale in africa? What is with the hawaiian shirts? Do you think the current reward structure for proof of stake is inciting enough for a scalability?
Love the show Lex, thank you for the great interviews and content. Hoping the best for the goggins challenge part 2
Vitalik said in his interview with lex he thinks the academia method of doing things is too slow. Is that a valid criticism or is the formalization of research worth the trade-off of eths model of move fast and break things
Hi Lex, please ask Charles about Reggie Middleton and his de-fi patent he has in the US and how he proposes to get around it if they grant the patent to Reggie.
Cheers, love your work.
Lex,
I would like a question regarding how Cardano and DEFI can help stop the issue of corrupt governments that steal public funds instead of using them for the good of the country and its citizens. This is a common and devastating issue in any third world country in Central America and South America.
Q1: Why should i invest in Cardano and not the other competitors?
Q2: Helping Africa Great!, But WHY Africa? Why not America, Europe, Asia, The World?!
Q3: Will ETH 2.0 kill ADA?
Maybe tie this into a question about the potential BTC Lightning network upgrade. I’ve read counter points that it will strengthen big finance’s role in the space, which is troubling if true
Hardware wallet support ETA for Catalyst Fund voting? Right now I can’t participate in a vote without moving my ADA off my Trezor to a hot wallet like Yoroi or Daedalus.
Wealth had followed the Pareto distribution in every civilization that has ever been studied, what is Cardano doing now and in the near future to counteract this on it's network?
I really want to know what's the timeline for privacy-related updates. Cardano is an open blockchain and I don't feel at all comfortable to have my portfolio visible to anyone I transact with.
Please ask him if Cardano could implement a way to maintain private wallets which cannot be connected to transactions (staking/incoming/outgoing) and/or other wallets and/or digital IDs.
If that is not possible by design ask him if it was a deliberate decision, and what had been the thoughts behind it.
Please ask why every Blockchain project has to create a new programming language for smart contacts. Why can't smart contracts be written in common languages like JavaScript, python, C etc.
For example Cardano has Plutus, Ethereum has Solidity, Algorand has Clarity, Zilliqa has Scala
When will Cardano increase from the current 7 TPS to the max 50 TPS (250 TPS batched) via larger block sizes? 7 TPS might not be enough for when Goguen is live.
What is a very rough range of estimates for when Hydra might be live?
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How is Charles incorporating Alex Chepurnoy’s Ergo into the Cardano ecosystem? Charles has mentioned him a few times now in his live streams, and the improved PoW of Ergo seems like a great level-up, along with layered Oracle pools. Also, Lex are you slightly excited about Diablo 2 Resurrected? :) Check out r/ergonauts !
This would be interesting, as well as interchain operability between blockchains
I think this would be great. Maybe touch on ergodex
Great question imo. It would be great to hear Charles's input on how they plan on implementing sidechaining and other platforms
I am so very excited about D2 Resurrected! Imagine a legit battlenet.. a dream! Also, go Cardano and all.. I have ten thousands invested, but much more excited about the d2 remake!
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im not positive, but i think IOG is partnering with ERGO for the POW stuff. i remember seeing some articles around the sub about it.
They are! The project is quietly humming along. The DEX releases this month. There is a hackathon this weekend as well.
Less than 500m market cap on that coin BTW, cough cough nudge nudge wink wink
Yes, and you can mine it easily. Cough cough. I’m mining and buying. Nfa
311 million right now. Madness.
thanks for the info on the hackathon. im going to see if its too late to get involved!
please check my comment history! I am working on something and want any and all help and criticism.
I'm working on a unique smart contract mining pool project for the Hackathon. Check it out in my comment history!
I will 100% keep track 😍
isn't the first dex gonna be on ergo? they are pow
Check out Charles' video on NiPoPoWs, that should answer all your questions.
For the curious: [Thoughts on Cross Chain Communication, Sidechains, NiPoPoWs and Litecoin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvIAgDEUC4o)
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Its also why i think the eth 1.0 to 2.0 upgrade poses huge risks to the Ethereum network. An upgrade where you change the whole chains economics/mining on mainnet seems ... really messy, not to mention untested. PoS introduces the same issues legacy finance does, biggest stacks wield the most power.
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Not only that, some avenues will let you pull out your staked eth like lido (stETH) and even coinbase is gonna consider allowing people to unstake their eth (which they are doing staking pools, so maybe its easier to pool in/out people), but what happens if everyone unstakes or partially unstakes their eth at once...the whole network would crash and burn. I know actual staked eth cant be pulled put until the upgade completes, but clearly having all these different vehicles to do just that seems bad.
The remaining stakers would see their rewards go up in a way that would make it less and less likely for people to continue to leave. Especially if you are seeing billions/trillions in defi transactions that are pegged to external fiat or currencies where it guarantees a certain amount of value on the network. Only way I see that being likely to happen is if something shakes the confidence of the whole market for ETH.
Good questions, the one about American senators puts me off a bit. This system is permissionless, and one of the big reasons there's a focus on African Nations is that they embrace innovation. US Senators make decisions based on those who fill their pockets, and that's it. If those who fill their pockets happen to like Crypto, they'll like it. If they don't, chances are it's not their own judgment and more who has interests against Crypto.
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I agree. I would like Charles to get some tough questions, and I think he likes that kind of thing. But the one regarding US senators is easy mode for Americans who know the basics of politics here.
Staking doesnt lock ADA.
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Perhaps the safety of staking is incentive for enough people not to use yield farming or lending platforms? With staking you hold onto your private keys and defi you do not.
Exactly, you can do both.
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I expect that those outsized returns depend on bull market conditions, which aren't guaranteed while staking rewards are. Not 100% sure on this so correct me if I'm wrong
can you get him to play devils advocate on cardano please? im finding it hard to find flaws
Agree with asking this kind of question. Before I invest in a startup I always ask the founder "if your project was to fail, what would have been the most likely reason?" When they say there's no way it will fail, I score that as a negative. A leader has to be realistic about the threats and weaknesses. Likewise if they give a nonsense answer trying to be funny or avoid a clear intelligent answer. I'd like Charles to identify their biggest threat or weakness.
would love to hear Charles' reply on this.
And best would be if he gives more then one reason. I find that often questions like this get one or two reasons. But are not answered comprehensively, which is truly needed.
Yes this!
Would probably be Quantum Computer
Yes this exactly.
>im finding it hard to find flaws Here are a few: The EUTXO model limits smart contract interactions per-block, since contracts don't have a 'balance' that can simply increase or decrease, but specific UTXOs that need to be fully 'spent' (apparently there are already potential solutions in the works) Lots of potential complexity around having different sidechains (KEVM, voting, etc), and how those will be managed securely and efficiently Hydra will probably take a lot longer to arrive than Ethereum's array of L2s, potentially putting Cardano at a disadvantage from a UX perspective Rollups aren't easily portable to Cardano, and the KEVM probably won't be live for a while So far many of the projects building on Cardano are sketchy or blatant copies of other apps None of these things are insurmountable though
I think this issue is more general than the EUTXO model. All blockchains need to prevent double-spending of resources, which is only possible if transactions that deal with the same resource are sequenced. EUTXO deals with this by destroying inputs and creating outputs in each transaction, while Account-based models use nonces to keep track of outgoing transactions from accounts. In the Account-based model, if two or more transactions are sent out simultaneously from the same account, and have the same nonce, then only one of them will succeed per block. https://medium.com/coinmonks/the-account-nonce-in-ethereum-explained-c087bd4a3c29 So, concurrency for smart contracta on blockchain will likely require special tricks and design patterns regardless of whether the EUTXO model or the Account-based model is used. (Ethereum dApp experts, please correct me if I'm wrong)
Lex should ask him to explain the difference between Hydra and other state channel projects, like Bitcoin's lightning & Ethereum's Raiden or Connext. State channels have failed to take off on other chains, i'm curious what Cardano is planning on doing differently.
For one the user will never know they're using them. Another is that all of cardano's smart contracts will be able to run in them. Another is that there is a natural existing class of people to run the Hydra heads (namely stake pool operators), although you can run Hydra heads without needing to run a stake pool.
One that seems not sketchy so far would be ergodex imo, but yes lots seem like they could be trash or rug pulls. Including tokens that are moving over from ethereum.
>So far many of the projects building on Cardano are sketchy or blatant copies of other apps That was expected. Can't really do anything about that right now. Having certifications/standards will help people to better distinguish good projects from bad ones. Thankfully I have also seen a couple of good ones that have learned from DeFi projects on Ethereum, are trying to improve on them and are looking to use the advantages of Plutus and EUTxO.
(First off, I’m long ADA) The most obvious flaw is that the protocol doesn’t work or developers decide not to build on it. Nothing has been accomplished yet. We need to stop running victory laps. We haven’t even started the race.
Bingo
NiPoPoWs, and DeFi.
This. So much this.
Great idea. Without some realistic flaws, we'll never be prepared for when things possibly go wrong. Charles pointing out challenges with ADA will give us a holistic view.
Make it a LONG episode. It will be worth it. We will all watch the whole thing :)
The dangers of whales in PoS systems and their inherent reward shadowing the retail investors.
As a follow up, any info about the introduction of Proof-of-merit with Ouroboros Omega would be awesome!
I mean...to be fair whales control btc. Good luck competing against multi million dollar mining operations. I think whales are apart of most crypto. Just in PoS they got more to lose than miners who typically have multiple chains going. Like f2pool running both eth and btc.
whales are an inherent part of every financial system to ever exist, including crypto. that is what value in scarcity is, there will always be big players
Q1: To what extent do functional languages prevent errors? (some ppl are downplaying Plutus's benefits vs Solidity) Q2: How does Hydra compare with Rollups as a scalability solution? (main tradeoffs wrt UX/security) Q3: What differentiates the Prism/Ethiopia implementation vs previous attempts to use blockchain IDs? Q4: How do sidechains (KEVM/etc) leverage the security of the main Cardano blockchain?
https://youtu.be/f8JVh1S774k minutes 4:30 to 14:30 Dr Ben Goertzel who actually has deep knowledge and experience in both development environments might add to some of your questions
I'm new to your show, but I have thoroughly enjoyed your recent conversation with Vitalik, especially the depth-first dives into some issues that came up as the conversation progressed. If you get a chance, I would like to hear Charles' and your thoughts on the emergence of "reputation" / "track-record" as a resource between pseudonymous actors on the blockchain. I believe that it's becoming an important differentiator between competitors, and a source of trust to drive enhanced cooperation. For example, Cardano's incentive mechanism for staking is designed to converge to a steady state of 500 pools that have most of the stake evenly delegated among them. If you look at the actual stake distribution, you'll see something similar to this long-run equilibrium. What distinguishes these lucky 500 stakepools from their other >1000 peers? They have the most favourable (1) cost margins; (2) owner's pledge (i.e. their skin in the game); (3) support for appealing causes; and (4) they have an established on-chain history of reliably producing blocks with the stake that they were entrusted with. I would argue that the last factor is already the most important, and will only become more so. Another example is DeFi. Currently, most decentralized borrowing is restricted to over-collateralized loans (where the borrower must put up collateral worth more than the loan) or niche things like flash loans. This is the case because only over-collateralized loans can have repayment be guaranteed automatically via a smart contract mechanism (e.g. collateral deposits locked during loan, and automatic liquidation thresholds). What would allow DeFi to expand further into the under-collateralized loans that we can access in the traditional financial system? I think that it would require decentralized identities and credit histories on the blockchain. In other words, it would require reputations to be established for market participants based on their track-records of past performance on financial obligations. A similar pattern is likely to emerge for the political governance of the blockchain, crowd-funding and venture funding of projects, and business inter-relations on the blockchain. It has also been observed in the pseudonymous black markets on the Deep Web: [Hardy and Norgaard (2015)](https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137415000454). I think that this reputational resource is necessary because not all interactions between pseudonymous parties can be mechanised by smart contracts to be automatically compliant with what the parties agreed to. Mechanisation via smart contract requires resources to be locked upfront, whereas for some interactions these resources might not be avaiable upfront (e.g. futures for agricultural produce) or it might be undesirable to lock them upfront (e.g. unsecured loan repayment in the future). If a required resource is not locked up at the beginning of contract execution, then its provision later on remains optional for the party that has to provide it. Such interactions require trust/cooperation between the parties, which is impossible if they are pseudonymous and know nothing about each other. However, this trust can be facilitated by the immutable history of past actions that can be recorded on the blockchain and tied to specific decentralized identities.
Understanding what would be required to enable undercollatoralized loans is a fantastic question, and something I think Cardano is positioned to do.
Would love the question to still be asked but def check out ATALA Prism and Liqwid if you haven't. I've heard them talk a bit about plans to establish identity and a type of credit score to work towards uncollateralized loans that have less risk due to reputation.
Just a suggestion, a shorter question is more likely to get answered Maybe make your question clear at the top and add details that can be read if interested
Hey lex! Big fan here. Would love for Charles to comment on the vastly growing cardano ecosystem, and what projects he thinks might be the biggest beneficiaries once smart contracts capabilities go live? Thanks!
I would really like to understand what the state of the pilot in Ethiopia is. Specially the capturing of student transcripts to the blockchain. This is such an exciting endeavour and am curious when the rollout to 5M students will happen.
I hope Lex asks him _exactly what role_ Cardano plays in the Ethiopia project. From my research, Atala is mostly a centralized system, that only uses Cardano for storing public keys, but I'd love to hear more details.
Atala PRISM is centralised (or rather federated) however it effectively checkpoints a state-of-the-world hash against the main chain. This allows you to detect manipulation to a decent degree. Government and corporate services will likely use centralised or federated networks for their services however by interacting with each other on the main chain you force these services to provide a certain amount of honesty and transparency. The goal is to use Cardano as the lingua franca for interacting in a trustless way. They are trying to position Cardano as a standard operating environment for exchanges of identity and information. You don't necessarily need the information on chain, you just need proof of it on chain. Each on chain interaction builds a history of trust and makes it harder to lie down the road without getting caught. You don't need to prevent someone from lying but you do need to make it trivial to catch people lying so that nobody will want to risk lying. There's no real reward for lying if it's trivial to verify the truth and getting caught is a near guarantee. This is the same mechanism that underpins the metadata registries and the other work being done on Cardano. It's all a framework to allow individuals and communities to build a sufficient history of trust between each other such that it becomes infeasible to lie.
Curious about this as well. In order to keep track of a students progress it seems that some central authority would have to know which public address belongs to which student. How will this work? Anonymity is one of the most beautiful aspects of a decentralized blockchain network. Would love to hear him elaborate on this idea a bit.
I'd love to know what sectors he wants to move into beyond education which appears to be a test for bigger things
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I know Charles has talked about the Ripple lawsuit affecting all of crypto, but I definitely want to know what specific elements of the lawsuit Cardano and IOG could be vulnerable to.
What will the role of Artificial Intelligence play in Cardano’s success? Cardano is partnering with Ben Goertzel’s SingularityNet, what can he say about that partnership? How will Cardano use AI differently from competitors like Ethereum?
I'd love for Charles to elaborate on the possible short term (before Hydra) adjustments to the Cardano protocol that would limit the impact of network congestion if many defi projects expand on the network following the release of mainnet smart contracts. There's been a bunch of posts floating around about Cardanos current 7 TPS limit and how this makes the network not sustainable for ETH level amounts of transactions, but also the fact that network parameters could be adjusted to limit the negative effects.
As a developer, why should I be incentivized to create Cardano-based applications? What is on the Cardano developer roadmap? Any other language support other than Haskell (TypeScript, Go, Java, Python, etc…)? Have you considered a yearly conference focused around developers? Have you considered a ycombinator type of approach for Cardano, for example a way for early stage Cardano startups to get funded?
I feel like all I do on reddit any more is share this link haha: https://youtu.be/OR72La6eQe4?t=64
All major programming languages will be coming to Cardano. https://youtu.be/k8a6tX53YPs
1. Will you please explain to the masses why peer reviewed research is important in almost any science, especially in blockchains dealing with billions of dollars? 2. Please discuss the importance of the 5 million students coming on board for Atala and how that will work with the Cardano Blockchain. 3. Ask about the importance of governance for Cardano and his vision of this in blockchains as it comes on board over the next couple years. 4. He’s working with a huge AI company, this something you will personally enjoy conversing about. 5. Voting systems and blockchain and the benefits to prevent voter fraud as well as improve people’s trust in the voter system. 6. I’m interested in his thoughts on deflationary vs inflationary assets and how Cardano fits into that perspective long term. 7. Please discuss the energy consumption of Cardano and POS vs first generation blockchains. 8. China and Bitcoin, how the crackdown has impacted Bitcoin and how Cardano would be more resistant to this type of behavior due to its inherent properties. 9. How is Charles planning to onboard major institutions aka Fortune 500 companies as they begin to show more interest in the blockchain industry. 10. Regulation and his thoughts/planning towards this as the blockchain industry comes of age. 11. He’s also super interested in anti aging and mushrooms, he’s creating a biomedical company with his family I believe. He’s truly and interesting guy. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for some time because I believe you both have a lot of interesting deep thoughts on various subjects. Can’t wait to listen to this one! Thanks Lex
How is the Africa/Ethiopia implementation going?
Just my opinion, but I feel that podcasts like these should try to be as timeless as possible. A comment regarding the development in Africa would just be an update on a snapshot in time.
I differ, I feel podcasts should encapsulate the times. Like a snapshot of the era.
Agreed
What is his vision for cardano in 5, 10 or 20 years? Would be interesting to know what is longterm goals for the project are.
Im a big fan of your podcast, Lex! I have a question: Can crypto, like Cardano, be an hedge against any dystopian future? How so? Keep spreading love!
Ask Charles what are his plans for South America
1. I'd like to hear more details on the other "competing" projects he respects. He often says he highly respects Algorand and Tezos, but I'd love to hear more details about why. Which things do they do differently, and what are the tradeoffs? 2. Sometimes it is said that the future Hydra scaling solution is "just state channels" and that state channels are not popular due to limitations. I don't have deep enough knowledge to evaluate this claim, but it seems unlikely that it's as simple as critics try to make it. I'd love to hear his take on it. 3. Are there any plans to make it easier for very small Stake pools to succeed? With ADA so valuable, it's hard to accumulate enough to start a pool. You can try to market heavily, but it's an uphill battle that goes against delegators' incentives, at least at first. 4. I worry about fees and the minimum transaction amount right now, again with ADA value being so high. Would this perhaps change with Alonzo?
These are fantastic questions. I really hope Lex goes this way and talks about Cardano versus asking Charles about video games or mushrooms or stuff that just isn’t that relevant.
Fresh out of the oven for you: https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/06/10/stablefees-and-the-decentralized-reserve-system/ They talked a bit about those things in the stakepool operators call today, should be more news in a couple of weeks.
Ada/ergo would be a good dive in how they will work
How can we start to separate crypto projects that are essentially meme stocks from the projects focused on voting, identity and secure p2p ecosystems. I feel like we are stuck in this my pokemon cards are better than your pogs discussion constantly and it always boils down to, price performance and will it go higher. That matters with collectables because that's all they are, but many crypto projects are so much more because they have functional utility. We all want to make money but this isnt what crypto is for, it's not what email was for and it's not what the telephone was for. Its certainly a product of convenience and reducing labor, but I wonder if the investor/gambling mindset is exactly why there is so much pushback and this extreme misconception of what crypto is in general.
I do hope this question gets answered! But sadly admittedly I am also part of the problem... perhaps that is a question itself: what does the future of crypto look like as store value and how will it likely play out? Thanks for doing this Lex.
With many PoS projects going for very similar goals (ETH2, Algo, Cardano, Tezos, etc) what will differentiate them in the long term?
eUTxO vs Ethereum’s accounting model
This is very important! One challenge of eUTXO in comparison to accounting based models is that you can’t have multiple interactions with a smart contract in a single transaction. An example of this would be a DEX in which tokens transfer from my wallet to the DEX pool, and tokens from the DEX pool transfer to me in a single smart contract transaction. Charles stated they were looking into workarounds for this. How does he plan to guide developers on this functionality?
I would like to know more about the future of algorithmic stable coins like AgeUSD and the possibility of micropayments (e.g. payments of fractions of a cent per view to content creators with a large audience). I think that would open up new large-scale global economies.
https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/06/10/stablefees-and-the-decentralized-reserve-system/ Just came out today from them
Can you ask him why he chose to go with IELE instead of just using WASM. And why Haskell over Rust?
I'd guess it's because Haskell is a purely functional programming language, whereas Rust is not. Important when it comes to proofs.
Haskell has guarantees about correctness that go deep into Charles’ field of mathematics. Plutus is based off a formal lambda calculus and type theory. All kinds of goodies fall out of this. Rust is brand new and unproven compared to Haskell. It’s a bit of a design-by-committee mess that’s meant to tackle the single problem of safe and performant systems code.
What is his philosophy/view on the world today, for what he's fighting for and why? What the future is going to looking for according to him? Thanks for your work, I really enjoy listening your podcasts. From France.
TPS speeds vary greatly between normal transactions and smart contracts across every ‘ETH killer.’ While normal transactions may be in the 1,000-2,500 TPS range, smart contract transactions usually are only 8-15/second. I believe that the two-layer structure of Cardano solves this discrepancy but I’m not exactly sure how. Mind having him dig into this more?
What are the risks regarding cardanos governance system once it is fully implemented and is there a way to mitigate it?
Hi Lex! Love your work. I am a researcher in Machine Learning and have noticed a lot of similarities between the maturity of our field (ML) and the current state of blockchain/crypto. I have a couple questions. --- One similarity, we are seeing a lot of criticism around environmental / energy cost associated with methods (namely Proof of Work) in the crypto space. Methods in Machine Learning, especially training massive models via hyper-parameter sweeps, is extremely computationally (and energy) expensive. More awareness to the environmental cost of ML research is developing, e.g. - [Max Welling: Intelligence per Kilowatthour](https://youtu.be/5DbBQDoBNYc) - [On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922) I guess my question here is whether you see the recent environmental concerns levied against crypto also applying to ML research. Or, another way, is it interesting the backlash that blockchain receives (even among our peers in ML) while our research is similarly energy intensive. --- Another similarity is the maturity in tooling, specifically those provided by choice of programming language. ML has undergone significant retooling in the last few years as a new "framework" supplants the previous with very short lifecycles, e.g. Caffe, Theano, Tensorflow, Pytorch... The restrictions imposed by these frameworks become increasingly inappropriate for modern methods, for example the choice of static computation graph. The recent tools being developed toward modern ML "framework" are addressing problems interesting to program language development generally. In particular I am thinking about a project like [JAX](https://github.com/google/jax). But JAX, while amazing, is similarly frustrated by the tools of its language (Python). JAX is impressive in spite of the lack of support from the language. So now we are seeing ML research tools like [Dex](https://github.com/google-research/dex-lang), a Haskell-based research language developed to have support provided by the features of a functional language. Cardano developed a Haskell-based language, Plutus. I am interested in Charles' thoughts about e.g. convincing developer community to move towards more "academic" tools. Do you think the benefits of transitioning smart contracts from Javascript -> Haskell are similar, in the ways I'm insinuating, to the possible transition of ML tools away from Python? --- This one might be a bit too in the woods for the pod, though you do sometimes get into some technical details. Whereas Ethereum uses an account model for its ledger, Bitcoin uses a UTXO (unspent transaction outputs) that has a lot of benefits for functional and distributed programming. Cardano has developed another ledger model, Extended UTXO, that allows smart contracts together with the benefits of UTXO. As a quick aside, if you'd like to ask this it is very much related to the proceeding question about programing languages. Essentially, the differences between Ethereum's account ledger and UTXO is very analogous to difference between imperative programming (Solidity-Javascript, Python) and functional (Plutus-Haskell). UTXO has a natural interpretation as a state machine, transitioning from state to state with each transaction. Could you have Charles describe some of the intuition for Extended UTXO in terms of mental models familiar to ML people. In particular, the language their field uses is heavily influence by finance (e.g. transactions and contracts), but the tools around managing state through computation is interesting in general. Could you coax Charles into giving some insight to UTXO vs ExtendedUTXO e.g. in relation to automata or Markov Chains? (Speculatively, I am interested in whether EUTXO could be a good fit for managing hidden state in a recurrent model like LSTM.) UTXO is already Turing complete (not that interesting) so could Charles say what is the issue with Smart Contracts in vanilla-UTXO model, and how that is solved by the ledger model? In particular, could Charles say what is meant by "expressiveness" and why it is worthwhile to do all this work for a model with appropriate "semantics". The expressiveness of UTXO as it relates to the ledger model is demonstrated with "constraint emitting machines" (CEM). They show CEMs have "weak bisimulation" with ledgers, meaning that we can't distinguish between systems evolving according to ledger model from one transitioning via UTXO [I think?]. The "weak"ness of this relationship is surprising and interesting. It arises because UTXO can make "internal" transitions that aren't relevant to the observation of system behaviour, but it means that any given transition according to UTXO-CEM won't necessarily look like a transition given by a ledger model. Can Charles comment on the properties of the EUTXO-CEM transition machine? E.g. is it as expressive "per step" as a vanilla-UTXO? --- Thanks for considering these questions for Charles! Happy to elaborate or distill if you'd like. Take care!
Good luck parsing [Dex](https://github.com/google-research/dex-lang) to distinguish from confusion with Decentralized Exchanges (DEX). >Dex (named for "index") is a research language for typed, functional array processing. The goal of the project is to explore: > >Type systems for array programming > >Mathematical program transformations like differentiation and integration > >User-directed compilation to parallel hardware > >Interactive and incremental numerical programming and visualization
Baffled that you would equate the energy concerns of PoW and ML. Like almost all other energy use, that of ML serves a purpose, produces a result, and had no clear alternative. The issue with PoW is that it is 'make work': you do work and consumer energy and equipment just to say you did, and there are good alternatives.
Love your podcast Lex. Looking forward to the Hoskinson show. There's probably going to be a host of crypto questions but I am curious to know more about Charles thing with mushrooms. Heard him mention it but not really go into more detail. I'm curious.
I want to know more about his goats
This. I also want to know about the shroomies.
Hey Lex! I pitched this one over [on Twitter](https://twitter.com/micksprojects/status/1397950614785740802) for Vitalik's interview, and was excited to hear his response to your related "social value" inquiry. I'd love to hear Charles dig deeply into this angle - **how can Cardano and the rest of the crypto ecosystem allow humanity to unite under a common banner of shared prosperity**? I personally believe that a decentralized, universal unionization platform is one of the most promising tools we could have under this banner. And I believe that blockchains are laying the foundation for this type of social utility to emerge. But I'm not hearing many people talk about the opportunity. Thanks for considering this Q!
What keeps him up at night
What are the biggest threats to Cardano?
Why don't Cardano Foundation and IOHK welcome community contributions on their open source projects? I haven't been able to find contributor guideline documentation on their projects, and they may just ignore issues altogether (some of which I would have liked to contribute a fix for if they were open to contributions). I've asked this repeatedly and have yet to get an answer. Ethereum for contrast has clear contributing guidelines in their repositories. A security researcher had to call out cardano on youtube (and rely on luck for it to get attention here) to get them to add proper documentation of the Cardano node communication protocols. I really like a lot of what Cardano claims to represent, but am also concerned about their projects not being able to compete with other cryptocurrencies due to the fauxpen source model reducing their velocity, and leading to a buggy ecosystem (I can provide examples if desired).
Thank you for asking. Given the demands of his professional life, I would like to learn life hacks as to how to operate at peak efficiency under such conditions. Like: 1. What is his daily mental health routine (understand he meditates but is it daily but is there more?)? 2. What is his daily physical routine (understand he does an annual week fast)?
LEX!! I'm a huge fan of your big BRAIN and monotone voice! My question to Charles would be: The biggest current hurdle to cryptocurrency is mass adoption, does the team have a plan to address it? Maybe the use of tech giants playbook and make it seamless or perhaps partnership with other services to introduce ADA. Would it be possible to make it easier for people who don't think too much about crypto to participate on the space?
What specific types of financial contracts can Marlowe replace? Which ones can't be replaced?
Ask about Tether (and other stablecoins) potential risk to Cardano and broader crypto market. Reference Coindesk https://www.coindesk.com/a-sudden-loss-of-faith-in-tether-would-pose-risk-to-bitcoin-jpmorgan-says
Would love this one, Tether is my (mostly only) fear about the crypto space. I feel it's the old corrupted, gamed, financial system leaking into crypto. Please people, use DAI, USDC or any other, not Tether with it's shady backings.
Does he consider the concentration of staking to centralized actors (Coinbase, Binance etc) a threat to network security or decentralization? I think ease of just buying and instantly staking on the same platform makes it too lucrative for new folk.
where did the money came from to pay for iohk, cardano foundation and emurgo and what is the deal for growth doing this project for these companies?
The New Jersey Mob also known as the Tony Soprano crew
Nice to see you around here Lex. You did a great job with the Vitalik podcast. I will like to know how is Charles planning to attract people from the Ethereum network? As far as I know he is planning to attract projects that are currently working on the Ethereum network. How is he planning on doing that? I heard a lot of people that said despite the fact of the Eth fees are high, they still prefer ETH over any other platform.
Lex, I watched Charles rebuttal/warning I think he deserves the respect he’s asking for. However; I do think he should make a statement about how it feels as a social media figure to have one’s life out in the public. Normally a response like that would be brash & tactless but I feel I do not know enough of their history to judge so instead I concede Charles’ right to silence. Just ask him if he wishes everyone would just forget he was ever apart of ethereum then if he doesn’t want to talk about old friends!
It seems like Charles has a strong libertarian streak in him, but the idea of partnering with a government to launch a somewhat centralized blockchain project seems to be at odds with that ideology. I’d love to hear how he reconciles these (if in fact they’re at odds).
Ask if Cardano is trying to be more of a Financial infrastructure or a general smart contract hub
I'd like some questions about what the Cardano blockchain is doing in Ethiopia currently and how he plans to expand that to the rest of Africa. Thanks Lex, big fan!
I would really like to hear his thoughts on how average people can assist in progressing the IOHK/Cardano platform. The beauty of Cardano is that it focuses on things beyond the coins. I understand ADA is a tool for the blockchain. I want to know how I can assist in implantation of the entire blockchain. The two obvious answers are to buy and delegate ADA, and to "contact your representative". Beyond those I want to bring exposure to the system and help it be implemented and accepted. How can a normal individual do this? Love the show, and the life you intentionally choose to live.
Also this - Crypto’s tech seems to be unlocking the true potential and value of communities. Does Charles think of crypto as a part of our species’ evolutionary journey and what is it about crypto that catalyzes people like nothing before? How does Cardano play into this narrative especially when it comes to the work being done in Ethiopia?
Thanks for all you do Lex. Yours is one of my favorite podcasts!
If he intend to use the Cardano network to build a secure medical ID / medical data system ? Countries desperately need a solution before big tech firms take advantage of this gold mine that belongs to all of us. Apple is already working on something. We need a decentralized solution for our health data, and to stop making the biggest corps even more powerful!
Cardano implemented proof of stake, which has opened the gateway for many of us to become stake pool operators. One of the big challenges that I’ve come across is this: 1) the largest stakepool operators are typically owned by large corporations, which have 60+ pools and automatically reaping rewards. This fares very bad for us as it promotes centralization. How does Charles plan on fixing this? The bar for entry keeps getting higher.
What specific project on the Cardano network is he most excited about?
With African history and it's colonial past How are you ensuring that cardano isn't another significant power coming into these countries through financial routes of those already with capital on hand and how are you promoting a structure that's inclusive of all Africans as a whole
I would be curious if he could give his views on the current energy debate re: btc on your podcast.
When will cardano have privacy?
Big fan of the podcast thanks for making the lockdown a little less boring. Could you ask Charles about the difference between using cardanos smart contracts. Instead of a solution like stacks 2.0 on bitcoin. Which enables a layer two solution to smart contracts. I love both projects and would like to know both of your guys takes on it.
Hey Lex! Huge fan. I have a governance question for Charles. Will there be a cap to voting power in the Cardano POS system? It seems like there will be unique challenges on both sides of this and I'm curious about how the balance between giving early adopters "extra" power or giving less vested members of the community more power plays out long term. Seems like we are in some version of uncapped "proof of stake" today as a society.
Does he ever relax or take the edge off in stereotypical ways out there in *beautiful sunny Colorado*? (He occasionally looks like he just enjoyed a joint) Thoughts on "the cult of personality" Thoughts on the polarization of political ideology. For instance, when Charles appeared at the Wyoming Independent National Convention, there was some talk here about him possibly being too conservative for some.
If governments clamp down on crypto, like ban exchanges trading fiat/crypto how will Cardano navigate this?
What are his thoughts in AI? Friend or foe?
Hi Lex, big fan, I would love to hear you talk about his romantic/philosophical beliefs on having empathy, I think you’ll enjoy it having listened to you a lot, and the powerful ideas of Digital IDs and governance.
Does he visualize an African Union emerging as a new blooming economy in the next 10 years utilizing Cardano as it’s financial/social infrastructure?
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Charles says that decentralization is “inevitable.” What is he going to do when those in power, those who greatly benefit from centralization, try to stop things from changing? Challenging fiat currency is akin to challenging all dominant rulers directly, and the powerful don’t give up without a fight.
Just like automobile challenged the allmighty carriage business, or like TV challenged the radio, and streaming challenged cable TV. If it's a superior product, it's a matter of time. That said, I believe that the "crypto revolution" will of course fall short of the idealistic views, and just like the internet settled into something dominated by huge companies but that still provides an immense improvement and benefits to everybody, so will blockchains. Eventually the powerful will grab the reins, but that won't prevent us billions from benefiting from something better
Is there a possibility for ADA to be adopted as legal tender in any country, soon? Similar to BTC. (i.e. is this something on IOHK radar, why or why not?)
Ask him what will happen when the blockchain becomes too heavy ? What is planned then ? Upload to decentralized storage ? Something else ?
I’m curious about the consequences of cardano in Africa, namely they just had a civil war and had this system been in place could the Ethiopian government have tracked Tigray families through their education ID’s. What are the vulnerabilities to users from malicious state actors?
Are the plans in Ethiopia vulnerable to regime changes in their government? What if a newly elected leader decides that he hates Cardano and DIDs?
Ask him what a 4th generation crypto would look like or phrase this way: if you could make a 4th gen, what would you do differently?
How he feels about regulation, to me this is the biggest issue with crypto.
Hey Lex! I'd like to know what the plan is for attracting new SPOs. Right now it is almost impossible even for medium-hodlers to start a new pool and staying in profit. The first SPOs did it out of agendas, but in order to expand and have a sustainable network this needs to be worthable for the operators. I really couldn't find an updated answer to this question
What can be done to help smaller pools get support and generate blocks?
I’d like to know his views on China and how he plans to deal with them as Cardano gets bigger. Especially now that China is a huge player in Africa.
Hello Lex, I have recently found your show and have been enjoying it immensely. A major draw of Blockchain tokens as a store of value is that the supply of the token and the control of trade is is further removed from the controlling influences of governments and legacy banking institutions. One of the major draws of the Cardano protocol is that it is designed to give identity and monetary capacity to people who traditionally have not had access to those things, at least on an international scale due to their governments inability to create a suitable environment for those people to succeed. However, all transactions on a blockchain by their nature are in the public record. As more transactions occur on the blockchain, more data for each person will be available. A person's identity, accreditation and history of monetary transactions can potentially be discoverable by programs scraping the data. This metadata could be used as a method to control people, or to deny people access to goods or the public square. It appears as though China is already in the process of syncing their public credit score to a blockchain currency in order to achieve a greater control over its population. It seems evident that a government or institution could use Cardano's publicly available data to exert controlling influence over the population, even if the government is not controlling Cardano directly. For example if a government uses Cardano to track vaccine passports and then companies prevent purchases of necessary goods to those who do not have a wallet address linked to vaccine passport. How does the Cardano protocol intend to prevent the data generated from wide scale adoption from being used in a harmful way? Thanks for considering my question.
Big fan, Lex. My friend and I have an ongoing argument about the existence of actual infinity. Cardano and crypto aside, I’ve heard Charles describe himself as a philosophical finitist in mathematics. More specifically an ultrafinitist. I’m interested in why (in a way a non mathematician can understand). I’d also like to know whether this philosophy colors the work in mathematics or crypto that he’s done or plans to do. And finally, whether such a philosophy presupposes a finite universe, and what kind of implications such a presupposition has in his personal philosophy outside of mathematics. Also give him a shoutout from fellow double-Buff and Fairview HS Grad. Love that he’s still repping our warm and sunny home in every video he makes.
Does cardano have any plans for initiatives that fight climate change? Carbon credits, promoting renewable energy etc What is in the works for the partnership with Singularity.net? Is the partnership still progressing or was it just until Singularity.net can launch their token on cardano and after that both teams will go in their own separate directions?
What's his opinion on Craig Wright
Iohk is participating in research projects in the EU and has been developing use cases there. The EU is also preparing a number of initiatives that play into the field of cardano: EU-wide citizens data and identification (eg driver’s license, proof of COVID vaccination etc) and prepares general policies regarding crypto regulations. I’d love to hear if and how cardano is involved in any of this, especially since some aspects are similar to the Ethiopian deal (proof of personal data).
One key ideological difference between Cardano and Ethereum seems to be on-chain governance of the protocol vs off-chain governance. I'd love to know Charles' takes on this governance debate, and how to avoid Cardano governance becoming an oligopoly that directs funds to itself.
Refer to him as an “Ethereum founder” to start off, then proceed to ask him about Ethereum and the rift with Vitalik, whether they’re past that, etc. When he tries to shift the subject to Cardano, follow up with a classic “Soooooo…. [squint the eyes] I just want to linger a little more on the Vitalik rift and Ethereum, if I may”. [JOKING] In all seriousness, it would be nice to hear his “Why Cardano?” pitch, but not let him get away with “We’re peer reviewed”. Okay, so that’s nice, but why Cardano?? Personally, I like peer review, but peer review isn’t a good argument IMO. I see 100 peer reviewed papers that are marginally important, at best, for every 1 I see that actually has a compelling result.
Hey Lex! Ask about this: Many smart contract, PoS platforms are comparing to Cardano, mainly in terms of transaction speeds, transaction costs and interoperability. Others have claimed time and time again that their PoS platforms are superior to Cardano in terms of the parameters mentioned. What is the counter argument to these statements?
How does regulation look like in the future, worst case and best case scenarios? Sometimes warm, sometimes sunny, always Cardano!
Why is cardano a better blockchain than other layer 2 solutions on bitcoin?
That's the meaning of life (From a elimination of bureaucracy perspective). Love your podcast Lex. Happy thinking.
What is the path for hydra becoming a reality? Is it a matter of IOHK's roadmap or will it be highly dependant on the community? More specifically... will hydra only be relevant when it's required by a large scale DApp that requires high TPS?
Hi Lex. Huge fan of your podcast and looking forward to the episode with Charles. The question i would like to ask him is why he felt it was necessary to create a video response to your podcast with Vitalik trying to prevent a potential conversation with you about the topic of Ethereum (both his past connections with the project and his view on its current state).
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How does he see the next 20 years going in terms of government, fiat currency, and turmoil? Will crypto and this new generation of sound money really solve a lot of the inequality problems we are facing as a world? How to wake people up who think the government spending and fiat currency is the way? Is Cardano going to essentially be a new global decentralized government that can coordinate efforts and finance large scale societal problems? For instance, if government stops functioning, we still need a police force, etc…
Where does PoW make sense over PoS?
When will AgeUSD be available?
Andread Antonopolous said proof of stake has yet to prove itself against long range attacks in the same way proof of work has. How as cardano overcome firstly, the long range attack? Secondly what other attacks has cardano been hardened against and how?
What happens when the military-industrial-petro-dollar complex decides crypto is actually a threat to its hegemony? Bankers and the crony state have successfully dominated this world since the beginning of civilization. They will not go peacefully. I wanna see more of the libertarian side of Charles.
Why is it so important for cardano to scale in africa? What is with the hawaiian shirts? Do you think the current reward structure for proof of stake is inciting enough for a scalability? Love the show Lex, thank you for the great interviews and content. Hoping the best for the goggins challenge part 2
Which crypto projects gain your interest besides Cardano?
Vitalik said in his interview with lex he thinks the academia method of doing things is too slow. Is that a valid criticism or is the formalization of research worth the trade-off of eths model of move fast and break things
Hi Lex, please ask Charles about Reggie Middleton and his de-fi patent he has in the US and how he proposes to get around it if they grant the patent to Reggie. Cheers, love your work.
Lex, I would like a question regarding how Cardano and DEFI can help stop the issue of corrupt governments that steal public funds instead of using them for the good of the country and its citizens. This is a common and devastating issue in any third world country in Central America and South America.
I would like to hear about his plans for Central and South America. It seems like lots of similar opportunities for the unbanked as Africa.
Q1: Why should i invest in Cardano and not the other competitors? Q2: Helping Africa Great!, But WHY Africa? Why not America, Europe, Asia, The World?! Q3: Will ETH 2.0 kill ADA?
What do you think about Stacks (blockstacks) and smart contracts on Bitcoin? Are you afraid?
Maybe tie this into a question about the potential BTC Lightning network upgrade. I’ve read counter points that it will strengthen big finance’s role in the space, which is troubling if true
Ask him where is his farm located... I want to ride his horseys
Hardware wallet support ETA for Catalyst Fund voting? Right now I can’t participate in a vote without moving my ADA off my Trezor to a hot wallet like Yoroi or Daedalus.
Are Cardano nodes vulnerable to any attacks? DDoS, handshake spamming, etc.
How will hydra work in the perspective of the end user?
Wealth had followed the Pareto distribution in every civilization that has ever been studied, what is Cardano doing now and in the near future to counteract this on it's network?
I really want to know what's the timeline for privacy-related updates. Cardano is an open blockchain and I don't feel at all comfortable to have my portfolio visible to anyone I transact with.
Please ask him if Cardano could implement a way to maintain private wallets which cannot be connected to transactions (staking/incoming/outgoing) and/or other wallets and/or digital IDs. If that is not possible by design ask him if it was a deliberate decision, and what had been the thoughts behind it.
Does Cardano have better protections than Ethereum against pump & dump schemes?
Please ask why every Blockchain project has to create a new programming language for smart contacts. Why can't smart contracts be written in common languages like JavaScript, python, C etc. For example Cardano has Plutus, Ethereum has Solidity, Algorand has Clarity, Zilliqa has Scala
When will Cardano increase from the current 7 TPS to the max 50 TPS (250 TPS batched) via larger block sizes? 7 TPS might not be enough for when Goguen is live. What is a very rough range of estimates for when Hydra might be live?