aa YES, it is still in the plan, but indeed good thinking! The true benefit is NOT to use such languages 
but inseparability is quite important at that early stage too!
I am aware that the actual lang for smart contracts are not Haskell but a simplified dialect
Contrary to what you wrote, any K defined language can be used to write dApps on the future smart contracts platform, not just Plutus.
Source: Charles on Reddit Reddit - Dive into anything
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lyrx1, I agree that Charles has an intuitive aesthetic sense; and I agree that Jobs’ hyper-focused creative ambition often resulted in a type of cruelty that Charles does not have (which I’m sure the team appreciates very much).
However, IMHO, Charles is not a perfectionist in the purest definition of that word. Perfection is the enemy of progress and it’s clear that he understands this when you hear him talk about the project’s “technical debt.” For those who are not familiar with that phrase, in software development projects “technical debt” has a very specific meaning: It means that a team consciously makes choices that represent tradeoffs, which result in less than perfect code in the short-run, but the code is good enough to meet a minimum level of quality. Then later, they know they must fix the imperfect code so that it works more perfectly over the long-run.
I believe that is one of Charles’ most significant strengths, i.e., he understands that perfection is never possible, but he (and the team) have a strong awareness of how to prioritize their time and resources to ship code that works very well in most cases. And when the code breaks, they have well-designed human and software protocols in place to fix the code and push it out more efficiently than any other project that I’ve seen.
Those are subtle but important distinctions because being trapped by perfection leads to failure and so does being sloppy and constantly deploying broken code. Charles and the team typically find the optimal balance between those two extremes, which is one of the most significant reasons why I believe this project has the best chance of success over the long-term.
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Yes, very well to all of what you are saying! I just love to contemplate about any potential weeknesses or strengths of such a project: It seems to be crucial to find out, if it will succeed or not. There is one thing that still makes me think:
In Ethereum we saw that it can be dangerous if a project is too generic, too ambitious or tries to solve too many problems at the same time. The EVM, the Ethereum World Computer, that was something really gigantic, wasn’t it. But gigantic things tend to fail, like the Titanic, that sank.
So, ist Cardano too big? Doesn’t it try to solve ALL the current problems in the blockchain technology? It wants to make EVERYTHING better, not just something. Sometimes I am asking myself, if some more specific, more pragmatic solutions for isolated problems might be better. Think about the scalability for instance. It is obvious at the moment that neither Bitcoin nor Ethereum scale well. Cardano of course promises to scale much better. That would be a single step, but big enough I suppose. There is currently no blockchain that has proven to scale well when used world wide.
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These are all valid concerns. I think our perception of a project is based on our life, professional, and technical experience. For example, when I look at Cardano, I don’t see a huge monolithic project. I see several discrete, interdependent, and synergistic projects, each of which has an essential purpose and interface to the other projects. This is true at the macro-level (e.g., the Cardano blockchain protocol, Daedalus, ADA, Ouroboros, Treasuries) and at the micro-level (the logical components and interfaces embedded within each of these projects).
Scalability is Inherent in Cardano. Each of these projects is managed by a separate internal team because each project requires a different set of skills and experience. There would be no added benefit to any of these projects or our community if Charles/team said, “Team, let’s stop all these projects and focus everybody on scalability, stat!” This is because, for example, Dr. Lars is an expert in optimizing large-scale web apps, but Dr. Larangeira is an expert in public-key cryptography, banking, and fault-tolerant aeronautical engineering. More specifically, each member of the team is already building scalability into the parts of the system for which they are responsible.
Scaling Back Up to Your Broader Concern. The reason I described the things above is because the issue of scalability is already a core focus of the entire Cardano project, but how scalability is actually achieved in the real world depends on deep knowledge and experience in many domains. Additionally, it requires thoughtful development across all the discrete components (and many others) that I described above in parallel because they are all indispensable components of achieving holistic scalability on every level (technical, financial, economic, societal, political, etc.) The same logic is true for any mission-critical goal: Every major goal for any large-scale project requires intimate collaboration between groups working in parallel on interdependent components of an integrated system.
Regarding the Titanic and Hugeness. The Titanic sank because of a single point of failure: The captain of the ship was negligent and took unnecessary risks, resulting in hitting the iceberg that sunk the ship. In contrast, and by definition and design, the Cardano project is the exact opposite of a single point of failure. Additionally, size/scale in itself is not inherently problematic; it’s the combination of system complexity and system design that determines the probability of failure. Although the mathematics of any blockchain are inherently complex, the system design of distributed ledger technology (e.g., Bitcoin and Cardano’s blockchains) is conceptually elegantly simple, which is one of the reasons these blockchains are so fault-tolerant and resistant to hacks.
Complexity + Poor System Design Kills, Not Roadmap Scope. Every project has a roadmap, which can be as ambitious as the team wants without added risk of failure as long as the design of their systems is sufficient to account for the complexity of their systems. Complexity combined with poor design is the real killer of any project, not the scope of the roadmap.
It Takes Time to Understand & Appreciate Cardano. Many of our community members already know this; so, this is for newbies: As I learn more and more about the Cardano project, I’m continuously impressed with the foresight, risk mitigation, and elegant system design that is implemented throughout the project. It takes time to see and appreciate all these things, but the reward is increased confidence in the team, the roadmap, and the future that Cardano represents for all of us.
Thank You Cardano Team! I’m so deeply thankful to the team for building Cardano because I believe it’s the only viable long-term path for us to escape the tyranny and humanitarian atrocities of many national governments on Earth today. These governments are infested with bad-faith and incompetent politicians who cannot resist the temptation to abuse their power over our economic and political systems, which destructively impacts the quality of our lives and our planet in virtually every conceivable way. (Sorry, that part was a little off-topic, but it’s all interconnected.)
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BTW, I should say that I’m still studying EOS to understand how it works on a technical level; so, I’m currently biased toward Cardano because it’s the first blockchain project that I’ve ever seen that addresses all the most fundamental problems associated with Gen2 blockchains (scalability, governance integrity, governance decentralization, atomic swaps to eliminate centralized exchanges, stronger privacy, etc.) in a way that is truly transparent and credible. And obviously the skill, experience and talents of the team inspires a great deal of confidence.
Up to this point, my initial impression of EOS is that it feels kind of cultish around Larimer and Blumer. When I see them speak, I don’t feel a connection with them and it doesn’t feel like a true team and community like Cardano does. This is not a technical factor, but it’s an essential component to building trust within a community. The EOS roadmap is very impressive, but I still need to spend more time reading their WP and determining whether their technical design and business models are philosophically consistent with the open source spirit, which is essential to long-term user adoption. (If anybody else has insight into these issues, I’d love to learn from you.)
The biggest concern that I have with any blockchain project is this: Their leadership lacks the courage and integrity to resist the pressures of governments to corrupt the integrity of their systems. When I listen to Charles and research the team members on the Cardano Project, I don’t see anything that would suggest any risk of corruption or breach of systemic integrity. So, even if EOS’ roadmap appears more impressive (I’m not sure yet. . . ), all the bells and whistles are irrelevant if one day a backdoor is built into their wallet that feeds all our transactions to a corrupt and/or tyrranical government agency.
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eos is an erc20 token with no mainnet and 1 bil ico dont compare that shitcoin to ada pls / thx 
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I really appreciated this thoughtful post, Chad.
I agree that an “exclusive winner” is not necessarily the only outcome, but there is little doubt in my mind that blockchain technology will unfold in a similar way that computer operating systems have. Microsoft dominates the world of PCs with over 80% global PC market share and Android/Google dominates mobile OS with nearly 60% global market share (and growing). The same concentration of platform and corporate power will almost certainly be true for blockchains, which is why I place such a high premium on Cardano’s decentralized governance approach.
However, there are structural and economic incentives for stakeholders within the global economy to concentrate even more power in a single blockchain platform vs. the history of computer OS market concentration. In fact, history has shown us many times that the best technologies do not always become the most widely adopted technologies. Cardano appears to be the best technology (“best” meaning it fulfills all the core requirements that I personally believe are important), but whether it becomes the dominant platform remains to be seen. I think this is where Cardano’s community-centric focus gives it a powerful advantage over EOS and most other projects.
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That’s really great! That means EOS has no meaningful chance over the long-run. Thank you for sharing your insight.
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@ADALove, you are saying »Divide and conquer« is the old principle
that will be applied in the Cardano project to tackle all the manifold
challenges. Good! I hope it will work.
But why are you saying that an ambitious road map does not imply
higher complexity? Of course it does! The more challenges you have, and
the more difficult your problems are, the more complexity there will
be. – The best design will help? – In God We Trust!
And what does make you sure that there will never be a relentless
captain in the Cardano team, maybe a guy like Francesco Schettino who
wrecked the Costa Concordia? There will be no single point of failure
in Cardano? There will be no leaders, no captains with too much
power and responsibility? You are sure? I am not sure!
But I am with with you when it comes to the final destination:
Satoshis initial idea was to set up something that could become an
alternative to today’s rotten financial system. That basic idea is why
I love blockchain technology, and why I trust in Cardano more than in
anything else.
But in the end all this will not be an technical item. It will be a
social item, and technology will vanish in the background. There will
be larger powers fighting on stage than just technical
finesse. Technology will become what it always used to be: A utility a
tool for people to work with.
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Agreed with most of your points, but I think there’s a misunderstanding of some of my comments:
But why are you saying that an ambitious road map does not imply
higher complexity?
Dear lyrx1, I didn’t say that. 
I said that size/scale/scope by themselves is not the problem; it’s the combination of systemic complexity and poor system design in many projects, which are much more significant contributors to systemic collapse than the size/scale or the scope of a project’s long-term roadmap.
For example, the Hoover Dam in the United States was the largest infrastructure project in human history (in the 1930s) and many people thought it would collapse and kill thousands of people, but the project was successful because the engineers truly understood how to decompose all the complexity inherent within that huge project into manageable and relatively simple chunks, each of which was integrated seamlessly into the larger project scope.
That’s what high-quality system design does: It simplifies the engineering process to reduce the net complexity of large projects so that they’re more fault-tolerant, more sustainable, easier to upgrade and maintain, and much simpler to execute than they seem to the untrained eye.
And what does make you sure that there will never be a relentless captain in the Cardano team, maybe a guy like Francesco Schettino who wrecked the Costa Concordia?
At this moment, my confidence in Charles is primarily based on his manifest understanding of the flaws in human nature, including his own human nature. His self-awareness gives him enough humility to recognize that no blockchain will ever be truly scalable, interoperable, or sustainable if the project’s leadership controls all the decision-making processes forever.
More specifically, Cardano is being developed based on decentralized governance protocols, which are being coded directly into Cardano’s blockchain. This is the essence of a DAO that is impervious to human corruption. Thus, my confidence in Cardano is only temporarily based on the project’s current leadership. However, my long-run confidence is based on Cardano’s decentralized human and technical governance processes, which are increasingly enforced by the blockchain automatically without any corruptible human agency at all.
There will be no single point of failure in Cardano?
I didn’t say that. My point was that Cardano’s technical design and implementation process is such that single points of failure are relentlessly hunted down and eliminated within the context of Cardano’s scientific approach to system development. Thus, the team’s entire philosophy and Cardano’s decentralized technical design are intended to eliminate single points of failure, including failures of human judgement. That doesn’t mean there won’t be temporary hiccups along the way, but it does mean that human and technical failures will be much less frequent when compared to other projects.
There will be no leaders, no captains with too much power and responsibility? You are sure? I am not sure!
I didn’t say any of those things. I think I’ve clarified these points above.
Bottom Line: When a system is fundamentally designed to account for the complexity of large-scale deployment, it will perform far better than projects that spend less time and attention on system design. No other blockchain project comes close to Cardano in this respect. Superior system design reduces execution risk, which reduces a long list of potential problems throughout the life-cycle of any project. The Cardano team’s technical design and human governance philosophies and protocols dramatically reduce many categories of risk for the project and for all of humanity. This is one of the many reasons why I have confidence in this project.
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Dear Adafans_io, I just spent some more time reading EOS’ whitepaper. Overall, I agree that it is no competition to Cardano, but I think we should be more precise in our evaluation of EOS because it’s not accurate for us to assume their blockchain is based on ERC-20. Most of the people in my network are very smart and have the resources to rigorously investigate the merits of any blockchain; so, I have to be more precise in my logic when I describe why Cardano is superior to EOS because people will not trust our judgement if we are sloppy or inaccurate with our evaluations. With that in mind. . . .
Based on their whitepaper (WP), only EOS’ ongoing ICO is based on ERC-20, but the actual blockchain that they claim to be developing is not based on ERC-20. The WP states:
PLEASE NOTE: CRYPTOGRAPHIC TOKENS REFERRED TO IN THIS WHITE PAPER REFER TO CRYPTOGRAPHIC TOKENS ON A LAUNCHED BLOCKCHAIN THAT ADOPTS THE EOS.IO SOFTWARE. THEY DO NOT REFER TO THE ERC-20 COMPATIBLE TOKENS BEING DISTRIBUTED ON THE ETHEREUM BLOCKCHAIN IN CONNECTION WITH THE EOS TOKEN DISTRIBUTION.
There are many people today drinking the EOS cool-aid and if we incorrectly say that the EOS tech is based on ERC-20, they will say things like, “Haha! See, you don’t even know what you’re talking about. EOS is based on a completely new blockchain architecture that blows everything else away. . . .”
Additionally, their WP states:
EOS.IO software utilizes the only decentralized consensus algorithm capable of meeting the performance requirements of applications on the blockchain, Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS).
This will lead many people to believe that EOS’ “Delegated Proof of Stake” implementation is exactly the same as Cardano’s DPoS. As a community, we should be prepared to explain why Cardano’s DPoS is better and/or why EOS’ DPoS is just vaporware that will never actually work. Since most people are probably not technically sophisticated enough to describe the technical differences, I think we should focus on the comparative credibility of the projects. So. . . .
The most significant issues that I see with EOS are as follows:
-
Untrustworthy Documentation. Their FAQ is filled with weasel words and constant hedging to avoid making any kind of concrete statement about the functionality, viability, or value of EOS.
-
Confusing Token Distribution. The relationship between the ERC-20-based ICO and the EOS tokens is deliberately vague and confusing; thus, many people have expectations about the value of their current EOS tokens that are inaccurate and/or unrealistic. When their ICO has ended, this issue will become much more obvious to their users, which is when they will likely have a user insurrection that will cause their EOS brand to implode.
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No Technical Substantiation. They claim their WP is a “Technical White Paper,” but it would be more accurate to call it a “Marketing White Paper” because it’s really just a glorified marketing pitch. There are no math/logic proofs, no verifiable mathematical examples of the EOS system’s logic, and it’s primarily a bunch of technical buzzwords strung together to create the illusion of technical rigor, but I have not seen any working examples of their TestNet systems; and obviously they have no MainNet. (Has anybody here ever compiled and tested their TestNet from their GitHub code? Unfortunately, I don’t have time to doing any meaningful testing with it, but I would be willing to keep an open mind if somebody here has any experience testing EOS.)
-
Lack of Team Talent, Skills & Experience. Their block.one website only displays Larimer and Blumer, with nobody else listed. Are we supposed to believe that a two-man company is going to change the world with a “revolutionary new operating system-like construct”? Based on their GitHub, they only have 5-8 programmers that consistently contribute to their project, including Larimer. Of that group, only 2-3 of them appear to have some solid and relevant experience for a project of this kind. And as far as I can tell, those people are working on EOS part-time because they also work for Object Computing, Inc. A project of this size and scope requires dozens of developers and engineers across many domains. Thus, there is no meaningful chance that the tiny EOS team could ever build anything close to the “operating system-like construct” described in their WP.
-
Untrustworthy Financial Flows. Nowhere in their documentation, website, WP, GitHub, etc. is there any concrete information about how they intend to use the proceeds from their ETH-based ICO. They currently have a $9 billion “market cap” (which should be called “network marketing hype value” because “market cap” is totally misleading); so, they have more than enough money to hire 100s of developers if they wanted to. Yet, they only have a few part-time programmers working on their project? (Playing devil’s advocate: Maybe they hide all their other devs in a top-secret underground bunker, but that seems unlikely.)
-
Lots of Hype, But No Substance. Their EOS website has videos of Larimer and Blumer giving speeches and interviews in rooms full of non-technical people. These people even admit they’re non-technical, saying things like, “I’m a graphic designer and I don’t understand how all this tech works, but it’s truly amazing and will change the world!” (That was a paraphrase of several statements I heard in their videos.) Thus, there is no meaningful peer-review process. No meaningful technical audits. No meaningful verification or accountability whatsoever regarding their technical claims.
Bottom Line: I have only scratched the surface of all the questionable technical, economic, ethical, and governance issues associated with EOS, but I think the points above should be sufficient to help our community come to a definitive conclusion about the long-term viability of the EOS project. This should also be useful in giving us all the ability to persuasively communicate why EOS is not even in the same universe as Cardano. In fact, EOS/block.one is operating in a parallel universe where marketing = technical prowess and hype = market cap.
Viva la Cardano!
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@ADALove thanks for this well-thought reply. And I do apologize for any misunderstandings that I have to be blamed.
I hope that we will soon get answers. Only the future can tell. For me, it took me almost two years to get into Scala. Now as I feel quite good about this, I have to face tha fact that there is another challenge waiting for me: Haskell !
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Thank you for to pushing a bit higher the discussion.
I am a big believer of Cardano, but the EOS project has an approach which is really good and they are working a lot (https://github.com/EOSIO/eos/graphs/contributors) based on the previous works on Graphene (Bitshares/Steem).
They are focused on having “enough” decentralisation level by giving some nodes power to run the network ; so normal users will be allowed to send a number of transactions/computation aligned with the stake they own (with no fees) and some nodes would have a specific role which is running the computation, generating blocks, storing data and would get reward (coinbase-like).
EOS is also a great project, please don’t do the easiest way of rating project like shitcoin/bestCoinEver, you are better than that Cardano fans
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Dear @louptheron , I appreciate your attempt to be balanced, but let’s take a closer look at Graphene/Steemit. . . .
Steemit has a relatively simple data model implemented in a very simple Web-based environment, which any competent ETH/Solidity dev could build on top of ETH in a couple months (probably even a few weeks). So that’s not a very good showcase of the power of Graphene.
Does Graphene Really Exist? If So, Where’s the Performance Proof? BitShares is more interesting than Steemit, but I haven’t seen any technical audit or verification that it’s not simply another centralized CFD exchange substantially masquerading as a decentralized exchange (or with hybrid de- and centralized features); thus, there’s no actual proof that Graphene even exists as a truly new blockchain technology. Only a source code audit would confirm this. And if it does exist, there’s still no proof that it can actually perform “orders of magnitude” faster than ETH as their marketing pitches claim.
What Security Trade-Offs Does EOS/Graphene Make? They provide no technical details or analysis of what security trade-offs they have made to achieve the claimed performance boost. There are ALWAYS trade-offs; and their users deserve to know what they are.
More Deceptive White Paper Games. Again, every single time they present a “White Paper,” they fail to present anything scientific at all. I’ve demonstrated that with EOS already; and here’s the same behavior with their Graphene/BitShares “White Paper,” which is still “under construction.” Why is it under construction? Because “. . . we have taken down the old whitepapers in order to properly review them under legal guidance.” In other words, their lawyers realized that the claims they have been making do not match the reality of Graphene’s actual capabilities and they’re preparing for the storm of lawsuits on the horizon.
Verifying Marketing Sources. Has anybody in this community ever tried to verify any of Graphene/EOS claims? Whenever you try, you will get trapped in a cleverly constructed circular marketing jungle that is powered by Larimer’s Steemit blogging platform and/or the BitShares.org website. For example, look at all the sources cited on the BitShares Wikipedia page, which Larimer or his team obviously wrote as another glorified marketing pitch. All of the PRIMARY sources point to websites that Larimer owns and controls. Thus, all the media mentions that Graphene/BitShares/OES receive are being “substantiated” only by documents that Larimer has created or influenced others to create. And many of those sources have absolutely nothing to do with Bitshares/Graphene or they link to content that is so shallow that it is meaningless.
Faking It Until They Make It. Based on all the information that is publicly available right now, it appears that Larimer and his crew are faking it until they make it, which might be fine if they were just individuals applying for a job at Starbucks. But they’re playing with billions of USD of other people’s money right now. This is a very dangerous game, which will likely end badly for him and the thousands of users who have been substantially misled into buying his EOS tokens.
Bottom Line: My professional life has required me to investigate many technical, economic, and geopolitical systems, which makes it pretty easy for me to detect most scams and unrealistic claims of corporate executives and politicians. In this case, there is no doubt whatsoever that everything Larimer is doing is based on half-truths, deceptively presented information, clever manipulation of his Steemit ecosystem, and a lot of hustle. I admire his hustle, but I’ll never invest a single penny in anything he is doing.
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Thank you @ADALove for taking the time to contribute, very good content.
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No one so far has attempted something as serious and as big as what Cardano is attempting. There’s bits and pieces of other currencies that emulate what Cardano is doing, for instance implementing or transitioning to Proof of Stake or BFT (e.g. Ethereum’s trying to implement CASPER, IOTA is PoS, XRP does their own version of BFT, called Ripple Consensus), but nothing quite as formal in its approach or as ambitious as Cardano where it aims to be this ‘glue’ for all available and future cryptocurrencies and moreover for all legacy fiat worldwide. I hate analogies, but if I must, think of what Cardano is doing as building the TCP/IP of cryptocurrencies… 40+ years later what Cerf and Khan produced, is still underlying the internet. That’s how basal is what Cardano is attempting to build. And this is why the stakes are sky high. They cannot afford to f**k this up, and they HAVE TO get it right the first time, thus the NASA Rover or Boeing 747-like rigidity of their approach… It’s freaking herculean, it’s ginormous, ballsy as hell and has the potential to upset the Earth’s financial status quo. This is why I hate it when people keep touting Charles as though he’s some Steve Jobs… Sure, he’s as smart as they come but even he himself said he dislikes the Jobs comparisons. If I must indulge, Jobs can’t touch Charles’ intellect, but that’s just my opinion… Be that as it may, this project’s importance and fruition is infinitely more important than Charles, or Cardano itself… We need good shepherding to bootstrap this, but eventually this will take a life on its own that will far exceed mine or anyone’s lifetime on this forum, or IOHK, or Cardano…
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I seem to like the issue’s you bring up, I will focus on just one here
Cardano will never be able to monopolize the blockchain market cause the code is all open source -
if anyone thinks that what Cardano is working on is just blockchain v.3 than they must have an idea of how technology works and possibly they are set in what they believe, once the blockchain code is written to communicate with every language across platforms with side chains involved what reason would there be for another version? maybe to be the protocol the internet operates on? that my friend will be the new frontier— if what Cardano wishes to achieve comes to fruition than there will be need for a new internet protocol, possibly a new language - a new language that can beat AI - a new language that can differentiate
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Yes, it will be interesting to see where all this A.I. development brings us… I’m sure google will jump in the game pretty soon as well. I suppose the internet will probably be slowly replaced or upgraded to have quantum proof security, with everything running on blockchains and accessed and searched and sorted by intelligent A.I.
I second this - thanks for the very deep thought replies here @AdaLove . Very informative and helpful and advances the community knowledge as a whole. So much better than the “XYZ to the MOON!” and “when will it hit X dollars?” on every FB group lol.
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