Hi! I have a bunch of general questions about Cardano:
Is there any IRC channel where you people hang out?
Any mailing list?
Why did IOHK decide to not hold an open ICO?
Why did IOHK target East Asia exclusively, specially Japan?
Is there any OTC market where one could trade ADA <> BTC with escrowing?
I do have a few more technical questions, but it would be probably better if I open a separate thread for those.
I am especially concerned about point 3 and 4 because I can’t think of any good reason for doing that for a PoS crypto, it seems to me like a very odd way to start.
No IRC channel that I know, there is a telegram room out there
IOHK has a mailing list, and the CF has a mailing list on the homepage
IOHK did not do the sale. IOHK was contracted to design and build Cardano.
IOHK had a long list of demands before it would accept the contract. One of the requirements was that the sale’s participants had to be put through compliance. Another was that each jurisdiction needed to be approved by a legal opinion. This pretty much guaranteed that most jurisdictions, such as the US, were excluded.
It is open source. But the stack, built from the ground up by IOHK, requires a lot of uncommon skill sets. Not that we don’t have some outside people looking at it, but many of the developers in crypto were trained on the Bitcoin tech.
IOHK is contractually obligated to work on Cardano until 2020. 2018 is where the bulk of the development will be finished and deployed. 2019 and beyond will see advanced technology integrations.
After, IOHK is still incentivized as it took partial payment in Ada itself. We have made a public announcement on this already. IOHK Ada is locked with 1/3 becoming unlocked every year. To date, IOHK has not sold any Ada on the market.
I see there is now a new Discord server available (note that cardanohub.org still have a link that says “Slack”).
Yeah I saw the newsletter form, but I actually was thinking in a Mailman style mailing list (like bitcoin-dev).
I’m a bit lost about Cardano’s early days: who contracted IOHK? was Attain Corporation in charge of the initial sale? what happened with that company after that? were they related to CARDANO GAMING GROUP ltd.?
Good questions: Cardano was initiated by a large group of crypto investors and enthusiasts in Asia. They originally focused on gaming but that group renamed to just Cardano Group I thought. To focus on computation services more generally and all the other aspects of blockchain, including private networks, there is an entity now called Emurgo (I just visited them up in Tokyo, and they have a new office.). The foundation is responsible (mandated by the Swiss foundation’s charter) for the Ada holders. They are charged with acting in the Ada holders best interests. All entities are wholly owned or ran by separate, independent groups. IOHK proposed the structure, and we thought this would be a more stable structure than the foundation - dev model most commonly used. Without naming names, this seems to be the case In any case, to ensure Cardano lives far into the future, a treasury and governance system will be added to Cardano. With that, other entities could be funded and development contracts, should IOHK do a poor job, be given to other groups
I am trying to learn more about Cardano’s history and understand who is who in this big project. My initial concern was about the initial distribution of ADA: in the same way a premined PoW altcoin is seen as unfair by most people, a PoS where a small party owns the initial stakes/tokens would be undesired, although, I understand that the bootstrap of any new crypto is the most vulnerable moment of its lifetime as it’s very susceptible to bad actor, so some level of centralized guarding is probably necessary until the network is big enough.
Could it be that Cardano requiring a high-level of specialized knowledge and skills will be an Achille’s Heel in a few years? What happens after 2020 if IOHK does decide to bail completely? Seems like the project would rot. Yes, it’s open source, but it would be almost impossible for the general hacker community to pick up and run with the project.
(Note that I am very interested in Cardano and want to see it succeed, but I always try to take these “devil’s advocate” perspectives to keep an objective view).
I can understand your thinking. But I am not concerned. Cardano will have a built in treasury system and the community can hire firms or its own core team. If IOHK does our job right, it will not be hard to maintain SL. To ensure IOHK is doing well, the Cardano Foundation is required to do periodic reviews of IOHK code. IOHK is highly incentivized though to make Cardano the best it can be.
Thanks for the info Jeremy, and I understand if you can’t comment on this, but would you assume that IOHK will continue to work on Cardano after 2020? Is it the goal of IOHK to continue their involvement with the development of Cardano after 2020? I’m sure some investors (myself included) are likely to purchase ada and hold beyond 2020. I think it’s best that cardano is not owned and run by one company, but I also wonder what will happen after the contract ends. My thinking is the community would vote to hire the best team to work on development, and that would probably still be IOHK at that point, so IOHK would probably still do most of the development after 2020…
In any case, to ensure Cardano lives far into the future, a treasury and governance system will be added to Cardano. With that, other entities could be funded and development contracts, should IOHK do a poor job, be given to other groups 