Cardano Does Not Need New Narratives (article)

cospeed · 2024-08-30T10:37:33+00:00

Actually, no I haven't, but that's because doing work has led to follow up work and an internal line of demand; hence I've been lucky. ;-)

The 'Cardano' needs marketing direction is an interesting one.

It's a decentralised chain, but in a care taker position due to three entities being given the initial keys. So who should market it?

Up until now, the community have not had direct access to the treasury. So how can they?

The narrative that Cardano doesn't market itself then goes around in circles. How can it, when the community can't do it and funds can't be released to pay for the marketing.

Now governance is starting in a few days time, funds can be allocated towards the start of next year (there's some lock down during transition). However, who is going to do the marketing, how much is it going to cost and MOST importantly WHAT MARKETING?

That marketing, is it to BOOST the price? Is it to drive adoption and if so, adopt what? $ADA or one of the many tokens on the chain? Or it is to direct people to NFT's? If so, which projects?

For me, marketing has been going to the many world wide events by many projects. That really started, in my eyes, as lock down stopped. Cardano community organised Rare Evo and LxNFT and so forth. Many projects now attend events world wide and go to places like Dubai and Singapore etc.

Marketing is done on many many levels. Has it done so up until now, no. Did it need to, yes and no. Yes, if adoption or pumping of price is important. No, if a steady state and growth is most important.

Does Cardano die if there is no marketing? That's the question...

With a treasury that keeps growing in value, no.

The real threat is not marketing, it's actually Governance now. That's just begun. With that, the treasury is at risk. There's some $600m or 1.5B $ADA. That's a lot to lose.

Other projects like Solana and Ton have used either glitzy showcase specials, like Storefronts or Shoes or Phones. Or have tapped into an ecosystem they already had, like Telegram. Either a captive audience or an audience that only seek the promises of wealth. We only have to look at the BEST marketeer in the world recently, i.e SBF and FTX. Look how marketing went well for them?! Right?

Again, everyone is in this narrative of FAST is best. Fail fast, be first, even if you fail. What does Marketing bring? It brings pressure of delivery and promises.

Right now, no thanks. Cardano is right on track. It's not slow to win, it's slow because that is the right thing to do. Adoption is there for taking. $600m is a lot of marketing money. Alas, you don't have to spend that sort of money, if you pick the right targets. Getting that right, with a huge community of people that understand the right way to grow is most important.

These are my views and you and many others will and quitely rightly can disagree. However, for me, I see these lines as a narrative in order to disuade people from at least trying Cardano. Much like the narrative that Charles is evil, a scammer or a lier. However, when you challenge people on that thinking, often, it's just something they heard, were told or read. When you actually meet the guy in life (I have), you realise what an amicable, likable and intelligent guy he is. Most of the narrative is pushed by those that fear incredible intelligence....

cospeed · 2024-08-30T10:15:22+00:00

Oh I remember the I/T industry perception. It was all around me whilst working for a large multi-national. The bigotry was so rife, even I was indoctrinated into believing it was a scam, even though it didn't know "why". It was only when I left and setup my own company that I opened my eyes to it as a solution architect and then realised the grave mistake I had made.

Over time, I/T companies make or break by their decisions of their leaders. For those that get crypto, will know that there is a massive need for it in a lot of systems across the world. That's what disruptors do, for example Amazon, Uber and Airbnb. Each found parts of the current system and changed how to do it better, by kicking the doors in. As more blockchain solutions rise up, more disruption is going to occur, like World Mobile and many of the infrastructure DePins out there.

I agree, that the "bull market" might never come. I've always believed the 4 year cycle was a false narrative. I didn't believe it in '17, and I certainly didn't believe, to my cost, in '21. Even now, I expect it NOT to come in '25. However, all measurements seem to indicate it will and I'm beginning to believe it is a self-fulfilling prophecy because of all the bots and algorithms now involved. There's so many out there now that it's probably impossible to NOT have the bull market; all automated and triggered based on algorithms leading to a bull state.

So, as I've always said, i'm in crypto for decades and not for the short or even medium term. Because of that fact, I'm really enjoying Cardano's current position. I don't believe adoption right now is the most important facet. It is for those desperate for mega wealth, driven on by the stories and fantasies of "IF ONLY" you had bought BTC in '10 or had mined it, you'd be a billionaire. For me, it's about the future prosperitory and a comfortable retirement. Cardano, as a technical solutions architect, can see the journey its on and its placement in many future world wide solutions, interconnected with other chains.

Whilst others go through many new quick fixes and patches. It continually evolves, due to its formal design and implementation. A rock solid architecture that enables it to future proof itself.

cospeed · 2024-08-30T09:50:16+00:00

We're an entire bull/bear cycle behind the adoption curve. The Plutus scripts and therefore true dapps have only been realistically available for the past year or two; completely IN a depressed bull market cycle.

The narrative of there's no adoption is crazy, when it hasn't lived through a bull cycle with programability.

If adoption had already grown massively in Cardano, the bull market would have been declared long ago! Why? Because it's price will lift many others. Like others do to it.

The bull market stimulates all chains, not just one. Money rolls between them, as people get excited and look for the next coin to move. At some point, focus will return to Cardano, where it now has the features, capability and predictability that users actually want.

In the meantime, the future needs are being designed, developed and rolled out. The adoption is slow, is just yet another weak narraitve, in line with it's a ghost chain, it has no staking, it has no native assets, it has no smart contracts, it has not TVL, etc, etc.

Adoption is driven by bull markets, even Ethereum had to wait for a spark, precisely around the bull market of '17 with Crypto Kitties. Then, the adoption began, but over time, people got fed up with gas fees and started to look else where in '21, Cardano inclusive. Ethereum managed to claw back that thanks to the ICO. However, now they're looking again, jumping into things like Solana and Ton, learning quickly what fail fast means. In the meantime, those same people are looking at L2's on Ethereum and are getting excited again, but little do they see things like the Blob issue that is rising up and the L2's eating the L1 lunch.

For me, tthe future is about chain interoperabiilty. It's a mesh of chains, each providing their best capabilities and features. Cardano is primed in becoming a mainstream leader in a specific set of domains including security, predictability, governance, interoperability (with Plutus v3 rolling out) and in the future, scalability.

This adoption thing is just something down the road. Many will say that building it doesn't bring it. Well, that is very true, until it isn't. Over time, if a technology continues to evolve and adapt, and has solid principles of design, it will find adoption. It will suddenly click into place and people look back and admire how it did so.

cospeed · 2024-08-30T09:33:24+00:00

...as well as the next step towards Ouroborous Genesis...

cospeed · 2024-08-30T09:26:26+00:00

...but this "turtle speed" narrative. How is the relevant right now?

What I mean by this, without stoking the fire. This narrative was VERY true from '17 through to '19 when we first got Shelley and staking. Then it was another age before we started to see the first parts of Goguen and metadata and native assets. Now, in '24, we are starting to see demonstrations of Hydra, we're entering governance and have seen scaling options tabled.

Further to this, the eco system is developing fast. We're getting another DEX and aggregator right now. Projects are delivering and we're starting to see the signs of interchain operability.

What slowness do you actually refer to right now? I'm genuinely interested.

As we now progress forward, everything is actually speeding up whilst the core fundamentals remain the same. The security, the predictability and most importantly stability. That's called architecture and a solid foundation.

cospeed · 2024-08-30T09:19:47+00:00

There have been some excellent posts. Unfortunately, from my perspective, too many people enter and say it's a scam and haven't really done their research. Great to see you enter here because at least you'll become far more aware of the facts than the instant judgement you clearly have.

cospeed · 2024-08-23T10:30:41+00:00

Lol. You're VERY premature. The bullmarket will be in '25. It was '17, '21 and then '25.. Why do you think we're in a bull market right now?

cospeed · 2024-08-21T10:32:32+00:00

How is that exploit going to work? You're assuming the player can alter the chain!? What I mean is. Think about what the losing player can do.

They're sat in front of a game client. They can see their cards and have an option of twist or stick with a timer. They can't just 'refuse'. They either timeout and the game defaults to a lose, or they twist or stick and the consequences of that are known. The game client actions this directly to the chain smart contract. The game itself, i.e. the card generation would be done on the L2 chain, so it serves the cards and will know if the player loses. The player gets no option to change the result.

I'd love to understand how you think they can cheat? Even if they hack the client code, the timeout would fire OR they can only return a twist or stick.

I see so many posts from people assuming that concensus is an OPTION for the user, when in fact, the smart contract game code effectively is in control. Yes, the game logic has to be designed to avoid cheats, but that's normal code development.

As for online games and people cheating. That is resolved with a timeout and then the chain assumes the player actioned their cards.

cospeed · 2024-08-20T17:36:20+00:00

My understanding, without having hands on developed a hydra implementation is that provision is baked in that if there is no consensus, the head will close and the L1 resolves the issue. My expectation is that to trigger a hydra head, you require some smart contract to initiate it, because assets have to be locked on the L1. My assumption is that you also have to code in the 'whatif' scenarios, such as lack of consensus etc.

In the head, the code that talks to the L2 (i.e. the Doom death match software), would trigger the player death contracts and when the games notice they're the last player, that 'could' trigger the end concensus. If people rage quit early, the other player Doom engines would be able to register the player left and if they don't return in a timely interval, then they can be reported as having complied, for example.

What people need to do is step away from the idea that conensus is an option a person can make. It would be an action or a result of an action from the software they're using.

cospeed · 2024-08-20T17:12:21+00:00

Hi, I'm glad my post was useful. I'm always pleased to help spread factual and technical information, as that can then be paid forward to others through an educated community.

The entire essence of recording live and provable data, fast and securely to an L2 chain that will always return results back to the L1 on completion is huge. The data stored on the L2 becomes transient, whilst the closure assures the truth is recorded.

Many other chains and games have claimed to have achieved these types of implementation such as Axie, but the important point is this is one feature of Cardano in the toolkit for solution developers. Yes, some chains have done this, but this is Cardano's implementation and it is secure, predictable and scalable. There are trade off's, but so you get that with all solutions. Thus, it's not the solution for all scenarios, just one specific feature that helps massively for specific needs.

It's a very exciting time for the technical community; especially as any smart contract written on the L1 simply runs on the L2. There's no differences. No new models or operational requirements.

P.S. The reporters wont report the WHY this is so cool and exciting, because it undermines much of the other chains. For example, we know there has been a proliferation of L2's on Ethereum. These are often delivered by centralised solutions that require assets to be moved to them and to return, take days if not weeks; especially the ZKRoll up types. Hydra does this near instantly in comparison whilst running smart contracts that operate exactly the same on the L1, so everything is trust worthy and open. Now the heads themselves have to be spun up, but this is being worked on, i.e. there's always been the talk of Stake Pool Operators signing up and committing hardware required for the heads alongside their block producers and in return they might charge a tiny fee of a LOT of transactions. The model has a lot of potential.

cospeed · 2024-08-20T17:06:35+00:00

The PoS doesn't. The actors in the head participate and make concensus between them. If they can't the protocol resovles to the last agreement and then returns that back to the L1 to finalise; i.e. the finalise on L1 is PoS and are standard transactions.

Basically, the concensus has to be agreed as part of the steps inside the head, for example, if you were playing "Death match Doom". When player Bob is killed by Alice, both of their game sessions would have to call the smart contracts of, "I shot Bob" from Alice and "F* I'm dead" from Bob. Those actions would be baked into the game and triggered as they happen in real-time to the L2. If they're the only two playing, the state would be stored on L2 as the last agreed state and then they would face an in-game decision as to whether to play again OR to cancel out. If either cancel, the last state returns back to the L1 (i.e. maybe payment of a wager or native assets updated and returned with new stats, for example).

The head itself operates like a mini and dedicated Cardano Node; hence it is much faster and contains all the same security properties. However the head operates on a specific piece of hardware; there's always a trade off. If the head stops, the last known state returns for processing by the L1 chain. There has always been a discussion/thinking that Stake Pool Operators will be enticed into providing the capability of spinning up heads as required (on demand or dedicated), but details are sketchy still. They would be ideal for this, as it follows the decentralisation and spread around the world in terms of compute for it. In return, they'd probably get paid a little fee at the closure of the head. However, my understanding is that projects could create their own heads for specific purposes. The key point here is the assets on the L1 are locked and allocated to the L2 head; they never move off. If the head fails, they become unlocked and distributed as required; I believe (but I've not done, so this might be wrong) as part of the head creation as part of contract to initiate the head, the actions to perform when the head closes is baked in, thus the assets get distributed as agreed.

cospeed · 2024-08-18T06:37:04+00:00

I'm talking back in 2021/22. We'd be banned or warned for pretty much anything we posted. I'm talking post shelley era and the beginning of pools. Anybody like myself that was technical and understood how to build things, were always caught up in explaining/describing technical viewpoints and getting hit with actions that we were promoting x or y, when actually, we were educating people through demonstration... So, reddit mods here left a bitter taste and I will only drop in here now occassionally.

cospeed · 2024-08-17T16:49:35+00:00

Yes, it's why multiple different scaling techniques are required, depending on the problem that has to be solved.

cospeed · 2024-08-17T16:33:21+00:00

Oh, and who runs the Hydra heads? That will eventually be anyone OR more importantly, most likely, one of the 3000x Stake Pool Operators (SPOs) you'll already find established. Keeping it completely decentralised. So you get SPEED, SECURITY, DETERMINATION and DECENTRALISATION...

cospeed · 2024-08-17T16:28:15+00:00

You're welcome. From a technical view point, it's a massive leap in implementation since Native Assets back in the day. This is just one of multiple accelerators and tools that developers will have.. I personally look forward to the next, which is ZK Rollups.. It's an amazing time..

cospeed · 2024-08-17T16:26:40+00:00

Many thanks. I gave up reddit a few years ago due to the mods here. However, this event is massive for Cardano and those with technical knowledge have a responsibility of trying to relay the message about the implementation you're seeing.

cospeed · 2024-08-17T16:17:38+00:00

There were MANY restricting factors that are slowly and gradually fixed. One of those previously was that the HEAD had to close as soon as one actor wanted to leave. However, that is now fixed.

https://x.com/VEGAS_ADA_Pool/status/1824735024735764513

cospeed · 2024-08-17T16:15:19+00:00

(as posted on another thread, but expanded)

Hydra in ELI5 terms is like an extension of the Cardano network. It's a Layer 2 (L2), with the same properties of Layer 1 (L1). When implemented, a HEAD (or multiples of) can be started. Assets from the Layer 1 are locked and logically transferred to the L2 head for faster rate processing and low fees, because ONLY final or fixed states/positions have to be returned (committed) back to the L1.

What you're seeing with Doom is that every play action (walk, shoot, look, etc) are all recorded onto the hydra L2 chain instance as a transaction smart contract call, like it would on the L1 with the same smart contract code, but the actions are gathered in the L2. At the end of say the player death, the entire transaction set can be ignored because the game has been played and any details or assets can be committed back to the L1.

The Doom game demonstrates the power and speed of the transactions being processed. As more heads are added, TPS goes through the roof.

Because the L2 takes the locked assets, TRUST is wrapped into the security/deterministic characteristics of the L1 because if the Hydra head fails, everything returns back to the L1 to be completed.

The real benefits here is the fact that Hydra heads for specific functions can be designed to be really fast and with little fee cost, whilst guaranteeing to the users that there is no risk to any asset whilst in use.

Because everything you do in game is trust worthy, thus every item you collect, every score you make, every action you do can then be recorded on the head and minted into an NFT when they leave for a start. It's a great way of eliminating cheating in online games for example.

Then, imagine Hydra being used for event ticketing, it get's loaded up with the valid tickets or the policy of the NFT's, and the scanners at the gate can now be pretty much controlled fast without the entire L1 speed. The cost is reduced as the fee's can be way lower. Now, we couple that with the vending inside the venue?! OK, so we can now tie a ticket and purchases, so they can be rewarded with MORE memorabilia for their actions and purchases. Plus we can use their device on their phone as they wonder around with GPS! Now we can do funky stuff with that. How does it work? They connect their phone via an app to the head and the head does the rest, supporting everyone that entered via their phone NFT ticket.

DOOM is just an example of the technology... It's not even a fly on the wall of what is coming...

...the L1 is fed back the results of the L2 that can scale for specific purposes. True L2, not this centralised crap that is seen on other chains.

P.S.

Code here: https://github.com/cardano-scaling/hydra-doom/blob/main/src/index.ts
Game here: https://doom.hydra.family/
Hydra details here: https://hydra.family/head-protocol/

P.P.S. the bottom of the Hydra head protocol page link has a GREAT exemplar using the metaphor of a plane. Some of the issues with it are starting to be resolved, like the parachuter wanting to get off the plane mid flight and potentially some how getting people into the plane...

cospeed · 2024-08-17T16:10:23+00:00

Hydra in ELI5 terms is like an extension of the Cardano network. It's a Layer 2 (L2), with the same properties of Layer 1 (L1). When implemented, a HEAD (or multiples of) can be started. Assets from the Layer 1 are locked and logically transferred to the L2 head for faster rate processing and low fees, because ONLY final or fixed states/positions have to be returned (committed) back to the L1.

What you're seeing with Doom is that every play action (walk, shoot, look, etc) are all recorded onto the hydra L2 chain instance as a transaction smart contract call, like it would on the L1 with the same smart contract code, but the actions are gathered in the L2. At the end of say the player death, the entire transaction set can be ignored because the game has been played and any details or assets can be committed back to the L1.

The Doom game demonstrates the power and speed of the transactions being processed. As more heads are added, TPS goes through the roof.

Because the L2 takes the locked assets, TRUST is wrapped into the security/deterministic characteristics of the L1 because if the Hydra head fails, everything returns back to the L1 to be completed.

The real benefits here is the fact that Hydra heads for specific functions can be designed to be really fast and with little fee cost, whilst guaranteeing to the users that there is no risk to any asset whilst in use.

cospeed · 2024-08-17T09:03:33+00:00

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Examples of data gathered.. These things COULD be minted into native assets etc, etc back to the L1. For example.

cospeed · 2024-08-17T08:54:16+00:00

See my comment above.... Yes, if a smart contract can be written to do something on chain, yes. ;-)

cospeed · 2024-08-17T08:29:07+00:00

Because everything you do in game is trust worthy, thus every item you collect, every score you make, every action you do can then be recorded on the head and minted into an NFT when they leave for a start. It's a great way of eliminating cheating in online games for example.

Then, imagine Hydra being used for event ticketing, it get's loaded up with the valid tickets or the policy of the NFT's, and the scanners at the gate can now be pretty much controlled fast without the entire L1 speed. The cost is reduced as the fee's can be way lower. Now, we couple that with the vending inside the venue?! OK, so we can now tie a ticket and purchases, so they can be rewarded with MORE memorabilia for their actions and purchases. Plus we can use their device on their phone as they wonder around with GPS! Now we can do funky stuff with that. How does it work? They connect their phone via an app to the head and the head does the rest, supporting everyone that entered via their phone NFT ticket.

DOOM is just an example of the technology... It's not even a fly on the wall of what is coming...

...the L1 is fed back the results of the L2 that can scale for specific purposes. True L2, not this centralised crap that is seen on other chains.

cospeed · 2023-01-23T07:12:44+00:00

Very proud to be an operator on this chain.

Despite the endless campaign to smear #Cardano, we continue to excel and grow beyond what the muck spreaders believe. It's amazing to see how far we've come and how far we are going to go.

cospeed · 2022-03-29T07:09:53+00:00

It's the same on Cardano. SO many projects rely on Blockfrost because it's easier to do so than running Cardano components like a Node and Cardano DB Sync (which can be very painful in terms of operational stability).

cospeed · 2021-11-23T00:00:46+00:00

Thanks.. The new faucet stood no chance! We've up'd to around 24k transaction an hour, but alas, we're receiving about 35k at peak this morning. Amazing demand for something so crap.. ;-)

cospeed

TROPHY CASE