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Comment by runeks | Hacker News Reader

Because they have a vastly superior PR department. And all the company’s employees have PhD’s.

So you’re bound to get a cryptocurrency so complicated that no layman can figure out its problems until it’s too late.

As opposed to Bitcoin, Ethereum and its ilk, whose problems have all (or even mostly) been figured out by the laymen people? Their PR consists of actively disclosing all their efforst in peer reviewed journals, demonstrating accountability and transparency and talking about their vision. They've already formally proved Ouroboros works, which is the core of their product. Proving means the math works exactly as intended. The proofs are available and published. If anyone with enough know how can disprove them, they are more than welcome to. No such rigor exists for ANY of the 1000 currencies.

Plus Charles seems down to earth and believes in working one's ass off, organic growth and hey, this is gonna be a favorite for all HN readers - FP!

I already bought some ADA...and will hold it. Never held Bitcoin nor Ethereum for any appreciable amount of time and I do not think they scale or can achieve massive, stellar success and assimilation into economies with their current architecture. Cardano is like Bitcoin 3.0.

Watch https://youtu.be/-zftnG6BYu4

What he says, particularly around the process of peer reviewed papers they're submitting to crypto conferences, makes perfect sense. No one has been able to bring this kind of rigor to cryptocurrency to date.

My only hope is they stay nimble, agile, responsive to the community's concerns and questions...... and deliver something iteratively instead of shooting for the stars. Their base is solid, they just need to build upon it now.

my thoughts exactly (knowing how academics work)

This isn't pure academics. It's applied and constrained by time and resources. 2020 is when IOHK's funding contract expires and renewal is contingent on performance. They've already proven Ouroboros as valid - I bought ADA, it's running. Can someone find a hole in it? Sure. The world could also come to an end tomorrow. Anything's possible. As it is, they've put more rigor than any coin so far run by "gut feeling" (e.g. testing but without formal proofs) rather than formal proofs and verification.

IOHK/Charles is pushing for performance, it's not just academic showboating.

Some of the greatest things ever were created when academic minds and experience were fused with strong business and leadership ethics.. Qualcomm for example - started out with a bunch of Ph.D.'s and a grand idea - CDMA, or rather power control and new modulation and coding schemes applied on CDMA, which is what their invention was (CDMA had existed since WW2 I think, commercially Qualcomm made it happen).

What bothers people is that most of the stuff Charles is talking about is flying way over most people's heads...so instead of sucking it up and learning about it, it's easier to just dismiss him, IOHK, Cardano, etc.

Since I don't know the future anymore than anyone else, you could be right too. Just in case, I put some money down on Cardano/ADA. So maybe I'll be right. If I'm not, feel free to gloat.

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