Thread by @matiwinnetou

Cardano as "2017 Ancient Tech argument"

(1) A few people start coming out how Cardano is ancient tech. To some extend this is actually true but it is a feature rather than a bug let me explain.

(2) 1 trillion USD Bitcoin is also ancient tech but it is build upon science.

(3) Ouroboros Praos of course cannot be considered ancient albeit there are some new interesting consensus algorithms, e.g. the one used by @avalancheavax

(4) I made a few times mistake in my life by focusing on tech I was thinking this will drive company to the next level

(5) I was impressed by microservices architectures yet some companies with monolithic platforms were way more more successful. They focused on UX and consumer rather than on technical details.

(5) I see a few communities of developers centered around certain very popular smart contract platforms that are making the same mistake, focusing on playing with tech than solving problems.

(6) One person brought an argument that lightning network is ancient, well if you have a technology that can deliver on layer1 250-1000 and on layer 2 up to ca 1 mln TPS in a decentralized way with backing of science why would you try novel and risky approaches that may not work?

(7) Of course you can do this, you can issue a token, let some consumer pay for it so that you can experiment. There is of course certain probability that you will succeed with your approach (e.g. successful delivery of sharded blockchain or optimistic roll-ups, etc)

(8) Question is why? From game theory and business risk point of view it makes no sense. Of course it would make sense if 250 - 1000 TPS based POS or 1 mln TPS (Cardano's Hydra) on layer2 would not be enough for needs that you have but it is perfectly fine and enough

(9) So one has to ask themselves a question, are you here to play and experiment with new latest shit technologies in blockchain or are you here to actually solve a real need for consumers?

(10) Let me share a story. A few years back I was heavily opposing NodeJS + React, more and more people were rewriting java backends to this and I was a sceptic. After all NodeJS is just a event loop??? In Java we had threads!

(11) Event loop is of course technologically inferior model because your CPU can be starved to death but of course event loop with async promises works perfectly for IO heavy workloads. This comes at a cost to a developer in terms of complex FRP (Functional Reactive Programming).

(12) Long story short, React + NodeJs had massive success because isomorphic templates were something that on many websites users enjoyed (Server Side Rendering) and then continuing session on the client. Both SSR + Client Side rendering in one! I was simply wrong!

(13) Inferior technology (event-loop) that could starve CPU resources introduced a paradigm change of first practical application of hybrid model (SSR + Client Side rendering)

(14) Do you see where I am going with this? The point was not to have a battle of "true PoS" vs not but rather to fix user issues and deliver state of the art UX experience.

(15) People that compare Cardano to EOS say - this is just dPOS (which it is not true!!!) but even if we assume this for the moment, lack of success of EOS has nothing to do with dPOS for God's sake. Shitty UX, hard to create wallet, @IvanOnTech spoke about this numerous of times

(16) So Lighting Network is perfectly fine technology, too bad it has so little usage in BTC due to the fact that they simply cannot agree on things (lack of governance), so it is second layer solution, maybe even commercial with little practical application (no exchange support)

(17) Bottom line, it is not about technology, "true PoS religion", it is about solving real world problems in decentralized way. It is about choosing the 'mix' right for the end consumer and businesses, not the best tech!

(18) Having said that to my knowledge there are no blockchains with eUTxO successful application other than @ergoplatformorg and Cardano wants to adopt and piggy back on this success as well. This is innovative like hell as smart contracts are easier for account based blockchains

(19) Last but not least - DO NOT listen to zealots, look what problems blockchain solves in what way, remember one blockchain may have 'true POS' but without governance like we have on Cardano via Project Catalyst it will be shit anyway. It is all about getting mix right.

(2) My bet is on #Cardano at the moment, I think this project is having the right level of compromises with innovation on tech side vs user happiness and business reality (delivery).

Feel free to comment and engage with other examples and your thoughts!

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