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Cardano Over Coffee ☕️ w/ guests @MusaRidwanItopa, @alphagrowth1 & @adamrusch
Recorded: Sept. 24, 2026 Duration: 2:16:59Space Recording
Full Transcription
you guys like my fancy music? It's really cool, huh? Good morning, Kavinda. Good morning,
KB. Give me a minute. I'm gonna go see if I have any co-hosts with me today.
Good day, Kaminda.
Hello. It was some nice music. I was like onto it, and I'm like, oh, am I in a piano lounge?
Pretty cool. It's pretty cool, right? Um, Twitter did an update for Android users,
so now we finally have all the cool little things that Mac or the Apple people had, um, like music
and sound effects, and I'm just stoked. That's pretty cool. I just hope that it.
I don't want to jinx it by saying it doesn't rug. So I mean, if they fix that, yeah. I mean,
non-rugging Twitter is always the goal, right? Where are you at today, Kavy? Part of the world.
I'm back in Sri Lanka. I was around and just got back last night. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good deal.
Good deal. Well, gosh, you're not too far. Are you going to go to Token? Yeah, I am planning to go.
Actually, this is probably the closest event for me. Um, in Singapore, that's what I was thinking.
Yeah, literally just four hours for me. Whereas if you guys are coming down,
it'll be like a twenty-four hour thing. Yeah, I um, I I opted not to go like a couple weeks ago.
I I don't even like being on planes. Never mind for twenty-four hours. Yeah,
but it's it's quite it's actually quite worth it. Have you been in Tokyo before? Now,
is what I would have liked to have done, and this is just me, and maybe it's because I'm looking old
or whatever. Is I would have liked to have flown. I'm on the East Coast, from the East Coast to
the West Coast. Maybe stay there a day and then do the flight. Because if I fly from the West Coast,
it's only 16 hours, and that, that those few hour differences that matters. I can work that though.
So I'm hopeful. Maybe I'll be able to go next year and just plan a better trip,
so I have a little extra time. Because again, I don't want to be in a plane 24 hours. Yeah,
that's understandable. I keep telling people if you are doing token, maybe I mean this year was
a little unplanned for most of them, but maybe next year. Um, to Sri Lanka for a small vacation
right after, because it's just a four-hour flight from there, and then head back.
So I think that'll. I know. Tokens. You mentioned that. Yeah, that would be awesome.
I would have to like wrap it into a vacation. I have way too much going on personally right now.
I'm trying to find new schools for both my kids. My son's in eighth grade,
so I've got to find a high school because his school stops at eighth grade.
And my daughter will be starting middle school next year, and she wants something that's more art
themed. So like, I can't just take two or three weeks off right now. Yeah, I wish. What is up, Chad?
Good morning, sir. GMGM music. GM Kavi, how are y'all doing this morning? Doing good, doing good.
I just returned back from a long trip, so still a little jet lagged, but yeah, all good. Yeah, good,
good, good. Um, let's see, what do we want to talk about, or do you just want to jump into? I mean,
since you did a long trip, do you just kind of want to talk about your intersect board stuff,
or do you want to wait a little bit so you can get some more people to join? You tell me, Kavi.
I don't want to keep you up too late if you're tired. I don't mind. I have about an hour or so.
All good. Okay. Okay. Good. Good. I didn't want to just have you over there,
and all of a sudden you're snoring, drooling on a microphone or something. Possibilities. Yes. Well,
I mean, that only happens to me when I'm reading some of these legal documents they send us.
All right. Let's see. There has been so much going on. RealFi is starting to kick off soon.
What is it? October first. They're going to be coming to Cardano mainnet.
Anybody hot for that? Chad, are you saying abreast of any of this?
What was it? I was making the post. What? That's cool. I'm just looking at all the stuff.
Like i I've seen these RealFi posts. They say RealFi is coming to mainnet on October 1st,
and everybody's pretty pumped about that. Ah, yes, RealFi. You are not one of the everybody
pumped about it. All right. Do you want to talk about who's going to token then?
Who's going to Token? Well, CF is a platinum sponsor. I guess, kind of courtesy of Amurgo playing
hot potato. But Token will have Hydra under. They'll be representing infrastructure and tooling.
TX Pipe, of course. Iagon. All right, we're just going to keep rolling. Ah, shit! Pragma.
Pi will be there representing Pragma. Of course, Amaru will be there. Dataless. Masumi Twig.
Hey Chris, Twig's Twig's going. I know Chris is going. Of course, Moneta USDM.
I think Blockjock's going for that. USDCX on Cardano, and Anzens and RealFi, MinSwap, Wingriders,
Strike Finance, Surf Lending. Have you ever heard of Surf? I've seen them on here. Yeah.
I don't know anything about them. Right. We're gonna learn about Surf Lending, fluid tokens.
That's not a surprise. Gravity Dex, Blockforce, Course Palm, Toto. Okay,
there's stuff I just don't even know. What's Toto Finance? No, I've never heard of that one.
But it sounds like a lot of people, and then a lot of new people. Well, yeah. So if you recall,
the CF was giving 20 businesses the ability to send one person, and they were paying for, you know,
the airfare, the hotel, hotel for three days in Singapore. So you don't just have to like fly in,
fly out same day or anything retarded. And they're also giving those teams the opportunity
to pitch at their booth, and I think they'll just be rotating through. So for some of these teams,
it might be a really good opportunity, especially ones I've never heard of. Hosky's going,
Snex going. Yeah, and of course Alpha Growth will be there too. I think Draper Dragon
will be there as well, and your usual suspects. I bet Catalyst will be there. Intersect Kavi
is Intersect attending officially. Um, yeah, I think Jack and a few of the staff members.
In terms of the board, myself and Mercy is attending. I think Rand is also supposed to attend.
I'm not sure if he is. But yeah, so we'll be. I think Rand is coming as part of Rare crew,
but in the board as well. So that'll be good. But if not, I think about four
or five of the new set people is going to be there. So that's pretty cool.
There are a lot of names going through this list that obviously we've heard of.
There's a few I've never heard of, but that's just me. Somebody else may know a lot more about them.
So that's cool. It looks like it'll be a lot of fun. All right, we have a bunch of people here now,
and Kavi has a limited amount of time. I do want to monopolize the time he's given us, though.
There is the intersect board voting going on right now for the election.
I think it's four seats that are coming up. Yeah, four new ones, and we have Kavi is running as well
as Adam Rush, who had already been on the board. They are running again,
and then we have a bunch of new people running too. Some of them I know, some of them I don't know.
But I would like to give Kavi a chance to talk a little bit about what he's done on the board,
and then maybe we can ask him some questions about why why we or what he thinks he would be so good
at this next year. What kind of changes he could help us usher in? Kavi, take it away.
Tell us about your awesomeness. Well, thanks, Kristina. Thanks, but I don't know.
I don't know what to say. But thank you. You you are an awesome person. I'm going to be honest.
There, having met you, you are so chill and down to earth and willing to talk to anybody.
And those are great qualifications for this role. So, just tell us a little bit about what you're
proud of, of what you've done already. Thanks, Christina. So, yeah. So,
I think just to start it off. So, this year's actually it's going to be two board member seats
that's up for election, not four. Ideally, because myself and Adam, who were elected last year,
we opted to take. Initially, it was supposed to be two year terms, but myself
and Adam actually decided to take one year terms because then there's rotation,
so that next year there'll be another elections for the other two seats that come on.
So every year there'll be more chances for people to get included. In so, first of all, I'd like to.
Obviously, get people to vote because I think we talk a lot about Cardano
and talk about a lot of decentralization and community governance and things. But ultimately,
those things only become real when people actually do come to vote and share their voices. So.
For personally, I'm standing again because after serving on the board, initially the first year,
which we had to a lot of work to create a path where there was absolutely none.
So there was a lot of pivots, there was a lot of pushback, there was a lot of it was
an eventful year to get the ball moving. But I still think that there's a lot of unfinished work
and probably. Even more opportunity than I first initially thought when I joined.
I've seen Intersect personally from both sides of the coin. I've seen it from the grassroots,
from basically the hub initiative that happened in Sri Lanka and all of the other regions as well,
working with students, builders, the reps, communities, and people, especially people who are new
to Cardinal. So I've seen it from inside the board, where you realize how much coordination
and structure and absolute responsibility that is there behind the scenes that not a lot
of people get to see. So I think for me, the next chapter about Inurec has to be about.
It's not mainly about creating the structures because we do have structures now.
It's about creating. It's about making those structures that we've created actually work better.
Because I personally want us to look at very seriously what Intersect can become,
and if it could become more leaner and more efficient and more effective with the resources that
we have. Because we've had a lot of people come up to us and talk to us about their grievances,
areas that we could improve and refine, and certain things when it comes to the membership.
So I think there are so many areas that we could really improve going forward.
I won't get into too much detail because there's a lot of other candidates also on the call as well.
But I must mention that personally, membership is one of the biggest ones
I will be focusing going forward because I feel like we need more people to get involved
and put their hands up and step forward. Because if we don't get more people involved,
especially new people coming into the ecosystem, we kind of feel like it's stagnated.
So I think just to put it out there, if it's the kind of effect that you want to see as well,
I'd really appreciate your vote officially. So regardless of who you support, is so.
Too many candidates out there, so please make sure that you do vote by twelve noon, I think UTC,
that the voting finishes. And yeah, so if you guys have any questions, please do ask.
So you guys listening know the drill. If you have questions, raise your hand.
Let me know if you're a speaker, just raise your hand. All right, Kavya.
So you talked about one of the big things that you want to do is bring in more intersect members.
How do we get more participation? Because we have a lot of members, but we we need to get
more participation. What ideas do you have around that? That's actually a very good question,
Christina. So I think one of the things that I've noticed initially when we started out,
we did have a lot of members, but unfortunately, it has dropped by quite a lot in
the past two years. And I think partly it's because a lot of the people don't really know what value
that they can get by being a member or how they can be a part of these things.
I think one of the things that personally I'll be looking into. Going forward is
the committee committee structure that we currently have. We do have a lot of committees intersect,
but a lot of the people don't really know what you can do with it, or if they can actually make
meaningful changes. Because currently, a lot of people just look at it as a advisory body
that doesn't really have a lot of power to decide on a lot of these things that take place.
I want to try and change that. Narrative because I think the people who are a part of this ecosystem
and also coming onto these committees, they're most passionate in this ecosystem.
So most of them are putting their voluntary time to be a part of these committees
and try to bring about change to see how these processes work. I think that's one of the key areas
that we'll try to work a little bit more. And also, in terms of getting new people in,
this is one of the biggest questions that I get asked multiple times from people who are outside
the ecosystem. Most recently, I was in—I was attending Rare, and I'm sure people who did attend Rare
they would have seen it wasn't a lot of Cardano people there. Say there was a lot of other people
from different other ecosystems who was part of the event. And when you spoke to people from
outside the ecosystem, what I did realize is a lot of people didn't know where to start.
So they're like, "Oh, you have Cardano. So what? Like, how do we get involved?
Do we speak to the foundation or IO? And I mean, Emergo at the time.
But where do we actually get involved? How do we connect with all these people?
So I think Intersect is a very intersection point for entry onto the ecosystem because you become
a part of Intersect and you get access to pretty much all of the founding entities,
all of these builders who are there, all of the documentations that you could go into and find
certain things. Get involved in committees, working groups to see if you are a serious builder
or a serious person who wants to get involved in the ecosystem. I think Intersect can become
that neutral body where you don't have to. I mean, if you don't like this person
or if you don't like that entity or this entity, it doesn't matter. So it has to have a place
where there is a neutral body where people can come into and start working together.
So I think Intersect can actually become that point. So I think that is the real selling point
for people coming onto the ecosystem. All right, I appreciate that. I want to talk about
the Intersect committees, and you're wanting to see them do more. One concern that many
of us might have could be how do we make sure we get the most knowledgeable people on the committee
before we give them more access, more control over things? Because the last thing we need is people
without the skill set who just have the passion. We've got to have the skill set as well.
That's actually a good point. I think getting participation is one thing,
and then also having the qualifications to do those certain things is another thing.
So you have a very good point there. I think one of the areas that we could improve is when you.
They did put these things when it comes to the board election this year.
There's a lot of preset criteria that was actually put through. So I think maybe going forward
for the other elections that come through for committee elections, we do have it every year.
So going forward to those things, I think we can put up certain qualifications
and expertise for people who are running for certain committees to be able to then become. I mean,
if they are good at that particular thing. So say if you're a marketing professional,
if you're running for something that's in a technical committee that doesn't really bring value
to either you. Or the committees, so it's more prone for them to go and run for
the marketing committees. What we didn't want initially happening is putting too much restrictions,
so that there'll be less participation and people wanting to come through. But I think now there is
real value, and a lot of people see what Intersect does. So I think now there is a bigger chance
for people to go out there and say, hey, if you know someone in in the field of marketing
or technical capacity, be like, hey, why don't you actually come and run for these committees
and get involved in the ecosystem? You want, you have passion, you want to get involved.
Doesn't doesn't mean that you need to be a Cardano maxi or Have to have been in Cardano.
It could be someone from a different ecosystem. So you could one hundred percent like that would be
pretty awesome. I feel like if we actually got people from other ecosystems
to want to participate in this stuff, and you bring up a great point there.
So I kind of want to see you segue into that. How do we how do we attract those people?
I think one of the areas that we can do that is through events that we have. I mean,
we have a bunch of different events that we have around around the world that we are part of.
I mean, through Superdano branding, we are there. So like like token. So those things are one way
that you could basically attract new people going in. And the other ones are basically
the grassroots level events that we have. Could be smaller ones. Could be could be university ones.
Could be other events that you have. I mean, we have really toned it down the past year or so,
given the market conditions and other things. But I also do believe that since there's a lot
of events that are happening around the world, we need to have a way for.
For these people to have a certain funnel to bring people in through these events,
there are hackathons that are happening that for the builder community, and there are
other things that are happening when it comes to the business communities that you go
and talk about these products that are there in in Curano and otherwise.
So I think there's a lot of work that you could do in terms of the grassroots levels to bring these
back up. I know that in InnoSec we did have the hub program before, and then we shut it down.
But we need to have maybe not that one, but maybe we do have to have a certain level
of Collaborative events that are happening at the grassroots levels, because I think that's
where the real new blood wants to come in. Because the other ecosystems, they if they just come
and they just jump in X space, or they just come and they're trying to do their own due diligence
to try and figure out how to enter, how to build, and these things, you get shut down
halfway through, or you don't really know where to get involved. And then you just go away.
So I think the best way for us to try and do that is through these grassroots level events.
That's what I personally think. So I think if there is a way that we could try and bring this back,
even at a smaller capacity, we can really bring in new blood. I like that. I like that.
But that means we need to make sure we get a budget for that kind of thing,
and making sure that we have the funds, making sure the right people can apply to receive the funds,
which is going to lead me to my next point. Kavy, what are your thoughts towards the budget
for next year, the process, the NCL, any of it? Well, that's a very, very interesting thing.
It's it's loaded, I know, but on the board you have you have a little bit more vision
over everything. Like you can see more of the bigger picture, as well as the ability
to kind of help steer things. So, what do you think we've done well? What are you hoping we improve?
Share with me. I think so. Just to give an understanding, so initial year when we did
the budgeting process. Towards middle of it, we took a pivot and we changed
certain processes to get things done. So I understand that, given that we've never done the process
before, so we didn't really quite understand how it worked because we need to get get it started.
So which we did, and then we did run the process this year as well. So there was a lot
of community feedback that came to even to the board level, and we have the strategy for 2027 set up
as well. There will be a different How do I say this? A different budgeting process
that comes through to 2027, which you will probably start hearing details about maybe
towards latter part of this year. And to start it off, so there might because there was a lot of
how do we say this? There was a lot. A lot of feedback that we got from the community,
which had concerns about, like you said, the NCL how the community puts in NCL
and then it gets increased in the middle of the year. So it's a bit of a chicken and egg story.
But there was also calls from the community stating we are spending too much on infrastructure,
we are not spending enough on marketing. They're spending too much on this and that
and all of these things. So then there could be maybe a middle ground that we could find
where maybe we could find a way we could have certain buckets or things like that where. Oh,
don't use that word. Pick any other word than buckets. You're going to trigger somebody, Kavi. Yeah,
that's what I said. It's very loaded. Boxes. We're going to have different boxes. Okay. Okay.
Different, different categories. I would say different categories when it comes to these things
where you could actually put that through. But they're all still in discussion, so it could change.
But there will be a community of feedback loops that's going to happen before all these things
take place. So possibly, is that the right way to go about it? We don't know.
But do we need a change? Definitely, we do. Exactly, so I think it it will be
a very interesting budgeting cycle because there are things that we need to change.
So we got to change those things and see how it works because I mean we can't really have
the same process every single time. And there is calls from the community to change
certain things as we go on. So maybe there are things that we did right throughout the years.
Maybe there are things that we could refine. So those are the things that
I think we will be looking into going into the budgeting process for next year.
There are time constraints from people coming up and saying we currently have a June July budget.
So can we bring it a little bit further up? So there are people who are building. From early months,
could be able to go in and put their budgeting things in there. So, I mean,
these are all of these things that we could think about because the intersect budgeting cycle that
we have, um, it's it's a process. But last year, not everybody followed that.
There were things that went the further ahead. So we need to find out why these things happen. So
and see whether we could actually try to have a process that benefits majority of them. I,
I guess my question is, was I front running? No, I don't think it's a front-running thing. I mean,
it's it's a decentralized ecosystem. People have the capacity to do whatever they would want to do
because I mean that's what permissionless thing is all about. So that's great,
but we also need to have a certain budgeting process, especially for new entities
and new people who are coming in, new businesses that are coming in who don't really know
how the things work in the ecosystem. So they might like to see if there is a process.
They'll probably try and follow it. So I mean, we need to have both ends of the spectrum.
You can't really restrict it because that'll get shot down real fast. Yeah, Kavy,
did you ever feel like you were not able to do things, or that you weren't heard when you joined
the board? Have you ever felt held back? Um, I know it's loaded, but people want to know this kind
of stuff. Like, yeah, feel like you were able to do your job. Yeah, I don't think personally
there was any holding back. I think the current Board members actually have a very good synergy.
Do we agree with every single point with one another? Absolutely not. We have heated arguments.
We have debates, but it's never disagreeability. So we we come to an agreement, even if we do have
different viewpoints. We make sure that we air them out and do what's best for the ecosystem.
So even if it's not the personal views that always gets basically pushed through,
I think as a collective board, we've done a really good job to be able to steer this
because it's really not an easy task, especially with all of these things that come through.
And as I must also mention, there were incidents that came through that needed attention,
technical incidents that came through, things like second fire incidents, and all of those things.
And I think having a body like Intersect has been super useful, and also to have the board there
to be able to help the executive team to take certain decisions have been quite wonderful. And also,
the board is extremely diverse. I mean. The experience that's currently being shared among
the board members—it's—it's different. And the good thing about it is,
you don't really get anything like this in any other ecosystem. And the fact
that the community members can come, they can get involved in committees,
and then also come up to the board and then get elected through the community.
So I think it's—it's a wonderful thing. Is the process completely foolproof? Probably not,
but we are getting there. I appreciate that. Thank you. Epoch. Good morning. Are you there? GMGM.
Did you have anything for our esteemed guest, Kavi? Not anything in particular at eight oh one.
I was the bitter. Hey, you know I could have asked you at seven oh three, but come on,
I gave you some time. I know, I know, but it's it's Starbucks day, so I'm a little hyped up on sugar
and caffeine. Yeah, yeah. It's so easy though. Espresso and everything.
So that's the nice part about Starbucks
is that you can just keep hitting that plus sign to put more shots in it, and it's just like.
But I'm here. I'm enjoying. What do you think are like? I'm not gonna say the most
because like that stresses my kid out when I say that.
But what's one of the like biggest challenges intersect faces? What do you think?
You asking me? Oh come on! Yeah, you. Oh me? I'm not okay. Biggest challenges that intersect faces?
I mean, you're trying to create. Oh, make sure we we've got Kavi answering
all these important questions. Need to know. You weren't here, so what do you need to know? Oh man,
there's there's so much I need to know, but. Actually, maybe this is. I'll take
a philosophical approach. Like it's it's unclear how much we need to know,
but we're a decentralized group, so we obviously prefer permissionless transparency. You know,
you know, building in public. You know, I think those are the things that we're all looking for.
But I think there's an honest question about governance and what is that level of organization
that is helpful to accelerating our efforts. Because we've seen time and time again, like
when you let a decentralized group try to make decisions, it can just take a lot longer.
This is why we. I know, I know. Something about the K parameter. Something about. I don't know,
but I think we need we we need people who are going to walk that line, you know,
giving transparency, you know, as much as possible, but also looking for ways of of making
things faster and more efficient. And what we don't need, I think, is like red tape
and an extra procedure, and you know, drowning people in in process. You know,
we we need efficiency. So if you're not making it faster, then you're making it slower.
And if you're making it slower, then it better damn well be a security related item.
But that's my two cents. That's your philosophical approach. Yeah, there's like some awkward balance
between centralization and decentralization, right? And I don't pretend to know the answer.
I just know people want to go fast and not be blocked unnecessarily, and not waste money.
This is like something we've noted on the show before. It's a huge difference in the Americans
versus the Europeans, for example. Because in conversations, we listen to the Europeans.
I'm thinking like when we're talking to Simon. And they want to do all this research,
and they want to investigate all these different models. Where on this side of the pond,
we're like ready to hit the ground running, and we're just going to try some things out.
And if it doesn't work, we're going to flip a little different, you know.
And that's kind of what I'm hearing there too. Some of us just want to try it. Right, right.
I don't know what's right. Kavi, I appreciate you so much being here. Obviously,
the call to action is we want people to vote. But what do you want people to remember about you? Ah,
that's a lovely one. I think what I would want people to remember me by is
that the honest effort that's been taken to make sure that your voices are being heard.
So I think as a community member first, to being on the board, I mean you mentioned this
before as well. I speak to everybody, and I try to always take a neutral path forward to see
all the angles from everyone. It could be right or wrong from certain different angles, but at
the end of the day, if you're all coming together to do what's right for the ecosystem,
and if I can. Look back and say we created the process. We did things the right way to make sure
that majority of it has not affected negatively to anybody. I think that's what it is. So for me,
I think like what Eepak was bringing up, the challenge when it comes to Intersect.
I think Intersect's biggest challenge is actually maturity. We've built a lot
of different structures now: governance committees, hubs, treasury processes,
a lot of different words. But I think the next phase is about making all of those work better,
clear communications, and strong. Stronger committees, like you mentioned,
and more new members coming in, better executions, operations, but also keeping Intersect
very much neutral. So, I really want Intersect to become the intersection point for Cardano.
I keep mentioning this over and over again, where the community and it's your phrase at this point.
Just yeah, it really is. I've heard you say it so many times. I do. I really want it because I want
people to understand where this Intersect word comes from, because people know about CF, I/O,
and all of these entities. But if it's the place where the community, the founding entity,
Is the builders, the governance participation, participators, and also even the common folks
can just come together, even if they disagree, and still move the ecosystem forward.
And if I can say that I help make that happen, I think that's what I want people to remember me by.
I love that. I'm looking for applause. Where the hell's there? It is. I told you, Kavya,
I got options now. Thank you so much, everybody. If you are just joining and missed any of that,
it's a recorded space. Feel free to go back and listen. But Kavinda here has shared why he's
passionate about intersect, what he thinks gone well, what he'd like to improve,
and those are all the conversations you want to hear before you vote. If you have not done so,
you have one day left to vote, everybody. So, thank you, Kavi. And then next we have Musa.
Good morning, Musa, or afternoon, I suppose. Hello, everyone. Good morning to you, everyone. Musa.
Thank you, thank you. So Musa is also a candidate running for the Intersect board position,
of which there are two. Thank you, Kavya. I was just still drinking coffee. So Musa,
you were not on the board previously. Why don't you start off and just tell us a little bit
about your experience in Intersect and the different things that you've worked on already?
All right, thank you. Yeah, I will start from my joining before joining Intersect right.
I've been a community member in Kaduna ecosystem. Prior to 2024, when I became a member
at Intersect, just an observant at Intersect, right? So yeah, I moving forward,
I became an elected member 2025, November, right? So I am actually before I came,
I was curious about kind of no governance, decentralized governance in general. Right,
so being an elected civic member also gave me an edge to actually understand some of the operations
or how to actually operate in the decentralized system. Because being in the house
with experienced people, learning from people, and you know, having live practical hands-on,
we are governance is being discussed. Decentralized governance is being discussed, right? So yeah,
and I have been on the civic civic side for in 2025. I've participating in
how to actually my major focus. To become a civic member was actually to participate in
adopting decentralization, practicing governance, right, and bringing people
to actually participate in governance. Because I think if we actually can achieve that, you know,
having people with having people with the skills, with the mind of being governance participant,
I think that would actually help us, right, as an ecosystem. Because we solely believe in
Kadano governance, and we actually be driven by Kadano governance, right. So.
I became a civic member, and my own personal that was just okay. See how I can, from my end,
with the little experience I have, how to actually bring people into cardinal governance
and make sure that they actually passionately observing cardinal governance,
participating in cardinal governance, right? Because I knew how. I've sat in the community side.
I've sat in the in the room where governance is being discussed, so I knew how.
A little challenging it can be for just a community member to actually understand Kadano governance,
right? Yes, it's it's simple, but to some extent it's simple, but yet to some extent it's during
my time it was quite challenging for me, right? To actually have my hands on materials, you know,
things how to actually get myself along with Kadano governance, right?
So I felt that was actually a challenge, and like okay, I think if I become a member of it,
say this is actually the least I feel I can do because these are actually Gaps between the ecosystem
and the intersect, right? The general members and intersect, right? People who are being in
the Kadalnu community for like a year two, and believe me, there are actually
some governance activities that they don't even. They they can only hear of it, right?
Or they don't even know how it works, how it operates, and stuff like that.
I just mean there's a huge gap between the general exec. I don't want to say executive,
like the the yeah the stewardship of moving people to Kadalnu governance and the committee member.
Trusting Kadavano governance under continuous barrier, so I pick it upon myself to see. Okay, okay,
how do I actually educate people, filling this gap, bring up people closer to what they should know
and what they want to know about Kadavano governance, right? And yeah, Musa,
I've got a couple questions for you. We're talking about like the intersect committees, for example,
and I'm I'm hearing from you that you want to bring more people to the intersect committees.
How are you wanting to make sure that we're bringing some talented people on these committees
who are really subject matter experts? How do we go about that? One of the ways
I actually thought of doing that, because you know, I'm not just trying to just bring people
on board for movies. I'm trying to bring passionate, like you said, talented people, right?
I've had a couple of workshop, from personally from my end, that I see people who are curious about
how they want to impact, how they want to like align their skills to Kaduna governance,
how they want to actually drive Kaduna governance forward with their participation.
So we are not just bringing, I'm not just bringing people, right? I'm bringing skilled,
like skilled, skilled people, talented people that actually passionate to actually do.
What they want, what they love to do, to move or drive Cardano forwards, right? So yeah,
through workshop, I remember through workshop by meeting with people. It's not just
about Cardano governance, though. You keep emphasizing governance, and I want to make
a bigger picture around you know the committees in general, because like some of them are marketing,
some of them are going to be more technical. You know, like we've got product
and the technical steering committee. How are we finding the right talent going forward
for those committees? That's actually why I said the word aligning people with the skills
to the right um um committee. Right, we have people from Nigeria. We have, I think,
we have one from Nigeria that is part of product committee, and this person is actually um.
Is actually from the background skills of products, and he has been observing.
We've been having life hands-on practical on product committee, and this person picks interest
and level up to product committee, where we actually have people on civic, yeah, on more civic,
right? We actually the last election people contested for different posts.
These are people that are actually having aligning skills to those committee.
They are not just coming based of no background or something, right? So before the before
people step in, they've actually have life hands-on on some practical experience
of what they are stepping forward for, right?
So we are not just we are not just looking at bringing people.
Sorry, and um, yeah. Alrighty then, Musa.
I don't know what that was about, so we're just gonna move on.
Musa, you've talked a lot about like your local communities in Nigeria and Africa,
and that's clearly a strength for you. How would you make sure that your perspective Informs
the board service without being like a regional advocacy at the expense of global membership. Well,
of course, I am not just trying to make a regional advocate, right? Stepping forward
into the global ecosystem, which is the Kaduna and the government, is you already like ready?
Whoever is stepping forward from wherever it is, should be ready to serve the global community
entirely, not regional, like not to be subjected to regional leadership or whatever it is, right?
Lido, you're double cupping or something. Lido, hey, you're on the account, dude.
How the fuck do we get Lido off? Is Lido inside the cup? He is because it's saying it's coming from
me, and I'm definitely not in Africa, guys. So he's not in the room with me. Um, how do we
how do we punish Lido? I don't know. Anybody got ideas? I'm staring at it. I don't know.
I was like, why can't I hear Lido talking while I'm talking? Are they like Musa? I'm sorry.
We're gonna try and try and talk to Lido. Messaging him. Yes, it is quite unfortunate.
Does any can anybody call whoever's answering the phone there? This is some Twitter shit that.
It's it's because he's on the Cup account on Twitter. What what's the phone number for the?
For the blockchain center there in in Canada. Oh my God! Do we have two people speaking through
one account, like parallel? Yeah. So the way this works is everybody, everybody on this show
shares the cup account on their day. So we all have access to be the cup account.
And what happened is, it sounds like Lido joined Twitter on the cup account,
and is completely oblivious because he does this a lot. He'll just like set down his headphones
or something. You know that's a huge like privacy issue. Like Twitter's really got to fix that.
That shouldn't even exist. Shouldn't even be able to happen. That's crazy.
We we should all call the block. Everybody message Lido. Let's see. X don't fix it,
then we can't do Cardano over coffee the way we do, and we've become accustomed to doing it
this way. So so him as a speaker in another space is coming through. Like wow, that's insane.
We've actually saved each other before because of this thing, this ability Twitter gives you.
Because like somebody would be rugging and somebody else would jump on the account real quick,
so they would rug and we would carry it. But does your input go to his? Well, yeah,
he shouldn't be hearing everything. Oh my god, this man! That's funny.
I think we've all messaged him on multiple.
At least he's not too loud. At least he's not inappropriate.
Lido, who are you talking to, Lido? I don't know.
I've sent him an email. I've sent him messages. No,
I think Chad's right. We got to call the blockchain center.
Musa, I got a question. Is Africa to Africa still like? Is that like considered a long distance call
for y'all, or is it just like state to state, like it would be in America? Sorry,
can you communicate with that? Okay, if you were calling somebody in another African country,
like Kenya, like like the blockchain center where Lido's at, would that be a long distance call
for you, or is that like just like a state to state thing? Like, how do they handle that? No,
it's it's like a long distance call. It's not going to be like a state to state long distance call.
That's crazy. I think he got the message. Yes, he has. Looks like he's asking to speak
the official way. Call him on WhatsApp as well. Good, good, because that's what it took.
We were all hitting him up on everything. Lydo, what do you got to say for yourself? Oh, too good.
All right, only on Cardano over coffee. All right, he dropped down his listener.
We're just going to ignore Lydo now. Musa, would you like to talk a little bit more? Forget
where we're at. Musa, are you still with us? Oh yeah, yeah. Thanks, yeah. Oh, okay, cool.
Is there any question from you? Sorry. No. Um, I just wanted to bring you back
and let's bring this back on. Um, we were talking about like actually um asking for permission
from Lido to bring me back in peace. Yes, you can come back, and Lido can be chastised for
his rudeness. Um, but we'll have to forgive him. What's happening? Please speak, Musa.
I'm listening. I'll shut up. It's fine. Just, just, just get in, bro. Lido,
I think you have to give him your vote after this, just so you know. Don't, Musa. No,
he owes me that. He owes me that for doing this to me. I get two votes, right?
Because I've already given out one vote already. Yeah, yeah. I think you get two. Okay, okay, good.
All right, Musa. Tell us a little bit more about. We're talking about the intersect committees
and making sure we've got the right people on them, and you know, let's let's take it from there.
Oh yeah. So generally stepping out to the board from my own end, I just feel like they are actually
quite a lot of gap. I don't. I won't say a lot. Sorry. Yeah.
Kudos to the current intersect board team. Kudos to them. Right. Forever. Oh yeah.
I just feel there is this gap that the board. The intersect theme itself,
and there is this gap between the board and the entire community member that needs to be filled,
right? And one of my major focus, if elected, right, if elected, is actually looking at
how to actually create a channel between the community member and the board, right?
Because I remember sometimes, sorry for that. I remember sometimes back where.
I had a challenge reaching out to Intersect Board was like looking for my shadow, right?
Like I kept messaging people on the internet. It was only one person. Kudos to Adam. Kudos to Adam,
right? So yeah, so it's not funny. Just on a normal day today, our activities reaching out to
Intersect Board is not something feasible. And also aside this, yeah, a couple of things.
I don't which I I don't I don't know if this is the right place to share this.
There are a couple of things on my radar. I just feel on Intersect Board that I feel
community member could actually. Be aware of, and then see how we can actually solve. Um,
full transparency and accountability is what I am actually looking forward to, right?
Because there are some unanswered. I remember sometimes last month I have some unanswered question
in my team. I have to be reaching out to um some intersect um executive member. To get answer,
so the answer question came from the community member, right? So I have to like reach out in. Up
till now, I think I'm still yet to get answer to that question, right? So yeah,
I just think that is actually a grab between community and um, intersec board
or executive that you know we should since we are pushing this legislation,
we should make it a free, open space to everyone to actually um you know every opinion
should be heard and um it should not be stressful or hard for people to actually voice out
and get questions answered, right? So yeah. I think that there are some core focus for my data.
I'm looking at some heating related as intersect. It's a good board. Thank you. I appreciate that.
Let's see. How do you think
that intersect could measure whether committees or working groups are actually producing value?
And we lost him. Hey, Epoch. How's it going? Pretty good. Something about metrics. I don't know.
He just maybe he comes back. All right. Does he need a substitute? I could pretend to be Musa.
What exactly was my crime again? Because I'm so confused. Your crime is definitely being confused,
Char. Your audio was coming through the cup. Uh huh. So whoever you were sitting next to
and talking to, we heard everything. We heard them answer their phone,
and we kept trying to tell you so that you guys would be aware. You were like, "Fuck that EpoC guy.
Cardano sucks," but I guess I'll suck more money out of it. We heard all of it. We heard all of it.
I have been trying to get a meeting with that EpoC guy. So yeah, he's difficult.
I heard he's really difficult. Very. You should have seen when I was trying to set up get access
to the email. Oh my goodness! And uh, I'll be releasing the flowchart for access shortly. Hey,
did you fix that stupid calendar issue yet? Okay, I'll do it right now. Jesus Christ!
I reported it to you when you were sick, and I get that, but you gotta fix it at some point.
In my defense, I tried yesterday to fix it, but my my Chrome window when I would log into
the account, it would just bug out, and I was like, Oh, this is a this is a technical issue.
I gotta come back for this. Sounds like a user issue. Yeah, I don't know.
I tried in incognito window. I don't know what happened. I think I need to restart my machine.
I don't know. Yeah. Oh, and that's dreaded. Yeah, exactly. You get comfortable with everything.
Nobody wants to restart, especially tabs. You get used to my tabs. Yeah, don't mess with my tabs.
For and now it's the AI session. I'm like, I like this one. We're not rebooting this one. Oh yeah,
it's all terminal windows and tabs for years. Um, what is uh new with your quest
for AI mastery epoch? What are you? Oh God. I don't know. Trying to calm everyone down.
That's what was supposed to be meeting about Epoch, your quest for AI mastery. I know.
What are you going to say? All the, all the costs just keep going up. You know,
like that's fucking man. As the person maintaining the platforms, these bills just keep going up,
and it's hard to convince people that they could get by with a lower model. Everyone's just like,
I gotta use Astra, and two weeks ago was like, I gotta use Fable. So it's
like people just want to use the latest and greatest at everything, even
if it's like writing a fucking email. It's very obnoxious, so I need to get to a point
where we're using the right model for the right thing and the right harnesses,
which is exactly what I was going to talk to Lido about. So it is very relevant.
When people are using this crazy model, do they ever use it on at least low for certain tasks,
or are they always extra high, baby, extra fucking high? Oh my god! Max MM effort. Well,
I saw Claude did a reset. That was surprising. How many hours do I have?
Because I voted for one board seat already, and the last one is it's tough. When's my deadline?
It's pretty competitive. Voting? Yeah, for the votes for the board. When does
when does the portal close? Twelve p.m. UTC, September twenty fifth. So for me,
that's eight a.m. Tomorrow. Okay, okay, okay. So I have a few hours. Yep,
and Kavi Kavi cleared because I was reading without coffee, and you guys shouldn't let me do that.
That we are filling two board seats out of the four elected seats, so that was cool.
And he also shared that both he and Adam voluntarily took a one-year term instead of a two-year term
to get those two seats alternating, so that you've got some coverage, you know,
some existing people when the new people come in, which I think is smart.
And Lido lost interest. No, I was typing. Funny enough, imagine me typing, typing to Kevin.
He was calling me to tell me that you guys are spying on me. We were spying on you
because you gave it to us. It would be like you know those flock cameras around the United States,
and you just emailed me the password or something. Like, well, this is the classic IT IT problem.
A lot of security issues is usually there's someone gave it to whoever, whatever, whatever. Oh yeah.
But that's good. Good. Good. Good. Good. We have some rotation. You can work. Hey, Lighto.
Flock is selling out to Axiom. Are they really? Yep. Oh God. I don't know.
I see so much reporting in the news where places are taking down the flock cameras
because of the privacy concerns. Because there's so many lawsuits with people abusing it. So. Man,
me and all my friends are just doing that pro bono. Yeah. Dork. I love it when I see the picture
of some guy standing next
to the flock camera with like a pole and a sign, and like you can't stop him. He's protesting.
Good morning, Eric. Look at you in this picture. This picture is very different
than your other picture. Good morning. Good morning. Yeah, I got a speaking slot out in Singapore,
and so Brian asked for a headshot. I gave him the one I usually use, and he had someone else
on the team throw a suit on it. Yeah. To pretend I'm presentable or something.
So you AI'd your headshot? No, I got people for that. Love it. I love it. Where are you at, Eric?
Alpha obviously, Bandos are about to win their first double A championship. Awesome, awesome. So,
what do you want to talk about with Alpha Growth today? That's a good question.
We're the source of the community. What do you guys want to hear about Alpha Growth
and what's going on in DeFi? My mind's going 20 miles a second, and things are heating up.
Things are crazy. I got tons of stuff I can talk about. I'd love to know what's interesting to you
guys. So, full disclaimer for everybody: I am on the operating group with Alpha Growth,
and I will tell you they are definitely doing a lot of documents because I have so many things
to read. Thank you very much. We'll we'll just start right here. Lido, Epoch, Chad.
Do you guys have any questions about this Prime project? How it's going? Transparency?
Any of these things? Yeah, all the above shit. How's it going? How many people are working on it?
What's the tech look like? How's the deployment? Are we on mainnet? How rich am I yet?
Does it support chocolate ice cream retrieval? I I will say this. I I'm not I'm not afraid
of reading. Um, I know blockchain doesn't like reading. So where where is the transparency
happening? Where are all these docs? Like, because I talked to some people who said already
that you guys uh told them that the product is in quite a line. Um, but where is all that stuff
happening? Like, which projects are applying? What the feedback is? Great question.
We've had 49 applications so far. We are not running a generalized grant process.
This is not Catalyst. This is very specific. We know what it takes to get
a quarter billion dollars of TVL on chain. 75 or something percent of our compensation is based on
success. So we are incredibly aligned on actually delivering and delivering as fast as possible.
So I know I've heard some frustrations about like, oh, well, we want really objective specs
and we want you know a month for everybody to apply for those. It's like we need to sign things
as fast as possible. We need to get the best and most qualified teams building as fast as possible.
And that is happening. So, if you want to know some of what's going on behind the scenes,
we're working on vault standardizations for ER six or ERC forty six twenty six
and seventy five forty alternatives to be standards on Cardano. We're working on Scooper standards.
We've got a bunch of different applications inside of Cardano working to make sure that the specs
match for all of their types of applications, so that it works. We're working on more SIPS. So, one,
making sure all applications are SIP one one three compliant, but two,
working on more types of SIPS so that there are Legos for future builders to come in place.
But right now, I mean, have you guys taken a look at the infrastructure audit? We start there. Oh,
wait a minute! You're on SIP one one three too. I mean, do you know how many people have raised that
to me? I'm just gonna, I'm gonna start doing a little tick list here. Oh. We. We to make this work,
we have to work with family offices and liquid funds who are going to deploy
significant amounts of institutional capital. We also have to work with asset issuers
and convince them to deploy their assets on Cardano and showcase that we're going to get
the adoption and growth. Most asset issuers' KPIs are just Net supply.
I think that's actually how we got involved here. The Cardano team was talking to Circle.
They got USDCX involved, and then Circle's like, "How are you guys going to grow this?
" And they're like, "What do you mean? We just paid you guys to get integrated." And they're like,
"Well, you need somebody that can actually drive capital inflows, drive TVL on chain.
Let me introduce you guys to Alpha Growth." So we actually got we got tapped on the shoulder
from the Cardano teams on Circle's recommendation. To do this kind of stuff,
the guy having name drops, but now we're far enough down the weeds that things are thinning.
It's yeah, yeah. So for anybody who's not familiar, SIP one one three is the one about the program.
I'm sorry, programmable token framework. Lighter, do you have a question?
Wait did I did I miss the thing about where I can see these forty nine projects
and who's getting in, who's getting out? Is there rationale? You can't,
and we're not going to make everything public. We will be transparent about who gets grants
and our reason behind them. We are not going to show every application what's behind them.
We're not going to show the names of everyone who applied. We encourage everyone to apply,
and everyone can talk to us. But no, this is not going to be fully public.
We're not going to go that far into the weeds with everything being fully transparent
and every reasoning behind it. If we did that, we would have to. Showcase our subjectivity of like,
hey, we're choosing this team because we think they're investable. If we're going to give somebody
a six-figure grant, it's because we believe that they can raise seven and eight figures in money,
and we need to know and show that that's going to be the case, and we need to help them to do it.
So part of what we're doing is setting up this investor pipeline. So if we give somebody you know
two hundred fifty thousand dollars to be a grant to build something, we don't want them tapping us
on the shoulder in six months, being like, hey, we're out of runway, and now they're.
A huge risk to us deploying strategies through their application. So we need to make sure
that whether it's Draper or whether it's an angel framework we're building bringing in,
or whether we have other venture options that if we give them two hundred fifty k,
that they're able to get two point five mil on top and have plenty of runway to run their business
longer term, and they're not looking at a six month, one year time horizon. That makes yeah,
that that makes perfect sense. So I just want to add to that Lido, Lido, real quick.
I just want to add. Hey you. The thing I'm really interested in is that place I can be one.
So the thing I wanted to ask Lido to wait for. While these RFPs are going to the Alpha Growth Group,
I do want to clarify that that is a role that the operating group plays as well.
Is that the Alpha Growth team? They're reviewing all this, they're putting all the information in,
and they're sending it to us, and they're saying these are the ones that we've selected.
And it is not the role of the operating group to start going through every little detail
within the proposal, but we are making sure that you know we're adhering to our mandate.
We're making sure that the grant fits the approved prime mandate, as well as confirming
it maps to like an audit gap or an RFP category or some kind of legitimate central procurement.
And that's part of the role that we're playing. Because I know Eric said he's not going to say
every team that applied that he considered. I do want to say that there is somebody actually looking
and saying, "Well, we need to understand why you chose Business C over Businesses A
and B." And it's really just going to be telling us what really stood out with this business,
how they were more advanced in this area or that area. So there is a little bit more going on to it.
And then whatever the operating group vetoes, especially, will have rationale that is public
and anybody can look at it. So you'll see that. We've been talking on the operating group
about also providing a little rationale and why we supported it too, but we haven't got to the point
to where we've had to make that vote and publicize it yet. We are rapidly approaching it. So
if I the the main question here, so I don't have to be chasing Eric down or you,
what can I bookmark to follow along and get these things as to come? Is that a central place
you guys are standing up, or that still coming too? I did not understand that.
Could you ask that again? Is that a central place that I can bookmark and be following along,
or is that still coming? Well, more specifically, Lido, are you wanting to follow along
on the voting, or are you wanting to follow along on milestones? Help me understand
so that we can give you the best answer. All of your public things, right?
Like with the intersect stuff, I know I can go to the the docs, that whatever, the committee.
I can see the open source stuff there. What's your version of that of everything
you're going to make public? Follow the Cardano Prime Twitter account. They're here in the lobby.
We will tweet tweet out quite a few things. If you check on the proposal that passed,
there are quite a few public milestones that we've done. We've committed to me being here
to answer questions every two weeks. There is a the DREP DAO and the DREP Council
does a weekly call. We don't call it DAO every morning. By the time we just call it DREP Council
now. Sweet. The DREP Council is opening up to random DeFi contributors.
So anyone who wants to give input and have insight into what's going on,
I'm there every Tuesday morning as well. But really, following the Cardano Prime Twitter,
and we're going to be doing things like transparency reports, kind of like the infrastructure audit,
where there are large documents and it does have a whole bunch of reasoning
and justification for it. That's where I'm not happy to talk through anything here. Well,
and then add that's where your stuff is going to be sticking us. No, so like um,
when the operating group votes on something, we Yoda's still like working on the JSON files
and stuff, but we're going to add it to the DRep Council website because they're they like do voting
and stuff there, and we can just add a tab and you can track everything right there. So
if you're looking for a URL, add the DRep Council website, and you can track what we do right there.
In addition to the Twitter account for Cardano underscore Prime. Lidub kabisa um. Sounds good.
Did we talk about that report that came out? We Cardano sucked. I think was it like fifty
or something? Eric, you want a high level? Um, Cardano is really, really cool conceptually. Um,
they have not had the network effects that Ethereum and EVM has. They have not had the venture,
the money, the public goods infrastructure that Ethereum has, and this space has been for.
From what I can tell, so incredibly circular and internal that everyone's competing only
against people inside of the space, with very little objective overview to what's going on outside
of the space, and very many pieces of infrastructure are four to five years
behind what is institutionally average elsewhere in crypto. That sucks. It is what it is.
It's our job to sprint and catch up in a couple of months instead of five years.
Ethereum is like what eleven years now, I think. How much of a needle would this move?
I guess we'll have to do the audit again after and see, or in a year and see where Cardano is at.
Um, seems like there's a time factor too, maybe. What do you think? I mean,
Cardano just had his ninth birthday yesterday. Ethereum might be what, like maybe a year
or two older. Sure, maybe there's a time factor. There's a there's a money factor.
There's a people factor. There are so many more people building an EVM than there are in Cardano.
There's been so much more legitimate business flowing through Ethereum rails than there has been on
Cardano, and I mean, Charles correctly predicted that Ethereum is going to not scale properly,
and it's going to run into these bottlenecks. And sure enough, Vitalik's out there talking about
transitioning to UTXO, which breaks everything that they have in their account-based models.
But they've had so much money and people and time and effort going into these kinds of things.
They've had so many Lego and building block standards that has made it easier to develop
and easier to build things there. They have so many network effects there that yes,
right now it is not an Apple's Apple's conversation, and we need to speed run all of what you know
consensus has been able to build there. The Ethereum Foundation has been able to build there.
And we need to make it so that people can run their businesses on Cardano. This is not a small feat.
It scored. We didn't have you know happy blinders on coming in. Like we're not shocked
that it's low, but it is lower than we had anticipated. We were hoping that we would be closer
to Sui. And the reason we chose Sui is because they're non-VM and they have about the TVL
that we're hoping to have at the end of this proposal for us to hit our mandate.
But even the gap from 51 to like the 71, 72 that Sui scored. We're seeing from like the first wave
of grants we're hoping to issue that that should bring us from like a 51 to like a 62,
but we need to get to the 70s by the end of this year, and then we need to have a path forward
to getting higher. I think that we're doing really good work right now.
I think we're going to be able to sprint to and through this really quickly.
But part of this is we need a lot of venture back in. We need a lot more family offices,
a lot more legitimate venture funds invested in Cardano and creating these ecosystem funds
so that people can get paid to have full time jobs to build really cool tooling in Cardano,
and that. Is not directly part of Prime's mandate, but that's part of what Cardano needs,
and we don't want Prime to just be a one-year project and we wash our hands and walk away.
We would like to over-deliver here in this first year and be brought back on for
more years to continue stewarding DeFi and business on chain. And if that's going to succeed,
then we need to have a longer than one-year vision, and so we are actively trying in that.
Lidob Gabisa, appreciate you, Lido. Good morning, Phil. How are you? How you guys doing? Good, good.
Do you have any questions for Eric, or anything you want to add with regards to Alpha Growth? No,
I'm just listening. All right, cool. Epoch, did you have any questions?
Questions about the ice cream, Epoch? I think that was a pertinent one. Yeah. Yeah.
What's the flavor ice cream at the next conference you'll be at? I mean, to be fair,
they use the term scooper, so I'm with you. Like, I want multiple ice cream flavors. That's right.
That's right. We're on the same page. The marketing writes itself. I mean, a lot of these big,
these big protocols on Ethereum do have sort of a theme going, and they
and they tend to stick with it. So I don't know. You might be onto something here, Eric.
For real question, um, what is it? I think five more days left for people.
Any projects I want to submit a RFP? Yeah, and we're talking. We might extend that another week
or two, but we would love to get RFPs in as fast as possible because we're trying to push
and start signing grants immediately. The faster we get people building and paid,
the faster that we get to where we can start deploying incentives and actually growing the TVL.
I want to be really cognizant, and we're you know we can say that on the proposal, we could say
that here every two weeks. But come December, you guys are going to be like, oh, we've had
alpha growth in here since like August. How where's the TVL? And I could say that I'm blue
in the face, like, hey, it's going to be five six months of building stuff,
and then we're going to pursue the TVL growth. We got to build it first to make it cheap, but. Yeah,
we we want that to be you know four or five months,
not seven eight months. So we're we're full sprint mode.
Does that make sense? Do you guys understand why I'm saying this? Yeah, yeah, no, I do, I do. Now,
so for teams that are still considering submitting an RFP, what advice would you give them?
Is there anything that you would consider like the biggest red flag? Give them give them
a little something. What what could they do to better position themselves?
Show me how you can build something really, really cool that also helps other people.
We need a lot of really talented builders who like to play nicely with others.
That makes us grow something bigger than ourselves. So we're seeing really cool apps that will be
great apps in themselves, but then also showing that like, hey, part of us building this this piece
that we build, we can make this a standard for Cardano, and now everybody else can use those
like open source technology and make that easier. Like that's that's super cool.
The idea that we've got you know a whole bunch of builders in the same room working together to make
sure that each other's builds work for their own applications—that's really cool.
That's the stuff that I want to see. So if it's tooling that is going to make it easier
for me to sell family offices and liquid funds to deploy on Cardano, whether it is business ideas
that have nothing to do with crypto but show that you have eight figures able to grow velocity
and we have a way to channel it on chain. Like demand side is important,
and then overall tech that helps everybody else is important. Those those two things,
and then overall UX. I know I've talked a little bit about wallets, but anything that just makes
it so much easier and less daunting for people who are going to use Cardano for the first time
to not have to figure out what's going on, that would that would help a lot. Oh yeah,
we actually had a space I think a week ago where we talked a good bit about wallets.
You know we have so many wallets on Cardano. A lot of them are niche. You know they do
a certain thing
a certain way, but the usability of them, if you're a first time user, it's very confusing.
Yeah, I don't know how many of you guys have used like Nosa Safe, but like. Even
though Noces has had issues, like they secure like four hundred billion dollars in TBL or something,
and common practice is still family offices that use multisigs of multisigs, and they're free to use
and they're free to set up, and it's really easy to track what's going on where,
and you can have the Easy Ledger integration there as well. Just even like dealing with coming in
and setting up our own multisigs and what's going on with like Intersect,
like the UX of us entering the ecosystem has been. A lot worse than we had anticipated,
and we need to make sure that the next teams that come in that we're asking to bring eight figures
of TVL and deploy into our strategies that they don't have these hiccups
and they don't have these red flags. We need to make it as easy as possible
for people to bring money into Cardano. So I agree. Back to the people that are still, you know,
considering submitting or maybe working through answering the questions
and they haven't hit submit yet. What might be one of the big red flags that you look for
in a funding request? We've seen quite a few that had no justification for the amount of funds
that are being asked for, no idea of like what's the spend, what's the burn rate,
what's the team size, stuff like that. Really important to us are demand drivers,
showing how and why this will lead to TVL, whether it's enabling the other projects
or you have your own legitimate business flow. My argument, and this is Eric ethos,
not necessarily all of Alpha Growth, but that most of crypto has been science fair projects,
not businesses. And we are in the business of turning science fair projects into businesses. So
if it's cool tech for the sake of cool tech, that still needs BD, that still needs sales to get it
to where it's actually meaningfully driving adoption. And that's okay if that's budgeted
and planned for, and you show us team competence and capability for that.
Like we still want to see the science fair projects. We just want that in mind. But if it's like,
hey, here is a new app. It's going to, you know, totally change banking in a different country,
and you don't show how and why you have experience and how and why you have the connections to make
that happen. Like, if you can show me that you could do that without crypto,
and then you have a crypto component to make it easier and bigger and faster and more scalable,
that's really interesting to me. If you are like, oh, if I build this,
they're totally going to come. I just don't believe you. So justification for funds
and the BD relationships and demand. Yeah, I appreciate that. I did see a question in one
of the Telegram groups, and I think Katie already answered it. But just to publicize,
if somebody already submitted their RFP but they wanted to add something or update something,
how would they go about that? That's a great question, Katie. I don't know if the RFP type form
is editable right now, but just submit more. Submit two, three, five in different verticals.
Just do it again. Just keep on doing it. Absolutely nothing wrong. Oversubmit like that is fine.
We want. You're not the one has to. You're not the one that has to go through
these first first round, are you? That's probably Katie, isn't it? Oh, I love it! I love it. No,
Katie's been great. In the channel, she directed somebody to a person directly in that channel.
But I like the idea. Oh, wait, she's coming up. She may not like your idea.
Katie is way nicer than me. If you can go to Katie, go to Katie. You will be happier. Good day,
Katie. How are you? Hi. Can you hear me? Yeah, yeah, we can hear you. Wow, I've never.
I don't think I've been on one of these in a really long time. Um. Hey, yeah. If you have
more information to add to your RFPs, our team would love to. It. It will help your application.
You can send it to us either in the DeFi channel. I I tagged Nabil in that particular message,
but if you send it to Anna, if you send it to Kareel, if you send it to me or Flynn,
like any of us would be happy to take more information back to the team for you. Awesome.
I appreciate that because especially after Eric talking about the things they're looking for,
anybody listening now or who might come in later and look and listen to the recording might come up
with some ideas, something that they want to add and you know make themselves look
a little more attractive. Absolutely, and we're we're for that. Like we want to see you put
your best foot forward, and we're gonna go based on that. You know, Eric will ask
all the hard hitting questions. We're gonna get into the nitty gritty details
and figure out if it's the best fit for the ecosystem.
But for sure, you know, we we want to see what what you are thinking. You know.
Yes, I saw Eric go off mute, so I thought he was gonna contribute.
All right, I think Eric's just messing with me, or Twitter is. Okay, so we've got possibly
another week adding on to this for additional RFPs.
Is there any particular RFP category, perhaps, that you really need to see more submissions?
You know what, Katie, Eric dropped, so you might. Do you know? I really don't.
That someone else on the team. Eric's back. Can you hear me now? Yeah, I can hear you.
I can hear you. I was. I'd asked, and I think it was right when you had dropped and was coming back,
and Katie was like, "No, don't ask me this." With the RFP submissions that you've received,
I think you said you've received like 49. Are there any particular RFP categories that
you really need more people to do some submissions?
So you've got more to consider, or somebody to consider?
I can't hear him now. Does anybody else hear? He's gone again. Okay. Yeah, I think he's.
This just might be a question that he doesn't get to answer. He wants to come back up again.
No. Nice. I've heard you the whole time, and I've been trying to talk every time
you're not hearing me. Just, just answer the question before anything happens.
Well, did he really brick the second you said that? That is yes. So this is what we're gonna do,
Eric. If you come down and come up, I'm not even gonna talk to you. You're just gonna come up
and answer that damn question. That was beautiful timing. It was like a movie scene, you know.
You're like, quick, before anything happens. Just as you say that, he cuts out. Ah, you know,
only on Twitter, right? We've had one of those mornings with the Lido double cupping,
and then now this. This app is truly awful. It's never, yeah, ever fixed. It gets shittier
every every year. We're running late, guy. We can hear you. Wait, go, go, go, go, Eric, go.
We're trying. Submit agentic finance. I want more apps that are doing cool stuff with AI
on the demand side as well as on the supply side. If you're putting tokenized compute on chain,
if you're doing cool tooling that will make it easier for agents to interact with apps, anything,
anything AI. We think that's going to help a lot in the distribution mode. That is,
if you have a science fair project, that is where we are most inclined to hear out
your science fair projects to to see how it can be better integrated. Did you guys
get that? We coming in. I'm like afraid to talk now. We're gonna see if it's truly
like the the cup account. I think I switched back to headphones. I don't know.
It's Twitter's kicking the butt out. Okay. Yeah, I heard you, and I thought it was great.
But like I said, I was afraid to unmute because I thought it'd kill you again. Before this,
what I was trying to say earlier, and you guys who couldn't hear me, is that there we need
more talented people in all kinds of teams. Whatever your skill set is, if you're good at BD,
if you're good at sales, then sweet. Cardano for a long time has had really competent builders
that haven't done good enough at BD and sales and growth. So let's match you with teams
that hopefully we can help get to a point where they're ready to scale.
If you are a really good developer, we also have a lot of teams that have wonderful,
wonderful deal flow and fantastic. Instead of elsewhere, but might need help on the building
and the development side. So there is tons of opportunity. We are going to succeed at bringing
a quarter billion dollars on chain, but it is going to take everybody sprinting for this whole year
to do it. And so anyone who wants to come up and sprint with us, there is opportunity.
And I think sprinting is a great phrase because that is a lot of what it feels like. You know,
we've talked about everything for so long. We got the proposal a while ago.
We've all milled through it, and now we're ready to do things and just get there.
Does anybody else have any questions about Alpha Growth, about the Prime proposal specifically,
any aspect of this? Eric's a busy man, but we we could throw in another question if you got one.
All right, Eric. Call to action would probably be apply, apply, apply. Let everyone know your idea.
Tweet about things, get people interested. Start earning money at your day jobs
or whatever it takes to get more cash in, and get ready for you know January, February
when we start rolling out some really cool stuff and have a whole bunch of opportunities to earn in
crypto. Whatever you guys have in DeFi on Cardano right now, it will be earning more in four
or five months. But also there will be way more opportunities and way more players and people.
So get involved in these projects early. Get Yeah, get ready because when we say we're gonna rock it
and we're gonna launch, we we mean it. It's gonna look vastly different here in in five months.
I love it. I love it. All right, Eric, thank you so much for coming. Katie, thank you for coming up
and speaking too. And I look forward to having you come back in a couple weeks.
I will let you you go. You're free. I'm sure you have more meetings. Thank you, Christina.
Thanks for hosting this, guys. Thank you for showing up. And always happy to to talk to you guys.
Thanks so much, Chad. You still with me? Still here. Can I get a mid roll, sir? Kind of an end roll,
but we'll do it. Thank you. You know, whatever. Everybody, this is Cardano over Coffee,
your decentralized morning show, coming to you live Monday through Friday, nine thirty
Eastern Standard, two thirty UTC, where we like to talk about what's being built on the blockchain,
and if you're building something on the blockchain, sign your business up. Click on the cup.
Skeleton. Go on the calendly link and schedule a spot, and we'll talk about your business
on the blockchain. Also, if you're, you know. In anything else, whatever you're making something
in art, music, come talk about it. We want to hear about it. That's what we're here for,
and we love it. We'll be back tomorrow with Maureen for the Friday spot, kicking it into
the weekend. And yeah, get your funds off of central exchanges. We kind of say it, kind of don't.
We don't know if you should. Maybe you should. Maybe you shouldn't. But you know,
we'll we'll stick with the old old way of doing things and say say our old spiel. How about that?
Treat them like a public bathroom. You wouldn't leave your wallet in a public bathroom,
so don't leave your crypto on a central exchange. Thanks for tuning in, everybody.
Let's kick off into banter. If anybody's got anything they want to talk about, no, no, no.
I'm going to talk to Adam next. Adam's going to tell us about his pitch. Oh,
we're just we're doing no banter today. We're doing four spots. Ah, we'll fit it wherever we do.
But to be fair and very respectful, Adam actually signed up for Wednesday, and Mr. Epoch there.
Did not have the thing fixed, so he was able to book a Wednesday. So I told him, "Just come on,
we're gonna talk about it. I want him to have the opportunity because again, tomorrow morning is it?
Like for me, I think it's like eight a.m. Yeah, it ends at eight a.m. Tomorrow. It's fixed.
" I see it now. That's why I was like, "Oh shit, he did it!" Yes. All right, Adam.
Nobody else will get that same same situation. Yeah, I realized afterwards. I was like, "Yeah,
usually I have meetings on Wednesdays, but that was like a rare Wednesday. I didn't have a meeting,
so I'm like, I want to sign up for Cardon over coffee. I already have that time set aside
on my calendar for meetings, but since my meeting got canceled for last week, I was like,
I'm going to go to Cardon over coffee this time, and then there was no Cardon over coffee.
" Like all right, well that doesn't work out. But I'm really glad to be here today. Yeah,
we are taking Wednesdays off for now. If you know anybody in the ecosystem that you think would be
a good fit, we are looking for co-hosts. But and also just try not spread ourselves too thin
so that we can keep coming, you guys, week after week. So Adam, you have already been on
the Intersect board. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what you're proud of in your time
on the board already? Absolutely. So, hey everyone. I think most people probably know me, Adam Rush,
and I've been serving on the board. The biggest thing that I've been trying to do on the board
is just make sure that we have the community represented. We went from having no community members
on the board when it was first founded to now having four members on the board out
of five five members of the board. So that is, you know, pretty good. And so, if you want,
I can give you a little bit of that history. Basically, back in 2023, when Intersect was founded,
it was, you know, kind of founded by IOG and Mergo to be the governance support mechanism
for Cardano as CIP 1694 was maturing and being spun out. So it was founded to take over
the repositories for a lot of the core infrastructure, and you know to start assembling committees.
I was you know already active in a lot of the early discussions around governance. And so I joined
the Cardano Civics Committee, which we were at that point helping to run 1694 workshops,
Cardano Constitution Drafting workshops, and which led to the Constitutional Convention.
And the what we eventually had was a number of the different members of the committees
came together, sort of to have a community advisory board that lobbied the then directors
of Intersect to say, hey, you know, we really need to have you guys make a path
for the actual members to have elected seats. And so that was what led, you know,
so that they were like, yeah, yeah, no, that's in the plans. But I really have to give a lot
of credit for to Tiago Nunes for assembling that group and, you know, sort of helping to lobby for
that. So, you know, we we sort of went, you know, sort of kept saying like, hey, you know,
let us let us help you, let us work with you to sort of make sure that we have the community voice
as part of this. And that so that led to Alex Pachanker and Mercy becoming directors on the board,
and Alex doing a stint as the interim executive director before Lawrence was,
and then eventually we have now Jack Briggs as our executive director.
But we then had elections for the board, and that was two years ago. Cavinda
and I won those elections to be elected to the board, and so we had two members on the board,
along with IOG, Imergo, and the University of Wyoming, and so. We sort of you know kept working with
them. We work a lot with the Intersect Steering Committee, the leaders of the various committees
of Intersect, to talk to the executive director and the staff to sort of help create
the organizational layer of the organization. But of course, Kavind and I said, like, hey, you know,
it's great having two members of the board, but why not have four members of the board
so we can really have community voice, you know, and really have as much
and share some of that workload and share some of a lot of meetings, yeah, yeah. So, so they said,
yeah, you know, we can we can expand the four. And so we we had in last year we had elections
for four seats because we also planned for the seats become staggered,
so we would have two year terms. So Kavind and I basically said at the outset
we are going to run for re-election, but we want to we if we get if we do win our a re-election bid,
we're only going to take the one year spot because we think that's fair
that we've already served a year. We'll take a one year spot. And then we'll. And we saw that Rand
and Mercy came on the board as as Intersect members to join us. So since last year,
we've been operating with four members elected from the membership of Intersect,
which any Cardona community member can join. And the seats were still held by Imergo and IOG and
University of Wyoming. As you all know, you know Imurgo has resigned their seat
because of some of the circumstances around the second Phi incident. So they have
bigger things that they need to take care of right now. And very sadly,
our colleague Steve Lupian passed away at the University of Wyoming. So we're basically
in the process of onboarding the dean of the College of Law at the University of Wyoming
to take over that seat. So I'm actually going to be, yeah, I'm actually going to be in Laramie next.
Are you going to his service? I wasn't able to make it to his service. His service was no.
He's he's got a business one. Yeah, the dinner. Yes, I am going to the dinner. Yeah,
next week I'm going to be at the yeah on the campus of University of Wyoming
for the blockchain stampede. So I'm really exciting to be really excited to be going there
to meet with Dr. Hill and Dr. Alston and all the people there who are going to be at
the blockchain stampede to sort of like yeah sort of get them get them fully plugged in
and get everything off and going. But then we also have that seat from the from that
Imergo has vacated. That we are currently in talks with other Cardano institutions.
Can't name any names, but other Cardano institutions that might be interested in taking that.
I'll just say long-standing Cardano institutions that might want to fill that seat. Nice. So yeah,
that's kind of where we are right now. And so now we have an election for two seats,
and we have a lot of excellent candidates, not just me. So yeah, but I'm here to make my pitch,
sort of talk about what we've been doing, and happy to field any questions. Yeah.
So we did hear earlier from Kavi, and then we heard from Musa, and I really appreciate
you fitting this into your time today. I do see somebody with a hand up.
I'm going to give him the opportunity if he has a question for Adam, Mr. Connector. Hey, what's up?
Hi. Hello. Can you hear me? I can. I can hear you. So I have a question to Adam. Back in May,
I was making video about intersect, and there was a guy who took one hundred thousand US dollars
for videos. And those videos had no no views. I think it was for the company of his wife,
something like. I already forgot about it. I know I made a video about it. I can share it here.
So my question is: Were there any ramifications for that person for obvious corruption?
So what's what's who is the person, and what are the specific circumstances of the money received?
He's referring to Lloyd. Yes. Oh, yeah. I know what he's referring to. He's referring to Lloyd.
I was about to. I I can tell you this, Mister Connector. Um, I I am a subject matter expert on
the Intersect Budget Committee. I am not an actual like member of the committee,
and I know that Lloyd is no longer on the committee or a part of Cardano slash Intersect. I see,
but were there any like moves undertaken to get back said money or? Yep. Yeah.
So I I can I can speak to this. So I think if you're if you're speaking about
that specific incident, I do remember that our executive director Jack Briggs put out a statement.
He had to talk to us on the board about this. Lloyd was hired by our previous leadership,
specifically Lawrence, to do work. And he did. In in addition to being hired by Lawrence to do
the work, he also was the recipient. I believe in the company he was involved with was the recipient
of grants to do media work. I'm under the impression that this media work was not—it's not as simple
of a story as he had videos that nobody watched. It was there was work involved
that he received funding for, and that he did meet milestones that were published.
And I was told that under the grant that he was given, he met the milestones to receive
that funding. I, as a board member, have a fiduciary duty to make sure that the organization
does oversee this. And after reviewing it, I have to be fair and say that we did not find any reason
to either either try to have retroactive action on that specific incident,
or to you know take action against anyone who was involved in it. However,
anytime there is an accusation of impropriety about that, it does you know make us think about like.
What's going on, and are there ways that we can, at at the very least,
be more transparent of what things are, be you know, be clear about what are expected about people,
so that there aren't these questions around it. So I know that there are people who think,
who feel that maybe various grant work. I've I myself have been accused that some of the work that
I did for Cardano Development Holding grants in the past wasn't good enough in some way.
I appreciate that. Yeah, I'll say that in those cases, I I met my milestones. I feel that, you know,
I personally feel that all the work that I did towards C D H grants were to the best of my ability
and actually exceeded what was necessary to be good work. That being said,
people can have disagreements, and that's why it's up to a strong board to look at things
and say like, are our procedures sufficient? And so we do have a set of criteria for
how we issue grants. We do have a set of criteria for how we hire people
and expect them to work on things. There was nothing improper about the way the grant was issued,
so far as I know, because upon reviewing it, Lloyd did not have any sort of hiring or grant,
you know, grant giving power that he was accused of. And so far as I know, he did.
Do work for Intersect, so you know I was not his supervisor, but so far as I know, he did that work.
So and it sounds like in the milestones, there wasn't something that specifically said
you have to achieve X number of views either. Yeah, yeah. Listen, I I think I shared that video
I made back in May. So he was given exorbitant amount of money for a few videos that nobody watched.
So everyone can judge for themselves. I don't know if you see it. I shared it. Okay. No,
I I appreciate the situation. This was something I was aware of as well. I don't know that details.
I already forgot the details about it all. That's that's why. Thank you for reminding me
who that was. But I know I made a video about it, so I share it. And you can.
I appreciate your question, and I appreciate Adam. You give him just give us an honest answer.
Everything is time-stamped, so it's like 14 minutes. There's a time stamp. Thank you. Okay. Sure.
Thank you, Adam. Let's. I was gonna redirect and just keep moving. If there's something else
you want to say, I'm not gonna stop you. No, no, it's okay. I mean, I'll I'll just.
Wrap it up by saying that you know people are going to have questions about the work we do
and how things go, and any single director won't have control over everything. Any single executive,
you know, on the organization won't have control over everything. And even I think that sometimes
the narratives that go out about what you know individual contributors of Cardona are doing
are sometimes out of context. But fair, you know, we have to. I mean, I chair a board,
but I only get one vote. Exactly, it doesn't always go the way I want. But we, so we,
we are held accountable, and people can reflect on that and look at our overall record. Yeah.
I appreciate that. All right, let's let's do a little forward thinking. Sure.
What what are a couple things that you would like to improve? You'd like to change?
What's what are you looking forward to making a difference in a new way? Yeah. Thanks.
So I think one of the things that I want that I would love to see
Intersect improve is just getting really back on our feet in terms of the robust work we can do with
you know like cardano contributors. It's been a rough bear market and And we've seen a lot
of you know a lot of projects go bust, a lot of people not have time to contribute.
Intersect has certainly not been perfect in our organizational skills.
I feel like there's a lot of times when committees hit you know brick walls and they're like, well,
what do we do now? Where do we go? We're not sure how to execute this. Some committees, you know,
like have really great ideas and and and do awesome. I'll I'll point especially to like
the product committee and the way they went about designing the vision 2030,
and you know getting the feedback from the community to sort of have this very proactive,
forward-looking idea of where we want Cardona to go in the next five years, right? But you know,
not everything is that easy. And one of the things I really want to do is you know keep working with
the intersect steering committee, keep working with. The cardinal committees to sort of say like,
hey, what are the lessons we can learn from each other? We've already started this.
Lorenzo has been has been doing a great job of getting people together to talk about like assembling
those best practices to sort of understand like what are we doing right,
and then what are the pain points so that committees can learn from each other
and try to smooth it out. It's something that's going to take time. It's not something
that's going to change overnight. But it's something that hopefully we can sort of apply
so that you know each committee can have sort of their working groups their their charge
of knowing like where they are where they really are empowered to do something
and how we can give them the support they need from the staff, especially
as we sort of like I hate to use this word, but it's I think a good a good one.
Right size our staff. It's such a nineties. Hey, as long as you didn't say executive function,
that's fine. No, well, yeah, we won't go down that we won't go down that rabbit hole today. Hey,
hey, yeah, we. But Intersect's been doing a lot of right sizing of our staff.
When it when Intersect got launched, the staff was all you know contractors from P Cubed,
and a lot of them were wonderful people. They were great people. I'm not saying I'm not
I'm not going to speak ill of P Cubed. It's expensive. It's very expensive,
and I think that not all of them were immersed enough within the Cardano way of thinking to you know
like always right. And to be fair, Adam, we started with that, and we grew from there. So,
and that's all to be expected. Thank you. Thank you. That thank you. That's that's the point
I'm trying to make. Is that you have to start somewhere, right? So yeah, we've we've grown so much,
and some of those P Cubed people have come over and you know moved to an Intersect contract
where they're no longer they've they've they've gotten out of the P Cubed safety net
and moved to be straight up contract with Intersect, so that they said we're we're putting our faith
in you guys to to keep going, which is awesome, which is a blessing. Not everyone was
willing to do that. Some some great people were like. Some great people
I would have loved to approach from P Cubed were like, you know, I just can't give that up.
I can't give up the benefits, and I'm like, yeah, no, I don't, I don't blame you.
There's a reason why I'm full. There's a reason why I'm full time at the University of Illinois
with my benefits for my family instead of right crypto. Um, but that's what that's why I'm.
That's why I try to make my difference as like a director, where it's a a part time job
as a director, and I can be a force amplifier rather than trying to be full time somewhere. Yeah,
I like that. I like that. Well, let's see. This was a question I tried to ask Musa,
but I think his internet wasn't going to allow any more conversation. How do you think
Intersect could measure whether committees or working groups are actually producing value?
Because that seems to be one of the biggest things I hear talked about. Is yeah,
there's a committee, but what are they actually doing? That's a great question.
That's a great question. And then the question is like, what do you mean by value?
Because sometimes you have immediate value. It can be subjective, right? Exactly, right.
You can have immediate work product where you are immediately coming up with here is
a delivered work product, and then you sometimes have delayed value where it's like, okay, you know,
you kicked around a bunch of ideas and maybe something didn't come out of it right now,
but then it did seed, you know, sort of seed the field for something else to grow from it.
I'll be generous and say that you know I think all of the Cardano, I think that all
of the intersect committees have at least done a lot of good work on seeding the field
for those kind of ideas. But we do need to ensure that there is a lot more direct,
like work product coming out of things, right? Because that is an imperative for Cardano. It's time,
you know, it's time to go, right? The train is leaving the station. We we are getting to the point
where, as this bear market is starting to go sideways, and we'll take off in
the next couple of years. There are going to be projects that stagnate and die.
Blockchains that stagnate and die, and those that will rise again and take off.
And we want to be in the latter camp. We want to be one of the projects that take off again
and rise. This is the this is the the cycle. This is how it works. I am a believer in the cycles.
So, how do we position Cardano to do that? How can Intersect help make that happen?
And it is about making sure that every committee. Is tying itself to deliverable work products,
and so that's one of the things that we've been discussing with the Intersect Steering Committee,
and one of the things that Lorenzo is leading this analysis on, of sort of saying like,
how can we understand that the good things that have come out of Intersect working groups,
and sort of realizing like, you know, the committees that are having these deliveries
of solid work products. If if they either are functioning as a working group as a committee,
or they are committees that have solid working groups that deliver those things,
so we're kind of moving in that direction of sort of figuring out like how do we
how do we do this because working groups have empowerment, right? They are sort of they they have
a story to tell. We are a working group accomplishing this goal. So and typically they've been asked
to, right? Exactly, yeah. That that's that's the goal. Yep. All right, all right.
How do you think we can get more? Experienced, knowledgeable people into the committees. Yeah,
we have to make it work. We we have to make it worth it to them. And it's not always.
It's not always about. Oh, that's interesting. Right. Go on. Go on. Yeah.
You got all of our attention now. Pay. Pay might be part of it. You know, we have this stipend,
right? We have. We have a small stipend that we that we give to people who serve on committee.
Who stipends what? Five hundred eight, I think. Yeah, it's like five hundred eight a month, I think.
And then if you're a chair, it's a little more. I think you get double for your chair, right? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, you get double for the chair. It's five hundred eight a month if you're a member,
and um, and it's something, right? It's something. It's yeah, yeah, yeah. Um.
It's a lot less now than it was a year ago. Oh yeah, it's not like when Ada was three dollars
or anything, but still. But still, but still, it's but it's. I think it's at the very least,
it's it's a show of respect because you're showing people that you respect the effort
they're making. Right, you're saying I value your time, and that's that's the main thing.
What it's for is to show you know I value. What's a what's a non-financial incentive?
I think the non-financial incentive part is showing that you know what you're doing is you know
is clearly defined and makes a difference, and I think that is part of the reason why.
People have gotten frustrated with some with with things sometimes is because they say I'm on
this committee, but I don't have a clear enough idea of what I'm allowed to do, what I what
and what I am supposed to be doing. Ooh, interesting. And sometimes we're like, well, you know,
you're allowed to come up with ideas, but you're not. You know, we we can't let you always.
We can't always let you speak for the organization. Um, it's it's this weird thing, right?
So Cardano that seems fair. I mean, when you say speak for the organization,
if I'm just you know Jane Doe on the budget committee, I don't think anybody should assume
I'm speaking for all of Intersect. Yeah, yeah. I mean, well, and Intersect also has to make sure
it's not speaking for Cardano, and so yes, yeah. And so as a board member,
so so Intersect is a point of centralization where we are a registered company in Wyoming that is
able to make real world contracts. And so that is that is a strength for us because we're
able to accomplish things that you know serve Cardano as a decentralized ecosystem.
Cardano as a decentralized ecosystem can't make a contract with somebody.
The D reps can approve sending money out of the treasury, but once that money leaves the treasury,
the only way to really hold somebody accountable would be through a class action lawsuit
against the person who receives it. Unless you have some sort of a counter-signing party that says,
you know, we are empowered to represent this, so that's where that's why the Constitution sets up
the idea of an administrator, and that's one of the functions that Intersect holds is to take,
you know, take the administration responsibility. So another, I'll be honest,
I appreciate the governance that Intersect has helped facilitate. You know,
when it comes to ensuring elections take place and things like this, I I do appreciate
that you have filled a role that we needed. Yeah. So, what other things can we do that helps
you know facilitate work on master the master the treasury process for us without
without yeah exactly but without overstepping our bounds without overstepping our bounds
because what I don't want to happen is I don't want it to happen where intersect I don't want
like one overlord to intersect to decide. We're gonna take all the money
and split it up just like this, and nobody else gets a say. And you're not gonna see it
until we take the withdrawal or anything like that. Like some sort of a far. Nah, we'd riot, right?
Yeah, I think that the whole community would be up in arms if something like that happened,
and maybe we'd even overreact and throw open, throw the process entirely the other direction.
I'm just talking pure hypotheticals. Hypotheticals, yeah, yeah. These are pure hypotheticals.
Maybe we'd all get up in arms and throw the direction and throw everything in entirely
the opposite direction. Maybe you can go too far. That being said, you know,
so we have to we have to strike this careful balance, and it's hard. And one of the scary things
about being a board member is that, like, I'm you know like I'm personally on the hook for some
of this because I'm you know I'm a director. So, but it's you know it's it's a joy to take it on
because this is this is really what I do. Like like this is this is what I trained for.
This is why I have a degree in a policy related degree. This is why I've you know this is this is
a lot of my background is in nonprofit organizations and working with groups like this.
So that's that's why I like to contribute in this way. I'm with you. I I like it too because it's
a way that you can add value. But what you're doing is you're trying to help other people add value.
Your value is in helping others, and there's such a great feeling in that, right? Yeah, I get you.
I get you. So we got a couple people that came up. I don't know if they have questions,
but I'm going to throw another one out real quick. Six months after the election,
what would we be able to point to and say, "Adam made that happen. Adam made that better." Um,
I hope that you'll be able to point to the fact that we have. Well-functioning relationship
between the the board, the staff, and the member committees of Intersect.
That's something that I want to have as a priority. Better flow there. So yeah,
some better information flow, collaboration flow. I also hope that you can point to the fact
that I've I work on sort of representing Intersect in the best way possible as a as a sort
of like let's say as an organization that represents Cardano. So like to the outside world,
like that's that's why I go to conferences. That's why I go to That's why I'm going to
the University of Wyoming. That's why, in a week after that, I'm going to be going to
the the Digital Chambers policy policy summit in Chicago. Like because I want Intersect to be,
you know, like in the know on these things and representing representing.
Is DC within your travel realm? You know, I did go. I did go to the Digital Chambers DC
Blockchain Week last year. And I know they have a couple things coming up.
I'll I'll shoot you a message just in case. Yeah. So those are things that I want to try to make
a difference on, and and not just me going to them, but also me making sure that that people
who need to be places also have the resources and empowerment to do that. Because sometimes I'm,
oftentimes, oftentimes I'm not the best person to be someplace, but if somebody from our staff
can go someplace, like if our open source director can go to, um, go to the open source conferences,
and um, if if Jack can be at the right places to talk to people, like that's even more important.
Appreciate that. Thank you. And of course, if you want to add to like transparency
and communication, those are things everybody screams about, and we would love to be able to be
like, Adam made that better too. No, yeah, absolutely. Lido with the hand up, all respectful. Like,
what's up? Respectful, like, question for the the new board or existing board or whatever.
Because it came to mind when you mentioned relationship with intersex staff, and the very amazing.
I think he's like the male version of Christina. Tex, he is everywhere. He does everything.
It seems like it seems like a whole shit of things go through him. That dude was waking up
at three a.m. To have a conversation with me. I've worked with other staff at intersect.
He's usually been the only one that 100 follows through, whether it's getting me in front
of a committee or whatever. But it seems like he's the he's doing all the work.
It is that seems like a huge risk. Or am I am I crazy? I was just paying him a shitton of money,
but it seems like he's working a lot. Well, I'll just say Texas is fantastic. Sorry, one last thing,
and I mention this because sometimes he can be a bit slow to respond. Like you know,
things would take three. He eventually gets me an answer, but sometimes he just get overwhelmed
and backed up. Yeah, absolutely. You know, Tex, Tex is fantastic. I I love working with Tex too,
and I need to talk to him about open source things. And but I mean, we we have a lot of people
on our staff that are amazing. And what what I'll say is that different. You know,
I think that different people in the community will interact with different members of the staff
depending on where their niches are. And what they're working on, and so there'll probably be
another person who will be, you know, praising Larissa the same way you praise Tex.
Another person praising Laura the way the way you were praising Tex. And I I could go through
everybody's names, right? On this, we you know we we have a very dedicated staff. We have
great people. We need a few more. We do have some. We at least have had some open positions,
but we also do recognize that we need better workflows for them, including like tooling for them.
So we have been looking at like how can we like improve the workflows.
Taking they're like playing with some of the AI tooling and stuff to help them get the information
they need faster, and stuff like that. I can't. I'm not going to. I'm not even going to touch
the 10 foot pole and budget negotiations. So sorry, I'm not going to respond to that portion
of your comment. But isn't when yeah everyone's great. Went into the sect to sort of slim
down a little bit. Hex inherited two additional committees. I think he's like three now. Is is
that just the life? I I am going to keep this in mind for the next time that we come up
for a budget request, and I'm going to be contacting you, Lido,
and we are going to be campaigning together. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Lido,
can you give us more money? We we definitely need it. Yeah. Open source committee is doing
a shit ton of work. I feel like that's one person's job, but he's doing MC. I think he's doing
technical steering committee. It's just It's crazy, but let me let this other guy speak. Johnny,
did you have a question for Adam? Yeah, yeah. Adam, just going back
to your purely hypothetical scenario where someone might overreact to budgetary decision making.
Would would Charles's response to intersect coming up with like a properly defined
budgetary line method to then fulfill through you know a crowd sourced method?
Was would his overreaction? Would would you classify that as an overreaction
beyond just a simple hypothetical scenario? You know, there's a lot of members of Intersect,
and everybody's going to have their position on how things should work.
One of the things that we need to do is, you know, just take a step back, look at it,
and have discussions and try to work things out. So, I don't want to speak to any particular person,
whether that member be well known or lesser known, or any particular scenario, other
than to say that. We have a lot of work to do, and it does take a lot of compromises between a lot
of different people. And I do think that, though, that we've made significant improvements
on the direction. And I think the more the Intersect works with our partners within the community,
groups like IOG and Cardano Foundation, and builders, you know, in all of you know all
of the builders on Cardano, that whether they are whether they are signed up as Intersect Enterprise
members or not. Any any builder who wants to come and give input, I think that we need to take that
all into consideration. So that is something that we are actively working on,
and it's something that you know we you you will see reflected in the next budget process. Yeah,
Adam, I'd just like to say you should also run for office. That's what that's what I do.
I I I burned out of U.S. Politics. I'm now I'm a blockchain politician. I'm up here campaigning.
You think this is easier? It's that easier. It's just he's got the skill set.
He's got the skill set required for. He's got the skill set required for answering questions
in a unique and interesting way. I'm just not, and I'm really not trying to bullshit anybody.
It's just that there are certain things that I have to protect the. I have to protect
the organization. That's what I do. Like I, I really, I really appreciate institutions
and what institutions bring, and I recognize that they can't do everything
and they can't serve everyone, which is why I'm in a space that is a decentralized ecosystem.
But even a decentralized ecosystem needs institutions if it's going to survive. Yeah,
and we tried to be one. So I'm gonna give a chance if Blockjock or Epoch had a question.
You guys are unusually quiet. I just want to give you your opportunity. Blockjock is quiet. What?
I'm not quiet. I'm at an airport and I'm with my wife, my lovely wife and daughter, and.
And we were about to go to San Diego, and once I hit San Diego, I am going to be incommunicado.
You're like, I'm done with you people, right? But I wanted to be here to support Adam.
Adam has been one of the. You've got a bunch of people that you've talked to on a regular basis.
I talk to Adam. I do talk to Tex. I do talk to Lorenzo, Larissa. There's no question coming.
There's no question, really. But really, there's more support surrounding.
Everything that everybody's doing, and everybody's doing more with less right now.
So I would like it, right? So I'd like you all to visualize. Blockjock would be walking around
with a sign and asking if you would like to have a sign in your yard. That's where he stands.
I would like more people to think about joining and becoming a part of the committee
and becoming a part of pushing Cardona forward in whatever thing that they find they could. Fill in
and help with. We'd love that a little bit more, you know. So Jenny got me started in this,
and now I'm just hooked into it. And I actually love helping people, and it feels really good,
you know. So that part I really, really like, you know. So if I can be a part of this in some way
and develop a decentralized governance structure that one day, a hundred years from now,
a country adopts. I mean, come on! What kind of legacy is that? Pretty amazing to think about,
you know. So who knows? It it could happen, right? Anything's possible, you know.
But this is where it starts, and Adam has been a principal in this since the beginning,
and you know, absolutely support what it is that he's been doing, and want to see him do more of it,
you know. So yeah, I'm just here for that mostly. So Eepak,
I have a question. No, all right, good. Eepak, did you have one?
Um, where do you see intersect in five years? Oh, dear Lord. Oh man! In five years,
I I would love to see intersect as very much like the Linux Foundation,
where it is a launching pad for other community initiatives. Where somebody can have an idea
for some like smaller like institution that needs to be there to shepherd a project,
and they can say, you know what, we we aren't ready to have like our own tax number.
We aren't ready to have our own. You know, like maybe necessarily, like we're not going to.
We don't have all the infrastructure that we need, but you know, we can bootstrap by coming to
Intersect events, meeting up with the Intersect community, and then we can like maybe get
some donations for a sub fund with Cardano Development Holdings, and then we can have some.
We can have a self governance system to where like we can we can have like anything that we need
that touches the real world can be like affiliated with this umbrella.
Where we we have the option of autonomy when we need it and support when we need it,
if that makes sense. So that's that's kind of where I want to see intersect go. You asked for that.
I did. I did. No softballs here. Nope. Nope. Well, thanks for running, Adam. Appreciate it.
It's great to see so many, you know, people trying to fill this spot, and I think you have
a great chance. So, best of luck, sir. Thanks for coming on the show, and I'm impressed
that you you keep rolling with the Cardano life. You know, ups or downs, you seem to be consistent,
and I I value that. Absolutely. All right, thank you, Adam, so much. Do you have like a call
to action other than vote, vote, vote? Join, join, join. I have, I have one more question. Does,
does anyone else have a hand up? Does, do you have one more question, Lido? Just,
just one last question. Oh my god! With other organizations, with intersect help,
didn't Adam Dean just propose exactly such a thing? Any update on that? Is, is that going to happen?
Um, I'll have to get to get with him to on the details. So, um, I can't speak to any specifics
on that. I can't answer that question. Next question. Okay, I guess it hasn't reached the board yet,
man, because he's presented it at the committee a couple of times. Maybe it's still still
in the bureaucracy pipeline. Yes, that is one. That is a question I'm not prepared for.
So I can I can talk to Mr. Dean directly. I know that he has he and I have discussed this idea
several times as well. But where exactly where exactly this is in the process, I can't tell you.
But hopefully, it'll be within five years. Because I was asking five years. Okay.
That's that's my that's my reasoning. But okay, so I guess yeah. I appreciate you guys
considering me. I I do what I can, and you know it's been it's been great. When Kavin
and I came on the board two years ago, you know. You know, we we we already had
some community representation there, but it was it was interesting being like the first
to be elected to the board, and it was it was very it was very like kind of having the switch
from being sort of like the oh you you've been elected that's great to now being the to having the
you know IOG and you know look at us and say like hey you know this is the thing that
we would like to do. How do you guys feel? Like where where should we go? You know,
like kind of seeing the relationship of how this really is. You know, like intersect really is. Not
that it was never about the community before, but like we we really have turned the corner, right?
In terms of like the community really is running this, right? So it's it's great.
I think that we have a bright future, and I just encourage everyone. You know, like get involved.
I know that it's tough out there with the bear market, but get involved.
And thank you for your consideration. Appreciate you, Adam. So, Intersect members,
you have to be a member to make this vote. You log into the Intersect website.
If you have not done your KYC, there was a KYC update that I think just
about everybody had to do a KYC update. Make sure to do that quickly because voting ends at
twelve p.m. UTC on the twenty-fifth. So there's not a lot of time. If you want to vote, go ahead.
Get that information in. This is um this is an important role. It may not be something people think
about. It is um is a paid role. I think it's uh thirty five thousand U S dollars a year.
These are people that are professionals that are coming in to help lead Intersect,
help guide Cardano as as a whole. So I mean, it's an important role. This vote is important,
and I really hope if you are an Intersect member that you'll go out and vote.
And that is all I got for you guys. I want to thank everybody for coming out.
If anybody wants to have any parting words, real quick, but I'm about to bounce.
Thank you guys so much. Anybody? I know Johnny threw up a hand really quick. Vote Adam. Yeah, yeah.
It's a shame. It's a shame you have to be a member to vote because I'm no longer a member
of Intersect. Funnily enough, it just automatically lapsed. I thought you'd have auto renewal.
I got an email saying no longer a member, and I was like, oh, well, okay. Right,
Adam might be a feature request. Don't make us check our emails. I thought that there was
a grace period, so you might want to check with you might want to check with the staff. No,
I got that. Just like, but I I don't mind not being a member. To be fair,
but if it's being run by the community anymore, I'm not a part of it. Yeah, my other labs too.
I have to go in there, but it did send a warning email that I ignored. Exactly.
The social thing didn't work for me, so I just went back to to M sub or whatever for the community.
Yeah, I'm not surprised. You joined on the wrong account. Do you lose your findership status
if you have a lapse? Your findership? What does that word even mean? Founder, founder. Oh, yeah.
I mean, like, I bet you do. It seems like an appropriate penalty. I, I honestly,
she might have that attitude, doesn't it? Please check. Please check with the staff because I'm
pretty sure there's a several month grace period of being able to get back into back
into membership. Like, listen, I don't mind if you if you guys don't want to auto renew me.
I don't mind not being auto renewed. It's fine. I'm not a member anymore. Thanks. Oh my goodness.
All right. All right. We'll get. Listen, Adam. Thank you. Smart contract setups
that you can always auto renew. Then I'll get that set. I'll get that frog.
I'll get that on the list. Johnny, you're special. Everyone else, have a great Thursday,
wonderful day. Come back tomorrow. Yeah, you're definitely special. Come back tomorrow
to join Maureen
for another wonderful episode of Cardano over Coffee. Take care, everyone. Bye, y'all.
