hi this is Charles hoskinson broadcasting live from warm sunny Colorado always warm Always Sunny sometimes Colorado today is October 25th 2022 almost upon us is Halloween the spooky holiday I wanted to make a video inspired by something I saw on Amazon and it led me down a path of thinking about cryptocurrency infrastructure and just how magical our industry is see one of the superpowers of cryptocurrencies especially real cryptocurrencies is this homogeneity and that anybody can participate at any level and when we think about the infrastructure of cryptocurrencies meaning the backbone that actually runs the protocols themselves uh I wanted to show you a few Links of just how accessible low-cost and easy it is for somebody to start from zero to actually get to a point where they could conceivably run something so let me share my screen real quickly present share screen and here we go all right well first off we have this lovely b-link gtr5 now there's nothing particularly special about this computer other than the fact that it's just proving a point it's very small uh it's uh you know relatively inexpensive at about 800 there's a lower cost version that's 400 but what's so powerful about it is the this particular processor and actually all modern processors when you actually look at it eight cores running at 4.6 gigahertz and very easy to upgrade out of the box this could comfortably run the entire cardano network as a stake pool operator no upgrade needed but as the protocol evolves namely input endorsers come and more demand is put on the spos the only thing you'd really need to do is add a little bit more high speed storage 200 bucks a little bit more high speed memory 200 bucks right now 800 probably could find some deals or things even cheaper than this basically the idea is though for twelve hundred dollars give or take you can run a world financial operating system and this particular form factor is extremely low on power then you say well how do you make it secure well a few things uh one thing is you you need the right operating system it's probably the most secure OS right now in the Linux ecosystem or at least the one that a lot of the security people talk about is cubes OS and there's a good Community that's around cubes OS if you're curious about it here's a good video I'll go ahead and drop this in the uh chat right here for you guys so you just have a link there but basically cubes OS security operating system and if you want to learn a little bit on how to use Linux there's a free class that's actually on edx from the Linux Foundation introduction Linux kind of takes you where you need to go then you'd be able to read the Cube's OS introduction and there's a bunch of tutorials and documentations and these types of things and then finally access control to your little computer system Nitro key open source so basically it's like yubikey but all the shit's open source and it does pretty much everything from secure login and Litany of other things made in Germany No back doors all that stuff and it's like 50 bucks let's see here yeah 49 euros give or take so what's the point the point is that this is 50 this is 800. this is your time okay and if you think about it the power of all these pieces coming together the uh the the the system coming together basically means that for what you pay for a cell phone plus time you could be an operator of something that runs on the scale of millions to billions of people processing Millions to billions of transactions events regulating people's identity enabling privacy for those who don't have it economic identity for those who don't have it this really is the magic of cryptocurrencies in a nutshell and it really is something that's so powerful that not only is your infrastructure there if you use cubes and nicer key your access control is actually better than the vast majority of world governments no matter if you're the UK or Russia or Australia or the United States Germany you'd actually be more secure than the vast majority of government computers including military operations and computers you think about that you sitting in your living room buying a 50 key learning a little bit about Linux becoming an expert with cubes and just buying a little Nook and sitting it there cost of a high-speed internet connection you can now be an operator for a global scale Network it's incredible when you really think about these things it's incredible now there's a lot more protocol design that has to happen to get it truly to where it needs to go but that's the evolution of these things and it's going to become commoditized and everything I've just shown you it's nothing special about it there's Intel nooks and all these other the Microsoft just launched a 600 Mini PC as a reference kit for the arm ecosystem that's probably pretty cool thing to play around with and those prices continue to fall there are people actually running Cardinal on Raspberry Pi's right now okay it's a little underpowered for where we'd like to go but not so much and the cost of computing continues to fall year after year the cost of memory continues to fall year after year the cost of storage continues to fall the protocols continue to get more paralyzable more efficient more scalable and that's the power of this thing it was very important to me when we designed cardano to have this Democratic Viewpoint where anybody can buy and participate and build a business now there's a lot more work that needs to be done and making it easier for small stake pool operators to participate if anything in Federation with larger ones through protocols like conclave and through things like partial delegation that's going to be a big work Point all throughout 2023 and input endorsers actually changes some of the things and you'll see the sips here soon which I hope will actually make it easier for us to have a lot more stake pool operators and obviously as the value of ADA goes up you get more decentralization that's the mechanism of the of the system so the point of this video is just to convey how incredible it is to be able to build a world financial operating system that you can run at home for less than a thousand dollars and some training that's all free online that has a higher level of security than what you would expect at a skiff for the most part if you're clever about how you put it together and you learn the right skill sets this is an organic evolving organism those endpoints get more advanced over time they're self-upgrading it's highly competitive and there's a lot of participants and actors and these protocols once fully Unleashed and unlocked will be able to enable so many different use cases like mithril for example opens up the entire like client world and also makes every single side chain easier to deal with because mithril certificates can be used on the sidechain sides to the main chain and there's going to be tons of transactions being processed but that's just an incredible thing when you look at the trillion plus dollars that's been invested in building the current world financial operating system and the fact that this can outclass it over time and you can run it at home on a on an Intel Nook or one of these b-link computers it's pretty amazing thing and uh it just blows my mind so much that I figured I'd make a quick video about it just have you think about it um in 2023 there's a lot that has to be done to improve these experiences canonical uh videos to be made tutorials to be made books to be written and a lot of collective knowledge amongst the operators of the system as it stands right now and obviously there's a huge room for improvement and uh and everything and actually as side chains come more revenue streams will come for stickable operators the more service lines will come for them above and beyond just the inflation of ADA but just for a moment think about what we've already accomplished and what we can already do with this Hardware you could process a transaction and make a block for the movement of a billion dollars of value potentially think about that somebody's already done that and it's there and anyone can buy it it's on Amazon this is one of the big differences to me between Bitcoin mining and proof of work and proof of stake when you see all these people in the Bitcoin World say well proof of stake is just a replication of Central Banking and and okay so I can go to Amazon and buy an 800 computer read some tutorials and manuals and then boom I'm participating and I'm in this system and that's a replication of the world banking system I don't think you really understand how the world banking system works and it's a lot more expensive to be a Bitcoin miner and be competitive in that respect and actually make a profit and do things there you can certainly buy miners but Asics are expensive and the odds are the vast majority of people that do well in that business are vertically integrated they spend hundreds of millions of dollars here a thousand bucks you're in the game and you're in the game well just make sure you have a high-speed internet connection that's pretty much it and it's going to grow and get better so it is pretty cool in that in that respect and it really does get me excited to see where this future goes and what this future can do cardano will eventually be a network of blockchains so it's not just going to be cardano but we think about the side chain side of things there's potentially going to be dozens eventually hundreds of side chips running in parallel All tune to specific things so it's like the Borg going around and absorbing technology every sidechain is a blockchain to blockchain partnership and this type of Hardware can run all of that this type of ecosystem can run all of that it's so cool and it's just the fruits of our laborers the product design and protocol design a lot more to do a lot more to go but every now and then just could take a moment to celebrate the small stuff that open technology even open Hardware potentially all these things can come together and you can create something really special and this is also a heartfelt thank you to all of the spos Who currently run cardano and make it as decentralized as it already is thank you so much for participating in the Pioneers programs for the ITN thank you so much for helping us get to Shelley getting Shelly to be fully decentralized and Beyond you do the Lord's work it's a hard job and I think sometimes it's an underappreciated one so thank you cheers everyone