Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson and Tamara Hassan broadcasting live from Ontario, Canada. We're here to resolve some executive workshop business and other affairs, and we're having a lovely time. We only have about 30 minutes before catching a flight, but by popular demand, many people have asked for Tam and me to do a podcast together. So, this is a pilot episode—hopefully, it’ll be tragically hip in honor of our time in Canada.
By popular demand, we figured we’d have a podcast for maybe 30 minutes to an hour, perhaps longer depending on engagement. It's always a live stream because you know how much I love live streams. We can talk about basically anything—governance, Cardano, life, philosophy—anything at all. You guys seem to love our dynamic, and I do too. It’s always so much fun when we have a chance to chat.
So, Tam, how are you?
Oh, I’m great, Charles, thanks for asking! How are you?
It’s been a day.
Yeah, it’s been a very long day here.
Unfortunately, yes. We have to work weekends from time to time, but that’s okay. It is what it is. I love what we do.
So, tell everybody about where you grew up a little bit.
Oh my gosh, I know! It’s like the question. We have no format, by the way; we didn’t even agree on what we were going to discuss.
Exactly, so I’m just ambushing you with questions. Where did I grow up? I actually grew up where I’m sitting right now, here in Dorchester, Ontario, which is a tiny little town. It’s a nice little town; I’d say it’s like a village. I always said I probably would never come back here or live here, but now I’m here. I moved back, kind of like a lot of other people during COVID.
I look at you and think, how do we do this? I don’t know.
Yeah, we really don’t know.
So, I always thought I would never move back here, but because of COVID, I was in Toronto and realized I didn’t really know anybody there anymore. So, I came back to my tiny little village. It’s interesting; it’s like the whole hero’s journey thing where you eventually come home with the boon. The boon is Ada, the boon is Bitcoin. So, I came back here, and yeah, I live in a small little town.
What do you think of this town? Have you been here?
Well, you know, I had a chance to see London for the first time ever. You kept saying it’s a small village, that there’s no one here, and we went out, and there were skyscrapers—like 15-story buildings!
Yeah, those are skyscrapers! Come on!
It’s a huge building; it’s the biggest ever for London, Ontario. There was actually a game store, and we bought some Warhammer figures, which was fun. It’s a lovely, quaint little Canadian town.
One of my most treasured memories is when we walked by the poutine shop.
Yeah, we actually took pictures because we were trying to create London memories for Charles here.
Yeah, we have a poutine shop! It’s a lot of fun. But what really struck me is that the town is a juxtaposition of where I grew up in Broomfield of the '70s and today. If you go to Broomfield, Colorado, you have all these buildings built back in the early '70s with the brickwork and everything, and I see them in London. I was like, wow, this is exactly what I’m used to as a kid.
I guess it was a ubiquitous style, and everybody was copying it back in the day.
Yeah, and we were talking about how you update the look of the '70s. I mean, the CN Tower in Toronto—I don’t know if anyone’s ever seen it here or if anyone from Toronto is listening, but it looks like a relic from the '70s.
I don’t know if we have to re-clad all these buildings; everything’s just a bit drab there. So, I kind of want to jazz it up here in London this week.
London is more of a city, while where I’m from is more of a village. I’m known as the crypto girl here, so a lot of people know who I am just because I’m in Cardano and what we do.
I have a question: how has perception in a small town changed during the boom and then after the boom, especially after FTX? Have you noticed a change in how people perceive crypto on Main Street?
Yeah, I actually have. I have a neighbor a few doors down from me, and my dad has a lot of businessmen who wanted to talk to me during the boom. They were like, “Oh, this is the most amazing thing! Let’s chat!” But they’ve stopped calling. My neighbor just kind of feels different now.
I was always very careful; whenever anybody asked me about crypto and wanted advice on what tokens to hold, I always said, “Don’t invest in anything you don’t know about. Don’t overextend yourself.” It’s not like I’m here shilling anything to anybody. Of course, I love Cardano, and I could say why taking any sort of position or interest in Cardano is interesting, but I’m always very careful to say this is not investment advice. These are tokens, and I explain the utility of the system.
They seem open to it; they really like to learn about it and understand it. But I’m just very careful not to be shilling one thing or the other. They all think I’m an investment advisor or something. They just don’t understand the protocol.
There are some little parties; my buddy Simon brings me to parties, and there’s one guy there who knows about crypto. He likes Solana, and I think I had too many drinks the last time I saw him and maybe told him how I feel about Solana, which is a lot. I’m a little opinionated when I’ve had a gin and tonic.
I’ve never noticed!
Yeah, you’re fine. But there’s a lot of interest. Even at the arena, we have a local arena. I used to play hockey; I’m Canadian, so I’m actually well-known here for my hockey playing. My referee, who used to ref me, lives in this little cul-de-sac where I live. He remembers me as a young hockey player, so I’m kind of infamous here.
Moving beyond crypto, it’s unfortunate that people tend to pitch and hold crypto. They say the only thing in life you do is crypto; you’re the crypto person.
Yeah, but I have six companies. You actually have lots of other divergent interests as well. For example, you want to tell them a little bit about the fabric?
Oh my gosh, you’ve got the book right there!
Yeah, I have a book on fabric. I can’t believe I’m showing this to people. This is a book on fabric, and it actually goes through the different types of fabric and how yarn is made. I’m the kind of person who wanted to understand it fundamentally first.
I like fashion, and the title is “Fabric for Fashion.” This book is so cool; it goes through plant-based fibers and animal-based fibers. They actually show some of the fiber cards in there.
These are different fibers, and it tells you about them on the side. It gives you the yarn. I’m the type of person who wants to make some of my own clothes because I can never find what I like online. Even in Italy, I couldn’t find anything.
But I have to understand it fundamentally first. It’s a bit extreme, but I want to understand textiles because fabric or fashion is textiles, right? You have to understand the fabric first and foremost.
That’s why I’m probably going a little too deep into this, but I bought all the things. I have a sewing machine, thread, and lots of needles right over there. I did this with baking as well; I spent about three grand on Amazon for all the baking things.
How much have you actually baked?
I baked cookies once—twice, actually. I had to make two batches because the first was not good.
But I get really into one thing, and then I want to learn everything. There’s an intersection between what you’re thinking about and what I was thinking about. For years, I always wanted to do something in textiles where we’d work with exotic materials.
Years ago, I read an article about how people in Wyoming and Utah genetically engineered goats to carry spider silk in their milk. You’d milk the spider goat and filter out the silk proteins to make clothing or materials out of spider silk.
Now, why would people want to do that? It’s about twice as strong as steel; it’s one of the strongest materials ever conceived. You can’t really industrialize it with spiders because they eat each other. So, to me, it was such a cool idea that you could genetically engineer something.
Since we’re now doing that with bioluminescent plant work at Colossal and other places, I always imagine that eventually, material sciences will come through. But then there’s the question of what fashion would look like with spider silk. What other materials could you use?
It’s a cool intersection.
They’re always looking for new types of materials to differentiate. I mean, the fashion industry just keeps recycling the same ideas over and over again.
Is it truly as strong as steel?
Yeah, it’s twice as strong.
What were you saying about some fabric that can change according to your moods?
Yeah, there are two different types of materials—nano materials you can put on fabrics. One is called thermochromic, which changes color when the temperature changes.
In fact, we have several houses in Longmont, and I went a little crazy decorating one of the houses. In the shower of the basement of one of the houses, we have thermochromic tile that we got from Japan.
We don’t tell anybody that there’s thermochromic tile; they’re just going to take a shower and suddenly it goes from black tile to multi-colored rainbow. They’ll be thinking, “What just happened?”
Usually, what I do is the day after, I say, “By the way, I’m really sorry to tell you this, but you know there may have been some psychedelics in that wine you drank yesterday.”
That’s for Jerry, Jerry Moroney, Chief Operating Officer of IO.
So, yeah, thermochromic is one material you can put on the yarn. Another project Google had was called Project Jacquard, where you can put transistors into the thread itself. You can compute with it, meaning that potentially, you could have the material change color based on mood if it had some way of knowing what your mood is.
It’s a pretty cool topic, and it’ll be interesting to see where you can go with textiles—from color and style to how warm or cold it is. Clothing can heat itself up or cool itself down based on environmental conditions or just the base materials, like spider silk.
I’m going up to Alaska soon to take a look at muskox, which is apparently five times warmer than cashmere.
You’re bringing them on your ranch?
Yeah, that’s nice!
Well, the question is, will they kill each other? You’ve got the muskox and the bison. Every time I ask people if they get along, they say, “Oh sure, they do,” but I’ve never met someone who owns both of them.
How are you getting?
I’d let you get 300 to 500 of them.
Holy smokes!
Depending on how delicious they are!
Yes, that’s a big factor—taste test!
Alright, your turn to ask a question.
Oh wow, okay, keep going!
You had an interesting podcast last night or a Twitter space on governance. How are you feeling after that one?
Well, I mean, it was two hours long. This is your life right now; you do all these cool things to relax and have different interests.
I’m going to go full Rabbi mode. What did you think? How did it go? How did it make you feel?
How did those questions make you feel?
Alone and sad.
You know, I understand the community and where they’re at. There’s a lot of fear, and they’re in transition. A lot of people lash out or want things to stay the same, but things can’t always stay the same. The only constant is change, especially when you talk about a dynamic protocol or product.
Cardano is a very dynamic ecosystem; it’s grown from just a few people to millions. We really do need a different way of doing governance with Cardano. The problem is that people come from many different political systems. Some come from authoritarian governments. In fact, at the SIP 1694 workshop, we had a gal from Jordan who said, “We have a king; we don’t do this whole democracy thing.”
You guys are a little different. Obviously, Cardano was founded in Japan and Switzerland—radically different countries in terms of government. Switzerland doesn’t even have a president; they have someone who occupies that role, but that’s just the chairman of a seven-person board in a confederacy.
From one perspective, I understand the difference of opinion and fear. It was nice to have a good conversation with people and dig in. My experience being there was that people enjoyed it and really liked to be seen and heard.
You were kind of on the outside; I know you were listening in.
I’ve been listening in a lot. I listened to the contingent staking debate. A lot of people don’t understand that I listen to debates internally inside our own company.
Oftentimes, these are things we had to solve—not contingent staking or governance, but we have internal discussions with folks. There are so many different opinions, so I’m used to that.
Listening for the first time ever, I think contingent staking was the first time I ever heard a debate like that in such a format. It was Dumpling, right?
Yeah, Dumpling and Bullish Dumpling.
I watched Charles’s videos, then I watched the debate, and then I listened to the one last night with you guys on the governance debate. I’ve listened to other Twitter spaces before; I go down Twitter space rabbit holes, especially during the FTX stuff.
I think we’re actually very fortunate. Everybody seems to have a very unique, mature opinion on it. Some of these Twitter spaces I listen to are just, no offense, painful to listen to. You have people rambling on or asking really silly questions.
But I found last night particularly interesting; everybody had really good questions. Some were more challenging than others, of course. I feel like you’ve built a very thoughtful community.
That’s what I thought about the contingent staking debate. I actually messaged Rick and meant to message Bullish Dumpling, who’s awesome, by the way. She needs to moderate so many things because of the way they both did it. It was very respectful.
To me, it’s the beginning of how you debate and how you do argumentation in a measured, respectful way. I’m just repeating what other people said, maybe what you said last night.
I say this all the time in our own company. The maturity in learning how to debate something and debating the same set of facts keeps coming up for me.
Even in our own company, we think we’re talking about the same thing—the same set of facts. I saw that with contingent staking because people were conflating the layer one argument with the layer two argument.
You’re like, “No, I’m talking about…”
I think that however you and us and the community debate in the future, even when the MBOs really stand up and debates happen, agreeing on the set of what we’re actually debating—the set of facts—is going to be really important.
But I thought last night was really positive. I know you wanted to wait for 1694 and all the transcripts to come out for everyone to participate, but I learned a lot from listening to that.
I know a lot about how your country was founded with Washington and everything. I thought that was very instructive.
It’s very hard stuff, but we’re living and breathing it. I’ve been involved in Voltaire for a while too, just kind of behind the scenes putting the team together at IO and helping with it. It’s been a long journey, a very interesting journey, but it’s amazing to see the people and community come out and debate this now.
Were there any highlights or particular questions that stood out to you?
I like when people challenge us. Honestly, the driving questions I have are three Trident questions. I think it’s fair to say that people are always going to want to know, “Okay, well, is IO, IOHK, or whatever we end up calling ourselves?”
I’m going for IO, by the way. Some people call us IOG, IOHK; I’m going for IO.
When we do our rebrand, by the way, we moved years ago from Hong Kong to the U.S. to a company called Input Output Global. We just never bothered to update the website.
We were always like, “Oh yeah, we’ll do that in six months.”
Yeah, we’ll do that.
I think about two years or so.
I know we’ll do that.
Well, we’ve been busy!
Oh my God!
Actually, one thing you’ve been transformational in that’s made my life and a lot of people’s lives a lot easier is the business transformation at Input Output and introducing the PI system, the squads and tribes.
Do you want to talk a little bit about that? I don’t know; is that kind of a boring subject?
We had a snowmobile going by here; it’s a very Canadian moment, and my dogs might start barking.
We’ve had to transform the way we do things as a company. Building complex software is hard. It’s hard to do because you have research, product, engineers, and engineering, as well as commercially driven decisions and community-driven decisions.
Sometimes it’s on behalf of the community and sometimes on behalf of the company. It’s very hard to coordinate people in a decentralized environment.
So when you guys really dive into the governance stuff and the MBOs, that’s what makes or breaks a project—how you actually plan together and how you get the work done.
We do PI planning; it’s incremental planning every three months. It’s really about first setting your strategy—what is your strategy?
I heard this too on the contingent staking debate. I don
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