Quantumplation | Pi Lanningham

Below you will find my write-up as an independent after action report for the issue impacting Cardano late last week, along with things I learned, why I was impressed, and what I think we can do better at in the future. I try to strike the balance between confronting the seriousness of the issue, while defusing most of the over-stated positions from talking heads on Twitter. This is an adult conversation, not whatever the children are engaging in on Twitter this week. I don't think it's productive to get into debates of what constitutes "downtime" or not; Instead, I tried to equip you with a framework where you, dear reader, can think about these things for yourself, and decide what you want to call it. I just ask that you make that decision for yourself, or allow your audience to do so, rather than parroting some pre-decided talking points. More informed discussion leads to a higher quality industry overall. 314pool.com/post/cardano-p…

The main point of my challenge was in response to those (not Elder) who claimed that the total cost-to-employ asked for by the Amaru and Blink Labs proposals was outrageous because "anyone can do it with AI nowdays". I think he has already demonstrated the validity of my point: Elder has a particular set of skills that allow him to do what he's doing, and he could command a salary even higher than what Amaru and Blink Labs are asking :) The amaru team plans to use AI to accelerate our development, and if we finish early, we'll return the unused funds. But AI hasn't yet significantly lowered the caliber of skill needed to accomplish those things, simply accelerated them. Regardless, I'll pay out if he accomplishes the goal; I may even pay him for his time separate from the challenge if he even comes close, so long as the knowledge base and anything he produces is open sourced, as he's likely to produce artifacts that will help accelerate Cardano development that would be well worth the price.

Really great to say, thank you! As I've said before, I also think you're not "vibe coding". I'll pay out my part of the pot if @Quantumplation determines it's valid given his criteria no matter what, but I think you're doing something at a higher "tier". From what I've seen, you're really driving this process. I'm assuming you're focusing on small loops with clear acceptance criteria, and pointing and repointing the AI in the right direction often. That feels like something between "vibe coding" and "artisanal coding"

For vibe-node, one thing I really want to stress is that what I am doing is not an argument for not funding Amaru and Dingo. Quite the contrary. I am burning 500 million tokens a day. I am starting 2 steps before most vibe coders because I have a wealth of experience in how to use AI for production grade engineering. The thing I am missing that I would need as a next step is either a lot of time for me to read and understand everything, or hire an expert like @wolf31o2, @_KtorZ_ , or @Quantumplation to do a deep dive into the code to make sure it's not severely messed up. The thing is, we don't get deep expertise in the ecosystem unless we pay them to do this stuff manually. If we pay our experts to stay dedicated to being experts, we can help to solve the node diversity problem by supplementing with nodes generated using my approach. It is not a replacement for these guys doing what they do. AI always needs a human evaluator. The measuring stick cannot be "it runs", unless you want more situations like happened last year with the bug that caused a lot of chaos. If we didn't have these experts to identify the bug AND fix it in record time, Cardano would have had a crisis on its hands.

Our first preview testnet block using Dingo has been accepted to the network. preview.cardanoscan.io/block/4119738

@builder__dao This is great; I'd love for the report to include the *targets*, as well, from when we voted on funding these projects.

Dear dReps, Transparency and accountability are at the core of what we do. 6 months ago, the Cardano Builder DAO funded 20 companies. All 20 companies have tracked the impact of the funding given to them through KPI reporting. You can view the consolidated report here: docsend.com/view/79g44t35q… Up next, pulling core Cardano KPIs (MAUs, Onchain Transaction, and TVL) live from on-chain in the CB DAO KPI Dashboard v2 for funded projects.

@AaireVoltaire @dgennnnnn @pyro_ae @IOGroup @Cardano_CF @emurgo_io @IntersectMBO @midnightfdn Details unclear, but likely it's a set of smart contracts that enable LayerZero messages into and out of Cardano

@Quantumplation @dgennnnnn @pyro_ae @IOGroup @Cardano_CF @emurgo_io @IntersectMBO @midnightfdn Is it an integrated part of Cardano or an add-on that is run separately?

IMO This is the single biggest step forward the Pentad initiative could bring to Cardano. Absolutely fucking amazing, congratulations @IOGroup @Cardano_CF @emurgo_io @IntersectMBO and @midnightfdn

Not quite like you're 5, but: Layer 0 provides infrastructure to pass messages between chains; I do something on Cardano, and want that to trigger something on Ethereum and Solana. The most basic example of this is bridges, but because it's generic, it can be used to build more sophisticated interactions as well. Their infrastructure is incredibly reliable and comes with a huge amount of ecosystem trust. If you've ever wondered "but we have bridges from other ecosystems, why do we still have a liquidity problem?" a big part of that has been the lack of *trust* in those bridges.

@Quantumplation @pyro_ae @IOGroup @Cardano_CF @emurgo_io @IntersectMBO @midnightfdn ELI5

Sundae Labs has been thinking about Gummiworm for a long time: how can we take the insights, ideas, and cleverness behind Hydra and make them viable for DeFi scenarios where funds from tens of thousands of users need to intermix. It's always been a slow burn research topic, and not something we could devote a ton of resources to. We've always tried to be super transparent about that fact. Attend my talk to learn more about that history, what the vision for Gummiworm is, and what the next steps are...

If you're going to be in Argentina in just under a week for @buidler_fest, I'll be giving a talk! I can't say why, but you might want to make sure you have a preview Cardano wallet with some ADA in it. For the rest of you, you won't have long to wait, I promise, but this one is Buidler Fest exclusive :)

@effectfully @Amaru_Cardano in the end, I didn't though! You're still #1 (for now 😈)

@Quantumplation @Amaru_Cardano Would you stop ruining my legacy by outcompeting me. Dude you've got no manners.

To celebrate the @Amaru_Cardano treasury withdrawal (go vote!), I spent some time this weekend working on optimizing the UPLC virtual machine used by Amaru. It's still on a branch, and needs lots of conformance testing because I resorted to some bolder optimizations (more on that soon), but... The UPLC virtual machine used by Amaru just got 2.1x faster! In fact, on my machine, it was faster than the Haskell implementation, which I was quite proud of. Will have to dig into where there is more to squeeze the next time I get a chance. 😅

@ItsDave_ADA @BELTRAANC It's certainly possible to build things that *look* done. That a casual inspection or an AI might *consider* done. But that's an infinite depth trap upon which my challenge rests.

@ItsDave_ADA @BELTRAANC In particular, we as an ecosystem don't have the tools to determine when such an implementation is "done"; We don't have a definition of what it means to *be* a compliant node. Without that an AI will *really* struggle to finish the task, even when guided by a Cardano expert.

Self Disclosure Privacy using ZK Proofs, Demonstrated & Executed Directly on Cardano Preview I built a demo where a customer buys a beer and proves they are 18 or over, without ever showing their ID. No name. No birth year. No photo. Just maths. Two beers were ordered. Two separate transactions. The same proof, reused, no re-verification needed. The blockchain recorded "age verified" both times. That's all it knows. No name. No address. No date of birth. No photo. No personal data of any kind. This runs entirely and directly on Cardano. No sidechains. No L2s. No off-chain verification. The ZK proof is checked by the Plutus V3 validator itself, on-chain, using Groth16. And this isn't just for bars, it works for shops, website signups, any age-restricted service. One credential, reused anywhere. Self disclosure means you choose what to share, and in this case, the customer chose to share nothing except "yes, I'm old enough, give me a nice cold beer." 🍺 Massive shout out to everybody involved in the below! Aiken smart contract language on Cardano (please don't judge my Aiken... I know it's bad 😂) ak-381 by Modulo-P, Groth16 SNARK verification library for BLS12-381 on Aiken Circom + snarkjs, ZK circuit design and proof generation MeshSDK, transaction building and wallet management Blockfrost, blockchain data provider A basic demo to set the stage for further privacy enhancements that can occur directly on Cardano. Self disclosure privacy on Cardano Cheers Cardano 🍻🍻 Beer 1 preview.cardanoscan.io/transaction/23… Beer 2 preview.cardanoscan.io/transaction/65…

@clarkalesna @wolf31o2

@wolf31o2 @Quantumplation Haha updated numbers soon

Dear @clarkalesna, It's been 3 hours since I made a pull request upon your repository of code for the performance of software benchmarking of smart contract virtual machines. Your consideration to this matter is desired. Please engage upon this request immediately. Thank you,

@NicolasC3rny @InASingleWord You remind me a bit of Hank Green lol

@InASingleWord Is that really how I look in meetings 😭 Thanks for joining and for asking questions. I wasn't aware that the doc hadn't been shared. Sorry about that. 🙏 The doc was a really rough draft on a potential budget for budget-related tasks

I try to attend the Intersect Budget Committee weekly meetings so I stay up to date. Anyone can attend these Monday calls, you just cant speak or use the chat. You're an observer. No real spoilers, they're still aiming for April to collect 2026 proposals. Today's call was a bit cryptic. They reviewed a document that they did not share on screen, only viewed independently and spoke on that so a little hard to follow. They are being urged to get the process out quickly it seems. Makes sense. Interesting discussion about the need to pay people to do technical reviews and about conflict of interests around every corner. Great discussion on ensuring the communication plan is solid and starts early.

@JoyeousT @AlessioDevPool @cexplorer_io @blinklabs_io It counts for something. *you* can have access to epoch 618

@Quantumplation @AlessioDevPool @cexplorer_io @blinklabs_io I am nice to them. Doesn't that count?

Hey @cexplorer_io where's epoch 618???

@amw7 @JaromirTesar (assuming the vibe coded node were widely adopted, that is)

@amw7 @JaromirTesar Also, clearing my bar is very very low, all things considered; It's only giving 1 human 5 days to find a bug that could ruin a 9 billion dollar market cap ecosystem?

Anyone can vibe code a Cardano node. Your biggest challenge will be convincing SPOs to install your node. If you don't get a significant stake, your node will never make a block. No sane SPO will risk their reputation with your vibe-coded node.