Charles Hoskinson says there’s no need to trust him to believe in the promise of cryptocurrencies and the new systems being ushered in by blockchain technology. People are messy – prone to mistakes, manipulation and death.
Hoskinson, who co-founded Ethereum, is the creator of Cardano, an open and decentralized blockchain platform that’s built to move digital cash called ADA. The system is designed for everyday spending, making payments and sending money across borders.
According to the Cardano team,
“A separate computing layer will be built to handle smart contracts, the digital legal agreements that will underpin future commerce and business. Cardano will also run decentralised applications, or dapps, services not controlled by any single party but instead operate on a blockchain.”
The system utilizes a new form of money to escape processes that are manually handled by people.
In an ask-me-anything session recorded earlier this month, Hoskinson explains why he believes code outperforms humans and why systems that are built on code, unlike traditional banking and today’s financial services that are controlled by central banks, company employees and government officials, are the future.
When asked what makes him trustworthy, Hoskinson responded,
“I’m trustworthy enough because I tell you directly: Don’t trust me. Don’t trust people. Trust code, trust protocols, trust science.
The raison d’être of Cardano has been ‘process over people.’ Basically, the idea is saying, look, people are fallible. We wake up with bad days. We get coerced. Think of mice – things happen, people die. Systems get mingled and mangled by things.
So, if you have code, you have protocols; you have checks and balances; you have the scientific method; you get third-party, independent, non-biased, federated opinions about what reality happens to be. If you ever read a book by like Social Physics from Alex Pentland – the wisdom of the crowds, if properly utilized, with proper idea flow, always outperforms any individual human.
So don’t trust me. Trust the code. Trust the protocol. Trust the process. And then, the only question is: What is the best process to achieve what we want? And what are the right incentives to create that process and maintain that process?”