Hi Andrew! I’m familiar with you through Twitter, though I haven’t engaged with any of your work yet. I am really glad, however, that Resistance Money is doing this work, and I hope you’ll publish a guest piece here at Daily Nous.

To your comment… if I was in danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water, you are in danger of drowning it. Hopefully you see the conceptual inversion through the rhetorical flourish 🙂

To substantiate…

“A large part of the reason for the project from one side is almost certainly to legitimate Cardano as a project by connecting it with CMU and thus raise the price of the ADA token, enriching the holders of ADA.

It will be interesting to see whether Professor Avigad ends up saying nice things about ADA, and in what other ways Hoskinson tries to leverage this relationship.”

1. Crypto is claiming near certainty that a large part of the reason for funding the center is to enrich holders of Ada (stakeholders in the Cardano blockchain).
2. He is implying that Cardano is not legitimate as a project in some sphere in which it could be legitimated if only it was connected with CMU in this way.
3. And he suggests it is probable (enough to be an interesting item of attention) this relationship will corrupt CMU to the purpose of legitimating Cardano for the enrichment of Ada holders (like Charles, and to a far lesser extent, like myself).

There is something Crypto is not wrong about here: we should be attuned to probabilities of profitable deception such that we respond with appropriate caution when such probabilities become apparent. What makes caution appropriate? Proportion to the evidence of risk for us in a given story (weighted differently by the seriousness of the risk).

So, here’s the story: a newly wealthy and famous man– wealthy and famous through stake in a volatile and widely mistrusted asset– invests a portion of his new power into a prestigious, conservative, and widely trusted institution. He is allowed to do so on the overt proposition that his interests are aligned with this institution (and us, as devotees of the discipline it extends).

Given what some experience of humans provides us, that story in the abstract has some probability of indicating a profitable deception on Charles’ part. Hence, we should take caution.

That’s the baby.

But to drain the bath water: the story is not that abstract.

Take it point by point…

#1
I don’t know how Crypto comes by his near certainty, except perhaps through a familiarity with crypto (the industry/culture) and– I would guess– ignorance of Cardano. There is strong evidence for primarily non-financial reasons that Charles– and less importantly, the Cardano project and its stakeholders– would benefit from the Center.

Two of the biggest lane of IOHK’s research and innovation, the special basis of its wealth, is formal methods programming in open-source software. Formal methods programming in open-source software is also the essential medium of the Center’s research (check this by reading the press release).

But this isn’t a strategic investment by Input Output. It’s a personal donation by Charles himself. who is mathematician of graduate-level training, interested in the philosophy of mathematics.

#2
I can specify (and have above specified) the abstract story given in the headline by telling you that the Cardano ecosystem, IOHK, and Charles already have a deep relationship with academia, proved out through the same mechanisms of trust that academics rely on: peer review, professional reputation, reproducibility, and scholarly impact, etc… It already has these connections in the highest degree– researchers from Oxford, Labs at Edinburgh, Athens, and Wyoming, tens of papers in Financial Cryptography and ISOLA.

Long before this center was created, Cardano was lambasted in the crypto industry (amongst the worshipers of ‘disruption’) for its strong ties to the academic world… for being institutionally legitimated.

#3
So, in fact, Cardano’s ecosystem has little to gain in legitimacy from further work with academia, but much to lose if it damages that reputation by corrupting academia.

Beyond that, I think Crypto is also wrong to sow mistrust about a community, a project, and an individual person who Crypto is evidently ignorant of.

There is a distinction, e.g. between on the one hand warning a female student that it’s risky to leave her drink alone with strangers at a bar, and on the other hand telling her such and such a fellow in particular almost certainly wants to roofie her.

(I’m using that example to make the distinction vivid, exaggerating the degree to make the kind clear).

So, if we do away with the bath water, I’m happy to keep the baby. 🙂

—–

Ah, and on your point about Cardano having an initial sale, you are certainly right. Having utilization-based or maintenance-based distribution & funding (as with bitcoin) is symbolically, and in more cases than not, substantially more pure than non-intrinsic distribution & funding mechanisms, like presales.

However, this is a whole ‘nother conversation 🙂