Some Additional Thoughts on Vasil (with better internet)

hi everyone this is charles hoskinson broadcasting live from warm and sunny colorado i finally have better internet so i'm gonna complete my thoughts on the video i made a little earlier while i was in transit so again 135 3 and 135 the test net all these things there's some narrative that's floating around and i just want to be super super super clear because it's a very unfair narrative that's floating around right now and it's incredibly corrosive and damaging and it's got to stop let's be clear about process here how it's always worked with these hard forks from shelly on has been that a test that is spun up or some form of testing surface an extensive amount of testing is done there's an ongoing dialogue between the state pool operators exchanges and now dapp developers and people from the cardano foundation and people from emergo and people from input output there are people whose day job it is to engage in that ongoing dialogue that dialogue has been going on for years now daily weekly numerous channels back and forth extensive conversations and testing lots of questions here and there there are people whose full-time job it is is to do nothing but facilitate that dialogue that's been true throughout 135 we believed on our side was going to be the node that we could hard fork from as a final series of tests as we've always done the test net was hard forked it existed people started integrating with it and then it was discovered that there was a critical issue in that node the elliptic curve implementation and that broke the testnet now we had to fix it and there was a series of back and forths and discussions and additional testings and layers of work that was done which resulted in the cutting of 135 1 and 135 2. it was discovered that there were still some lingering issues which resulted in 1.353 which then was extensively tested and we got to a point where we felt very comfortable and confident in it which led to a series of communications that occurred i believe last week about 1 35 3 where we started saying to the fpos begin testing on your side now we need to start getting this node out there people have to begin testing the node so it led to me tweeting that people should start upgrading to 135.3 as i believe 17 according to pool tool have already done so and are making blocks with in a mixed node environment and it's very important to understand that again the vast majority of the new features the code the capabilities of 135.3 have already been tested and integrated against when the test net was out now some sbos expressed concerns so we had a call with them many came together there was an ongoing dialogue and they said well we would like additional test infrastructure of which sam leathers and other people were there and were very accommodating and said yeah okay if that's what you want to upgrade we will accommodate so we started the process for that then some sbos decided to go and make podcasts with incredibly incendiary titles about how catastrophic bugs are preventing cardinal from updating and predictably so the dishonest crypto media is now running articles the most recent of which is from crypto briefing there's a broader point about where to communicate and process it's clear from the enormous amount of effort that we put in and you put in as a community that we're in an act of dialogue and that people matter especially given that the upgrade decision is made by the spos not us and there are channels for these things we're deep debates and dialogue can happen there is the sip process where deep debates and dialogue can happen if you choose your choice to use reddit twitter telegram or other channels for that debate and dialogue nothing meaningful will be accomplished no real technology will be developed no real conclusions will be drawn you'll just incite a flash mob wild speculation and opinions and ultimately sensational comments which will be used to harm the integrity of the project will be used to harm the perception of the project from today what a lot of people in the cryptocurrency space who aren't in the cardinal sphere are going to take away from this isn't that there are checks and balances and that cardano's actually really decentralized and that one group of people can hold another group of people accountable which is all true they're going to take away the headline catastrophic bug cardano that's where we're at that's where we're at because this is the level of discourse in our industry and the level of maturity in our industry just how they operate how they think and if that's your end if that's what you want to accomplish well mission accomplished but if you want to actually engage then understand that there is a process for that there are people whose full-time job is to do so there's community managers there are developers there are infrastructure people that you have known you've met you've worked alongside and had conversations you've interviewed on your podcast they're here to work with you and for you to get us over the finish line and get fossil out a lot of egg on our face from 135 it's always a shitty situation when a test net doesn't work out the way that you think and that so late in the pipeline a bug can slip through and it calls into question all of the lists of things that need to be done so will there be a postmortem of course will there be an extensive discussion and an analysis of this there's already a workshop planned for it in september for just this thing we are aware of it and i wish we had a back seat on that particular event in this particular issue but let's be clear about something there's still the use of formal methods there's still the use of extensive q a there's still developers working 24 7 right now to make sure things are where they need to go and the vast majority of the code we're talking about the vast majority of it has been extensively tested in many different operating scenarios it's just a fact you can't escape that fact the correction of the incumbent test net whether we implement a disaster recovery or shut it down and create a new test debt is not connected to the launch of fossil already right now in a mixed node environment 135 is running and it's running against other nodes things are happening new test nets will be spun up there's pre-production and so forth people are playing around with these things there's extensive internal testing as well a lot of people have because we've been in this game for a long time a lot of capability to test things and guess what nothing's changing you can't just ask for we need more testing you have to say what do you want to test what test do you want to write what scenarios do you want to run what environments do you want to deploy into and you can't conflate a failed test net with the main net because test nets are constructed and destroyed all the time in this industry that's their point they're used to play around with things and break things ethereum's had dozens of issues with prior test nets and shadow nets and so forth and you read about them in the crypto media they're not big events and they in no way in any way harm cardano itself no funds have been lost no keys have been hacked no no nodes have collapsed right now today transactions are being processed on cardona just they were the day before and the day before that that's just a fact unfortunately the headlines are now catastrophic bug cardano and that's what's going to stick in consumers minds it's going to take a lot of marketing and discussion to be able to get that to unstick also sticking in their minds now is that vassal is probably not going to ship this year which is bizarre because we are almost there it's now in the hands of others and of course discussions are going to be held and things are going to be done but the features are there they work they're tested very thoroughly there's a high degree of confidence in them there's no reason for it not to get over the finish line imminently but it's going to stick in the mind that fossils not going to ship which means less people will migrate to the project less commercial interest in the project and ultimately less adoption for cardona those are the real life consequences of using reddit twitter facebook or other channels youtube shows to discuss issues that frankly should be discussed with process in direct engagement with each other there is a point for dialogue that's why the sit process exists that's why the testing frameworks exist can they be improved of course is there lots of ongoing chain governance coming of course there's a whole open source group members-based organization that's currently under construction to create more inclusivity checks and balances and layers of things for the project there's every desire to create this because you the community are a resource you're not an adversary you're not a downstream customer you produce cardano as much as we do or anyone else does and what we've proven today is cardano is actually decentralized that's great that makes me happy should make you happy but at the end of the rainbow we do have to take a step back and understand there needs to be a basic decorum here and some basic respect here and it's so counterproductive and destructive it's very easy for me to just stand on the sidelines and just not get involved at all but i care about this project i care about its perception and i care about us getting a fair shake and having a bit of an experience dealing with the crypto media that has a long history with cardone for some reason of being dishonest about it we can't walk into as a community self-inflicted wounds traps the point of decentralization is that you have to admit that sometimes things are a little slower and you have to create structures to allow people to be heard that's the point of catalyst which helps set priorities and get funding behind those priorities that's the point of saying things like these sbos have to upgrade because it creates thousands of actors who are now involved in the discussion of when and how to do a hard fork event the point of test nets is for these things to run obviously that system needs to be updated and revamped and there needs to be improvements to it this is the discussion that's ongoing right now that you're a part of and we do try on a regular basis to reach out and talk to people and engage with people some cases daily in some cases special groups are created just to have those ongoing conversations again and again and again and i've always viewed this as a value-add and a plus and if i had all the time in the world i'd love to spend a whole year two years cleaning and polishing cardano i'd love to just do nothing but write code and develop and say all right we'll come back to it later but it's not my call it's not my choice this is a diverse ecosystem and it is a product that is used by millions of people it's listed on over 200 exchanges there's over a thousand projects under construction at this very moment deploying or have already deployed on cardano there are over five million nfts issued on cardano this is a big ecosystem there's a lot of things going on and there's a lot of divergent interests a lot of people say move quickly a lot of people say slow down a lot of people say we'd like this feature a lot of people say we like that feature it's a big ecosystem so the best we could do trying to be a steward and manage this chaos is to create channels for people to express themselves and there definitely are channels for the spos if they can be better let's talk about how to make those better we certainly can but again it is not productive to go and just ignore all those channels and go to youtube and into reddit into twitter because again you will not achieve anything it's not going to change the process it's not going to change the discussion the debate and the dialogue all it's going to do is create a situation where catastrophic bug cardano is the end result and that's what we got to i'm not happy about it it's insulting to all the people who work so hard to get us where we're at and it's just a mess to clean up now and i don't think you are either so tomorrow i'm gonna wake up and we're gonna work as we do every day hard at getting us over the finish line and getting vassal out we'll continue the dialogue with the spos i know there's a lot of test scenarios they want to run okay we'll try to work with them to make sure that all those things get done and again ultimately it's the decision of the spos of when and how to update i frankly feel we've done it on our notes that 135.