“I decided to make a quick video about whether I should eat my shoe or not,” Charles Hoskinson said in the opening a live stream on Twitter today.
The blockchain thought leader, along with Vitalik Buterin and several others, created the Ethereum network some years back.
You may have heard of Ethereum, as the vast majority of notable smart contracts utilize it.
IOHK: Not Ready To Let Go Of Reins?
After several semi-dramatic months, Hoskinson left the Ethereum project and started IOHK, a company that is parent to a growing blockchain called Cardano.
Today, Hoskinson addressed a previous wager he’d made in April.
Hoskinson said that if a hotly anticipated upcoming release of Cardano, called “Shelley,” was not released in 2019, he would eat his shoe.
In a playful “Surprise AMA” made around the end of April — so definitively not an April Fools’ joke — Hoskinson explained:
“I will eat my own shoe if it does not.”
Where Are You, Shelley?
Shelley has been delayed for a variety of reasons, and users have felt disappointment because the release promises full autonomy and complete decentralization of the network, which presently relies significantly on IOHK, Inc. resources.
As one researcher explains:
“At the moment, Cardano is a federated system, where IOHK, Emurgo and the Cardano Foundation are in control of the ecosystem as a whole — including all current stake pools.”
It’s now October.
The developer came prepared with a Cowboy boot, but no leather was consumed this day.
After showing his footwear to the audience — a pair of Lucchese western-style cowboy boots — Hoskinson explained that the delays so far have been for the best.
“We have a process as to how that system will decentralize.”
Hoskinson then elucidated that one problem with simply launching and fully decentralizing — and dealing with any potential side effects later — is that earlier adopters of Cardano will have a massive head start in things like running the network’s nodes.
Just Kidding
He then justified his failure to eat a shoe by stating that, in his view, IOHK did, in fact, “ship Shelley.”
Shelley reportedly nears the final stages on Cardano’s test network.
Ada, the base token of the Cardano network (similar to Ether on Ethereum), stood at just under 4 cents at press time, having lost nearly 3% over the 24 hour period.
The Cardano network processed very few transactions over the same period.
Like all blockchain utility tokens, the platform must have demand for use in order for the token to appreciate in value.
Cardano’s community widely believes demand for Ada will rise in a post-Shelley world, which explains why some viewers insisted that Hoskinson go ahead with his promise and eat the shoe.
Watch the whole video below.
Shoe Eating https://t.co/713txRTqVp
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) October 3, 2019
For those that still want Hoskinson to eat an actual shoe, he has now promised to eat a “shoe cake.” In his view, it’s the halfway mark, since he thinks the company did its bit, after all.
