🔥New video is up: Cardano and Midnight Are Getting More Usable This week was packed across @Cardano and @MidnightNtwrk. I cover @alphagrowth1, @emurgo_iostake pools, @secondfiapp recovery, @ODATANO_V4, @ChatSoonApp, ADA agent payment flows, @Noctis_Zone, Midnight at Token2049, @FCBarcelona Fan Lab, @FireblocksHQ, @Catalyst_onX Pilot 2026, Cardano Venture Hub, and the k parameter debate. Full timestamps: 0:00 Cardano and Midnight week 0:30 Alpha Growth RFP 1:10 EMURGO stake pools moving to Shunsuke Murasaki 3:21 SecondFi recovery update, staking rewards and Midnight claim questions 6:02 ODATANO, Max Weber and Cardano/Midnight API tooling 9:03 Chatsoon testing, contact scanning, follow-ups and privacy identity ideas 13:01 ADA agent payment flows and where small software payments could fit 14:25 Noctis launchpad and private token launches on Midnight-style rails 16:56 Midnight at Token2049 17:54 Barça Fan Lab and Cardano user-facing experiments 21:10 Fireblocks support for Cardano Native Tokens 23:31 Catalyst Pilot 2026 teams across stablecoins, payments, lending, identity, healthcare and supply chains 27:23 Cardano Venture Hub and the next builder cohort 29:26 K parameter debate, k=500 to k=1000, small SPOs and ADAOZ delegators 34:43 Wrap up A lot is happening at once, but the common theme is usability. Better custody, better APIs, better recovery paths, better apps, better builder support and more real users.

New @AnthropicAI Opus 5.5 is truely impressive. 👏 Asked it to generate a 15sec explainer animation of my new app @ChatSoonApp. Pure HTML/CSS/JS. Retained 100 page speed score and web accessibility. One shot prompt on ultracode. Brilliant job.

2B+ WhatsApp users can now touch Cardano without a wallet. @chatterpay has ADA live on mainnet. @tomasdm_eth showed me the Draper demo. Weirdly simple. Phone number. Text or voice. Done. This is the onboarding angle I care about. Would you trust WhatsApp for ADA? CC @MartinPefaur

I went into @draper_u thinking I was refining a Cardano startup idea. I came out thinking very differently about how I build companies. For four weeks in Silicon Valley, the Genesis program forced me to question market size, customer validation, fundraising, go-to-market, trust, security, and whether what I was building was actually a business. The original idea was a Web3 bounty platform. That eventually led me somewhere much more interesting: programmable escrow and stablecoin payment infrastructure. In this video, I go through the full experience, including pitching @TimDraper, getting the pitch wrong before getting it right, learning to validate before building, and how those lessons are now shaping @MoshiConcepts and Hokan. A huge thank you to everyone who shared their time and experience throughout the program: @draper_u @TimDraper @aalicbarker @AsraNadeem @TechRebelWorld @sfjmorris @Andytang @joevezz @lorenzoxbt @rodventures @1stNoL @c00v @LuchangArcanum And also David Bland, George Northup, Azan Haider, Tessalou Velera @OrionFund @Cometa_Labs and @samizb This one packs a lot of lessons. Chapters: 0:00 Intro 1:23 The Genesis programme 2:16 Building something isn't enough 4:22 The first pitches 5:54 Talking to real customers 7:25 The idea starts changing 8:40 Pitch practice and getting it wrong 10:53 Pitching in front of Tim Draper 12:32 The question from Tim Draper 14:10 Catalyst, grants and automation 15:37 Trust is the real product 17:01 After the pitch, the programme changed 18:27 Go to market 19:32 Blockchain should become boring 21:10 Not everything needs a token 22:09 Networking was probably my weakest area 23:36 The people were a massive part of it 24:40 The Cardano community came to Draper 25:35 The final week 27:14 Resilience 28:19 Stablecoins and payments kept coming back 29:11 The final days 29:57 What actually changed for me 31:07 What I'm building now 32:15 Conclusion The biggest lesson? Being able to build something doesn't mean it's the right thing to build. Validate. Listen. Adjust. Then keep building. 👊

I'm going to Singapore! 🇸🇬 I'll be representing @MidnightNtwrk all week and will be at all these events. If you want to catch up, register, and I'll see you there!