IOHK | WHY WE ARE BUILDING CARDANO | 06/28/2017    The challenge is that a totally transparent development process could influence discussion to become more theatrical than evidence based. Egos, attempts to win over a community, and fear of sounding stupid could force conversations to become sterile and counterproductive. Furthermore, outsiders could attempt to co-opt the conversation in an effort to force their particular tangent to become the only relevant topic. Everyone has a sacred cow. So how does one balance the need for a transparent development process, which is owed to the community that has entrusted progress to a set of core developers, with the need for freedom of expression without fear? With Cardano, we have decided to embrace a standards driven process with directed oversight. The community needs to know that the science and the code are well thought out, checked and actually solve the things that developers claim they do. To this end, peer review should completely satisfy the science component as it has been designed specifically for this purpose and has given us the modern world. For code, this topic is a bit more opinionated. For Cardano, we have elected to entrust the Cardano Foundation to serve as a final auditor of IOHK’s work. In particular, they are entrusted with the following duties: 1. Regular review of the source code contained in the Cardano Github to check for quality, test coverage, proper comments and completeness 2. Review of all Cardano documentation for correctness and usefulness 3. Verifying the claims that the protocols produced by the scientists are fully implemented To accomplish this task, IOHK will submit regular and timely reports to the Foundation – and its assigns – to review. The Foundation in turn will release a development oversight report to the Cardano community on at least a quarterly basis. This first effort is intended to start a broader conversation about how a decentralized project achieves accountability. Development oversight from a trusted third party is a powerful tool to ensure that developers are on track, but it is not sufficient to completely guarantee that the project will always deliver. For this reason, after the treasury is integrated into CSL, the Foundation will encourage additional development teams to construct alternative clients based upon the formal specifications developed jointly with IOHK. Development diversity has been a great technique used by the Ethereum project to avoid a monoculture forming around a single set of ideas or developers. WHY WE ARE BUILDING CARDANO  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Page 27 of 44