Overview
Mike Hornan YouTube is a training channel that walks viewers through running Cardano infrastructure and voting on network decisions, one command at a time. Sessions are unedited screen recordings, so you watch each step happen and hear why it matters. Several are in French alongside the English ones.
The channel belongs to Mike Hornan, a Quebec-based stake pool operator whose GitHub profile sums up the aim as simplifying Cardano into understandable content1. He runs the ABLE stake pool and ran recurring community workshops on SanchoNet, the test network used to rehearse Cardano's governance rules before they reached the live chain2. SanchoNet's role has largely wound down now that those rules are live on mainnet.
Key Features
- Whole procedures, not summaries. Sessions typically run 45 to 80 minutes and follow one task from start to finish, so a viewer can work along on their own machine instead of reassembling the steps afterward.
- Governance roles taught by doing. Walkthroughs cover registering as a DRep, a delegated representative who votes on behalf of ADA holders inside Cardano's governance system, and managing the credentials used by a member of the constitutional committee, the body that rules on whether governance decisions comply with Cardano's constitution3.
- Rehearsals for when the network breaks. A multi-part series works through what operators do during an incident such as a chain split, following CIP-0135, the written disaster recovery plan for Cardano networks.
- French and English side by side. The French sessions are labeled Atelier and cover the same governance ground as the English ones.
- A written companion to the sessions. The SanchoNet-Tutorials repository reads as the text version of the channel, covering wallet setup, pool registration, DRep creation including the multi-person case, and every type of governance action Cardano allows. It was written against the SanchoNet test network rather than mainnet.
What to Expect
This is a workshop archive rather than a news or commentary channel. Expect one operator at a terminal, working through a procedure without editing flourishes, and expect the pace to assume you are following along rather than watching passively. Someone who has never used a command line will find it demanding. Someone already running a node, or holding a governance role, will find this level of detail hard to get elsewhere.
Uploads came in bursts around whatever the operator was working on rather than on a schedule, so the channel serves better as a reference library to search than as a feed to follow. Check the command syntax against current tooling before following along, since the written reference sheets are pinned to older Cardano node and CLI versions.
Beyond the videos, the ABLE pool site carries free material that pairs with the sessions: downloadable governance infographics, a plain-language guide to CIP-1694 (the proposal that set out Cardano's governance system) in four languages, and command-line study sheets in six4. Intersect backed his Cardano Governance in a Nutshell infographic project through a community grant5 and documented a Future of Cardano workshop he led in Quebec City6. He has also put a proposal to Project Catalyst, Cardano's community funding program, to continue the workshops and recovery drills7.
