Well it’s that time again my fellow Ada-mantium handed Cardanites! And with each passing month we get tantalizingly close to the launch of Goguen!
I know you’re all busy and want to know the key points from todays event, so let’s get down to it.
Alonzo Update
- Command Line Interface (CLI) up and running to allow people to interact directly with the network
- Daedalus, Wallet backend, application back end not yet up and running
- Exercises have been created for testers for submitting transactions via CLI available. After this there will be exercises for minting of native tokens, and then more sophisticated Dapps
- Circle of testers is expanding through a buddy (people bringing other people in) system
- Aim is to get more experienced users to help train up newer users
- Plutus partners are building some innovative smart contract applications and will demo at the end of June. Examples will be around: lending pools, exchanges, oracles
- We are days or a week away from moving from Blue to White!
- Will involve first releasing a new version of the node with an enhanced CLI, then after this a new network for white.
Peer-Peer Network
- Peer to peer is about decentralizing the network so that there isn’t a central IOHK federated node that governs the network
- All major features are completed, and integrated on the mainnet as test relays.
- Getting close to a public testnet
- Tests results so far look good, cool visual showing how a peer to peer network grows and gets better over time
Partner news
Nervos
- Nervos is a Layer 1 POW blockchain that solves interoperability between chains.
- Partnered with Cardano to build a bridge between Nervos to Cardano
- Ada holders will be able to transfer their tokens to the Nervos block chain (as wrapped Ada) and then utilize the applications on Nervos
- Later on Nervos holders will be able to transfer CKB to be used in Cardano Dapps once Goguen is released
Orion
- Aiming to solve the problem of liquidity with different assets on different networks.
- Flagship product: Orion Terminal – a chain agnostic, decentralized and non-custodial gateway that is being built that becomes a single platform, that aggregates the liquidity across all decentralized exchanges, centralized exchanges, and swap pools. Funds remains on their respective networks or wallets.
- So for example Orion users will be able to trade Ada from their wallets without having to give up ownership of their funds,
- Not just for crypto but all digital assets: NFTs, and eventually stocks and commodities
- Initially bridging to Cardano via EVM then by Plutus smart contracts
- Second product: NFT Aggregator will be launching on the Cardano blockchain
- Traders will be able to seamlessly swap any asset for NFTs using Cardano blockchain
Revuto
- Active subscription management solution
- Manage your online subscriptions such as Netflix or SAS software into one platform so you can review and block anything you no longer use
- Recent token sale raised $10m
- App coming later this summer
- Chose Cardano as it’s good for handling lots of small transactions and the time and attention Cardano has had on security, plus the support and interest from the Cardano community (we do have the best community don’t we?)
NFTs
Admittedly I never seem to pay attention whenever NFTs are discussed and this time I also had a Reddit user haranguing me as I tried to pay attention.
First there was a lot of explanation around the market landscape for NFTS, specifically ones that bridge sports and video games, predominantly around soccer. I did not hear Cardano mentioned so had no idea what the connection was.
Then we had another NFT update from Wolfram, this time I’m better equipped to understand it. IOG and Wolfram are building an NFT market place, with Wolframs Cellular Automata designs as NFTs.
A cellular automata is a cool thing that I learnt about many many years ago at university – imagine a grid with tiles, and you come up with some basic rules for a little robot traversing this grid, painting each tile black or white as it goes along. The rules might seem simple but it can lead to really elaborate designs (one below is a simple example), and is a metaphor for how the world around us can evolve into seemingly complex designs through simple rules of nature. (Hopefully I’m doing the explanation justice there)
Beyond this Wolfram see NFTs as a way of expressing the community you belong to just like in real life you might have a coffee cup or a t-shirt.
The Wolfram language will allow users to mint NFTs on the Cardano blockchain in real time.
Coti are also involved. My ears perked up when I heard AdaPay get mentioned, as at Robot Pool one of our goals is to educate all the charities we donate to about Cardano and how they can accept donations through AdaPay.
Coti are building the financial infrastructure for the NFT auction site on top of AdaPay. Glad to hear Coti continuing to innovate on the Cardano platform.
The auction site will eventually allows for trading of NFT collectibles as well as things like luxury good tracking – integrating with Atala Prism.
Community NFT projects
- NFT-Maker.IO – A decentralized NFT marketplace running on Cardano where you can mint your own NFTs and then trade them. v2 in development.
- Jes-Art.com – selling art on the Cardano blockchain. Go check out the site!
- Creator of Space Budz – is now building a wallet for Space Budz
- Cardanspace.com – own virtual space
- Pxlz.org – Interactive pixel art NFTs
Project Catalyst
- 10% rise in participation
- 23,000 unique wallets involved in votes
- More than 27,000 people participating on IdeaScale
- Voting for Fund 4 concludes tomorrow.
- Fund 5 registration ($2m Ada) will start on July 8th
- Can register to vote with hardware wallets now – I will have to try this out as this is why I have not voted so far!
- Weekly Catalyst town halls are now more interactive and utilize zoom.
- Fund 6 will have $4m USD worth of Cardano
Catalyst tools built by others:
- Project Swarm – A community venture for live open discussion with the community on the weekends. This sounds intriguing — I shall have to research it some more
- Catalyst Voting Tool – that enables you to quickly browse other proposals on the ballot, read the reviews, and get better informed.
IOHK Research
- Update from Prof. Aggelos
- Only a handful of crypto projects focus on cryptography/cryptocurrency research but this trend is moving upwards
- Cardano has been doing research since the very beginning
- IOG has In-house researchers (IOG) embedded researchers (Uni labs funded by IOG), and external collaborators (outsourcing the research problems to partners)
- Hydra – published earlier this year. Achieves isomorphic (equal form) of layer 2 scripting with layer 1. Different from Bitcoin Lightning where the layer 2 is different from layer 1.
- Ouroboros Chronos – accepted by Eurocrypto 2021. Demonstrates how the protocol can be its own timekeeper (decentralized timekeeping)
- Mithril – aka Snarks so that things can be validated very fast. For example somone can connect to the blockchain much faster. Paper submitted for peer review. Can expect to see a prototype tested soon.
New Cardano Foundation recruits
- David Taylor – Head of Marketing. Formerly microsoft, ciscos, and Avanade. Focusing on moving quicker (e.g. Bittrue and YouTube live)
- Speaking directly to governments, inter-gov agencies, and enterprises rather than spending money on advertising
- Foundation itself is building a global team – go check out their jobs board
- Sidney Vollmer – advertising background , writer on digital technology. focused on building the brand of Cardano. Aim to make Cardano easy to understand for the general public.
- (Essentially as I understood, crypto is too nerdy , not welcoming to the general public, so in 5 years would be good to have a few solutions that make it really easy to for the general public to understand the value proposition of public blockchains)
Plutus Pioneer
- New pioneer program starting on the 1st July. Slightly shorter format of 8 weeks. Go register now.
Other IOG news
- Check out the IOHK blog – for further articles including changes to pool rankings
- Cardano Docs site up and running – go check it out
- IOHK japanese site with some impressive pronunciation from Tim
- Cardano Summit 2021 – Register here summit.cardano.org
- Mid-month update will be next
Personnel Change
- No more Aparna and her big seat. Aparna Ju is moving on!
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