Hi All!
Thank you to everyone that joined the Meetup! We had a record turnout. Out of the 48 people that registered 20 people attended! I hope we continue to have more people join for meaningful conversations. It is an exciting time to be in the cryptocurrency space! I just wanted to provide a quick overview of topics that we discussed, and I know we didn’t get to everyone’s questions so if you want to reach out to me my email is kevin@k9kstaking.com.
- 2020 recap: 2020 was all about the Shelley release. The Cardano network once was federated, meaning, all the blocks were created are by IOHK and Cardano Foundation. In July, the network moved to become decentralized and controlled by stake pool operators. Currently, 70% of the network is run by stake pools and 100% is projected by March 2021. Currently, Cardano is the most decentralized proof of stake cryptocurrency. 2020 IOHK Year-End Review Video: source
Staking statistics - source
+1500 staking pools
68% of total ADA staked (21.8 Billion ADA)
133K delegators
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Staking vs. Mining: Stake pool operators have the same function as Bitcoin miners and are compensated for each block they create therefore incentives to run the network. How Bitcoin mining differs from staking is mining is very exclusive because operators need mining equipment and only the mining pools that have the most resources have opportunities to create blocks. And people who hold Bitcoin do not participate in the network or earn rewards. Cardano is more inclusive because anyone that holds ADA, regardless of the amount, can participate in the network and earn rewards by delegating to stake pools.
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Project Catalyst: Project Catalyst is a tool for the Cardano community to submit proposals, vote on proposals, and fund proposals. Project Catalyst is a part of the Voltaire era to help govern the network to avoid hard forks such as Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum Classic. Another element of Volitatre is the treasury. One of the pain points for a decentralized system is deciding who pays for network upgrades and other costs. The treasury solves this by collecting 20% of the block rewards to fund future developments for Cardano. The treasury is projected to have ~$70 million per year to fund a proposal on Project Catalyst and that is based on the price of ADA. Join Project Catalyst here.
Project Catalyst concluded Fund 2 which distributed $250,000 to 11 proposals. View winning proposals here. Fund 3 is now live to submit proposals with a fresh $250,000 in funding available. Project Catalyst is expected to have new funds available every 6 weeks. See the funding schedule below:
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2021 is All About Goguen: The Goguen era is underway and is expected to be released by March 2021. Goguen gives Cardano the ability to support smart contracts and applications. Fund 3 in Project Catalyst is all about DAps (decentralization applications). Developers can begin developing and testing an application in Cardano’s Testnet here.
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XRP vs. SEC: U.S. SEC filed a lawsuit against Ripple and two of its top executives for the sale of $1.3 billion worth of unregistered securities between 2013 and 2020. The commission accused the CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen of failing to register their respective sales of XRP worth relatively $600 million. My understanding is the SEC is going after Ripple’s founders was because of their actions using XRP rather than an issue with XRP alone. Charles and IOHK have not sold a single ADA even when ADA was trading over $1. source
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Cardano’s ICO: According to Emurgo, Cardano pre-sale was done with full KYC & AML under Japanese law and absolutely no ADA was sold to anybody living in the US nor was there any marketing done in the US. The pre-sale was not done by IOHK and so it’s not related to them anyway. *Ethereum also did an ICO. source
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Liqwid: Cardano lending markets for decentralized finance: Liqwid was one of the 11 proposals that received Fund 2 funding from Project Catalyst. Liqwid is creating an open-source, non-custodial liquidity protocol to earn interest on deposits and borrow assets on Cardano. Cardano Forum has more information on Liqwid here.
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2017 vs 2021: We discussed the differences between the crypto run-up in 2017 compared to the latest run-up. The 2017 crypto boom was fueled by fraudulent Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) taking advantage of Ethereum’s ERC-20 token and the lack of regulatory oversight. Now, the market is more mature and there is oversight preventing people from raising money so easily via ICO. Also, projects are now at least 3 years in the making from their 2017 ICO so the legitimate projects are beyond the ideation phase and now have more substance.
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Don’t invest what you’re not willing to lose: Cryptocurrencies are one of the most exciting emerging technologies. However, they are very early in their adoption and the markets are very volatile. You should not trade or invest in crypto (or any asset for that matter) that you cannot afford to lose.
This is a quick overview. I look forward to continuing our discussion and I imagine there will be much more to discuss for the next Meetup. I am planning for the next Meetup to be the Wednesday, 2/24, or Thursday 2/25. What times work best?
Cheers,
Kevin
K9K Stake Pool
Ticker: K9K
Pool ID: 6cabf3837d2884000af0eb9b661870f0080233cfb4e9a239a007450c
Website: https://www.k9kstaking.com/home
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