Welcome to the Cardano Community Digest!
Published by the Cardano community team every two weeks, this Digest will provide you with news, updates and events about the project and ecosystem!
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Focal points of the week
Empowering SPOs with On-Chain Poll For Network Governance
The Cardano Foundation recently announced an on-chain poll for SPOs. This is a first step to increase the resilience of the governance mechanism. The idea is to make it easier for SPOs to have a say in parameter changes, technical improvements & the ecosystem’s future. Any SPO interested in participating in this initiative is encouraged to subscribe for updates as they are announced. If you missed the first workshop session, watch the recording here.
Cardano Summit 2023 - Tickets Now Available
Get ready to celebrate Cardano at the year’s most anticipated event, the Cardano Summit 2023! The main stage event will take place in Dubai from November 2nd to 4th, featuring industry-leading speakers, ample networking opportunities, and exciting celebrations. Don’t miss out on this extraordinary gathering – reserve your seats as soon as possible to secure tickets for special events. Tickets are now available at https://tickets.summit.cardano.org/. Join us in Dubai for the Cardano Summit 2023 and be a part of the vibrant Cardano community!
Adam Dean On a Mission to Build The NFT Community Across The West-Coast of North America
West Coast Crypto is a road trip/tour designed and conducted by Adam Dean, co-founder of Buffy Bot Publishing and NFTxLV (previously known as cNFTcon) to build the NFT, crypto, and web3 communities, locally, throughout the west coast of the United States and Canada.
The 2023 Road Trip will take Adam from Las Vegas to San Diego, CA before turning north and following the coast all the way to Vancouver, BC CA before heading home to Vegas by way of Boise, ID.
In partnership with the NFTxLV Event, the team is partnering with local communities and projects along the route to collaborate on branding, marketing, and participation.
The goal of the road trip is to foster and strengthen the bonds of community while also educating and welcoming anyone who may want to learn more. Source
Ambassador Stories, Journal #36 Jeremiah Baani & Patryk Karter
We are delighted to present two new Ambassador Stories this week. This time, we bring you the inspiring stories of Jeremiah Baani and Patryk Karter, who have joined our Ambassador ranks as Meetup Organiser and Content Creator, respectively. These extraordinary individuals not only shed light on how they are driving the advancement of our ecosystem, but also offer a glimpse into their personal lives. We are honored to share their captivating stories with you, and we hope you find them as interesting as we do.
Other Cardano Related News
- Frederik Greegard, CEO of the Cardano Foundation, shared some thoughts on the publication of the Foundation’s first Annual Report.
- The Cardano Foundation completed redelegating its wallets and announced the stake pools chosen for this round.
- The series “A Spotlight on Stake Pools” returns for a sixth entry, this time interviewing Lido Stake Pool.
- The Cardano Blockchain Infrastructure Alliance (CBIA) unites experts and industry leaders to foster Cardano’s growth, innovation, and adoption by providing a collaborative platform for developing UTxO-based applications. Source.
- Atrium Lab recently hosted its first Cardano Meetup at Consensus2023. This was done in collaboration with SingularityNet. The event hosted several speakers discussing what they’re building on Cardano. Source. Here is the link to rewatch the live stream.
- Switzerland for UNHCR launches a second series of exclusive NFTs in support of forcibly displaced people. Only available during Consensus 2023.
- Essential Cardano360’s April edition provides updates on the Cardano ecosystem, including the Hydra protocol, Lace wallet platform, and Paima Engine gaming project. The show also features an interview with Frederik Gregaard, CEO of the Cardano Foundation.
- The Cardano Foundation is hosting a Cardano Meetup in London on May 9th, 2023, to facilitate engaging discussions and connections between the financial industry and the Cardano community.
Cardano Reddit Top 10 Most Engaged Topics
Below are the most engaging topics on Reddit
- Below is the first implementation of our Reach cloud engine being used to present in a hospital.
VEERA medical is doing a fantastic job of showcasing one of the many tools we can provide.
- “Why Is Cardano Hated” An Attempt to Analyze Cardano’s Culture
- How active are you on Cardano? Anyone here have a single wallet with more than 15 thousand transactions?
- New Cardano explorer by 3xpl: no ads, super fast, lots of features for devs (JSON, WebSocket, and ClickHouse APIs + downloadable database dumps)
- Total staked ADA have gone down considerably from 70+%. Is it a signal people are actually using it now?
- We are proud to introduce the first Stakeless LP farming in crpyto! Users will instantly begin farming once they’ve acquire their LP tokens. A users farming can be viewed from the pools dashboard. Farming rewards are emitted on a 24 hour cycle. We’re excited to see you farming soon!
- Ergo - Rosen Bridge
- Wrapped Bitcoin finally launched on the Cardano testnet! Join us as we discuss why this is a game-changer for the Cardano community and what to expect for the future.
- Highlights from FutureFest’s recent Farmer’s Market community event. A Cardano platform for virtual events, equipped with wallet login and native-asset integration
- Aiken: the Future of Smart Contracts
Cardano Forum Top 10 Top Referred Topics
Topics that have received the most clicks from external sources. (last 10 Days)
Recently held Meetups
Other meetups around the world:
| Date | Topic |
|---|---|
| 16 April 2023 | Les transactions sur Cardano (Transactions on Cardano) More Info |
| 16 April 2023 | HK Cryptodrinks social (Web3festival) More Info |
| 19 April 2023 | Pacific Town Hall - April 19, 2023. More Info |
| 20 April 2023 | Uganda - Cardano Campus Meetup Edition 3. More Info |
| 28 April 2023 | Empowering the Cardano Community in Africa: A Summary of the 28th April Catalyst Africa Town Hall. More Info |
Recently held Ambassador Calls
- 03 April 2023 Open Translator Call
- 05 April 2023 Open Content Creator Call
- 06 April 2023 Open Meetup Organizer Call
- 19 April 2023 Open Moderator Call
- 20 April 2023 Monthly Ambassador Call
- 24 April 2023 Open Translator Call
- 26 April 2023 Open Meetup Organizer Call
- 26 April 2023 Open Content Creator Call
Bi-weekly CIP editor Meeting on Discord
Are you interested in attending CIP editor meetings? Join the Discord channel to learn more about this interesting community where ideas and recommended changes are all discussed.
What happened in CIPs last week? (by @RyanW)
Continued Recommendations:
-
CIP-0045? | Decentralized WebRTC dApp-Wallet Communication:
- This proposal describes a decentralized communication method between dApps and wallets based on WebTorrent trackers and WebRTC.
-
CIP-??? | Authenticated Web3 HTTP requests
- This proposal provides a standard approach for implementing wallet signature authentication in dApps via HTTP requests.
- This has had some recent engagement
Next Meeting:
CIP Editors Meeting #65:
- May 2nd 4:00pm UTC
- Held on Discord - here.
- Agenda TBC
Weekly CIP updates can be followed and reviewed here.
Cardano Wiki
Aiken: Revolutionizing Smart Contract Development on Cardano
TL;DR
- Aiken emerges as a promising alternative to the Haskell Plutus platform for developing and deploying smart contracts on Cardano.
- Designed with usability, security, and performance in mind, Aiken offers a more accessible and familiar syntax to developers, reducing the learning curve associated with Haskell-based Plutus.
- The language is tailored to address the unique requirements of on-chain smart contract execution while ensuring compatibility with off-chain processes and external tools.
- Aiken’s open source and collaborative development environment, along with the support from the Cardano Foundation, ensures continuous improvement and feature enhancements.
- In the near future, developers can look forward to the introduction of the Aiken playground, which will make learning and experimenting with the language more accessible. Moreover, a comprehensive security audit will be conducted to ensure the reliability and safety of Aiken for smart contract development on Cardano.
- As the Aiken language continues to evolve, it promises to further streamline the development process, improve performance, and enhance the security of smart contracts on the Cardano platform, fostering wider adoption and innovation within the Cardano ecosystem.
What is Aiken?
Aiken is a pure functional programming language that offers developers a modern and efficient environment for building smart contracts on Cardano. With a toolkit for working with Plutus, Aiken streamlines smart contract development and fosters an open source ecosystem. Designed to provide a user-friendly experience, Aiken makes it easier than ever to create decentralized applications (dApps) and implement advanced blockchain solutions.
Aiken: Tailored for Cardano
Created specifically for the Cardano ecosystem, Aiken is a domain-specific language (DSL) that simplifies smart contract development and deployment while focusing on accessibility and user-friendliness for developers. By targeting Cardano, the Aiken team can optimize performance and leverage the platform’s unique features.
An Alternative to Haskell?
While Cardano smart contracts are, at the moment, primarily developed using Haskell, Aiken offers an alternative language built for the Cardano ecosystem. Although Haskell provides powerful tools for smart contract development, its complexity can deter many developers.
Aiken addresses these challenges by offering a more approachable platform, a modern development environment, compatibility with Plutus and seamless off-chain interoperability with any language stack. This allows developers to write and deploy smart contracts on Cardano using a functional programming language that shares similarities with Haskell, ensuring full integration with Cardano’s features and benefits, while also retaining freedom for their off-chain infrastructure.
Key Features of Aiken
Designed with usability, security, and performance in mind, Aiken includes several key features:
- Familiar Syntax: Aiken employs a Rust-like syntax, making it more accessible to developers familiar with Rust compared to Haskell’s esoteric syntax. This eases the transition and reduces the learning curve for implementing smart contracts on Cardano.
- eUTxO Knowledge Required: Despite its simpler syntax, developers must still understand the extended UTXO (eUTxO) model to use Aiken effectively. This model governs transaction and smart contract processing on Cardano, making it crucial for building and deploying secure, efficient, and reliable smart contracts with Aiken.
- On-chain Focus: Aiken is a development platform that is exclusively designed to run on the Cardano blockchain. This means that it is not suitable for developing off-chain applications as it can only be executed on the Cardano blockchain.
- Off-chain Compatibility: Aiken ensures compatibility with off-chain processes and external tools, allowing seamless integration with off-chain components using established tools like MeshJS, Cardano-Client-Library, and Lucid. This interoperability creates a flexible development environment, enabling developers to combine each resource’s strengths for comprehensive Cardano-based applications.
- UPLC and Lambda Calculus Foundation: Aiken compiles to untyped Plutus Core (UPLC) and adheres to lambda calculus principles, essential for Cardano smart contracts. Compatibility with UPLC and lambda calculus enables developers to build and deploy smart contracts aligned with the established computational models in Cardano, leveraging research work and guarantees that comes with it while offering Aiken’s accessible syntax and optimized performance.
- Purely Functional: Aiken maintains its purely functional programming nature while offering a more familiar syntax. This design choice affects developers, especially those with imperative language backgrounds, as it requires a different problem-solving and software design approach. Functional programming emphasizes immutability, referential transparency, and the absence of side effects. Developers working with Aiken must adapt their thinking and methodologies to align with functional programming principles, posing challenges for those more familiar with imperative programming paradigms.
- Blueprint Stub Generation: The Aiken team is developing blueprint stubs for various programming languages, streamlining the integration process with off-chain components. These blueprint stubs serve as templates, providing developers a starting point for implementing off-chain functionality in their preferred languages. By offering stubs, the Aiken team simplifies connecting on-chain smart contracts with off-chain processes, enhancing the overall development experience and promoting seamless Cardano ecosystem interoperability.
- Property-based Framework and Formal Verification: The Aiken team prioritizes formal verification for Cardano smart contract security, reliability, and correctness. They plan to introduce a property-based framework, enabling developers to define, test, and mathematically prove smart contract properties and invariants. This will enhance contract quality, safety, and robustness. Aiken currently offers an integrated unit test and benchmarking framework for code hardening and experimentation.
- Comprehensive Toolchain: Aiken comes with a full suite of development tools, including a compiler, code formatter, package manager, language-server, documentation generator and testing framework. These tools streamline the development process, enabling developers to build, test, and deploy smart contracts efficiently.
Benefits of Aiken
Choosing Aiken as their smart contract language allows developers to enjoy numerous benefits: ….
For the full article, visit source:
Spotlight for Community-built Tools
The Developer Portal was created to foster a home for developers who are dedicated to building tools and services on Cardano. The platform allows developers to not only collaborate on projects but also to showcase their works.
The Developer Portal aspires to become a credible source where users can search for tools to fit their needs.
Community projects already running on mainnet are encouraged to add their projects to the Developer Portal.
- Aada.finance: Aada is a peer-to-peer lending and borrowing protocol on the Cardano blockchain.
- Building On Cardano: Place to view what’s happening within the Cardano ecosystem.
- NuFi Wallet: Non-custodial, multi-chain wallet with in-app DEX.
Network insights
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