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
Join the Cardano CIP-1694 Workshop in Zug
Cardano is stepping into the age of Voltaire, with CIP-1694 at its core, a proposal for an on-chain governance model. To encourage community engagement on this vital initiative, the Cardano Foundation, EMURGO, and Input Output Global are hosting a series of workshops. We’re thrilled to announce that registrations for the Zug workshop are now open!
The workshop aims to gather community feedback on CIP-1694, promoting its ratification and encouraging collaboration. We invite educators, developers, stake pool operators, and academics to contribute their unique perspectives. The events promise engaging discussions on; enhancing community participation, DReps, voting thresholds, community tooling, and more.
The Zug workshop takes place on June 3, 2023, at CV Labs Zug, from 9:30 to 18:00 local time. Participants include representatives from the Cardano Foundation, IOG, and EMURGO.
Due to limited capacity, we can accommodate only 40 attendees. So register now at this link to secure your spot, but remember that registration doesn’t guarantee a seat.
Please check out this forum post for a more detailed overview.
Messari’s Q1 2023 Cardano’s Report: Interview with Charles Hoskinson and Frederik Gregaard
Messari Research Analyst Red Sheehan hosted an in-depth conversation with Frederik Gregaard, CEO of the Cardano Foundation, and Charles Hoskinson, CEO of Input Output Global, discussing Cardano’s Q1 2023 performance and the future roadmap…
The conversation highlights the impressive Q1 performance of Cardano and key milestones achieved, such as Cardano’s on-chain Governance, the growth of Cardano’s TVL, and active Community participation through staking.
The team also discusses the updates and developments in the Cardano core protocol and multiple programming languages being tested, such as the Marlowe DSL and Aiken smart contracting language, the addition of a privacy framework called Midnight to the Cardano ecosystem, and Babel fees that will enable users to pay transaction fees using Cardano’s native tokens. The team also highlighted the Cardano Foundation’s effort to partner with universities on the offering of on-chain certificates that can prove the validity and authenticity of the document.
This, and my more were discussed. We highly recommend taking time to view this very insightful conversation.
Entering Voltaire: poll experiment live on mainnet
After the successful launch of the Cardano Pre-Production Testnet SPO-Poll, we are now entering the project’s second phase.
In this blog post we discuss the second phase of the project that involves a multiple-choice question with six options regarding the K and minPoolCost parameters:
Which setup would you prefer to be put in place from Q3 2023 onwards?
- Keep k at 500 and minPoolCost at 340 ada.
- Keep k at 500 and halve minPoolCost to 170 ada.
- Increase k to 1000 and keep minPoolCost at 340 ada.
- Increase k to 1000 and halve minPoolCost to 170 ada.
- I would prefer to abstain.
- None of the above.
The poll is a way for the Cardano ecosystem to test mechanisms for future decentralized governance and to encourage participation from the entire community.
The blog post emphasizes the importance of carefully considering the questions to be posed in on-chain surveys and provides insight into how the Cardano Foundation arrived at the multiple-choice question. The post also discusses the need to extend the voting period for the second phase of the poll. For a detailed discussion of the mainnet SPO-poll we recommend reading the blog post.
Tokyo Blockchain Expo Spring 2023
Another year, another successful Tokyo Blockchain Expo Spring has taken place. Held twice a year, the Tokyo Blockchain Expo serves as one of the premiere events within the Japanese blockchain industry and the Japanese Cardano community once again outdid themselves to provide a stellar booth full of educational content and information regarding the Cardano ecosystem, its uses and the many projects and initiatives taking place. Community Manager Andrew (pictured above), was also in attendance, and enjoyed a warm welcome from all the familiar friendly faces.
A special thanks to every single member pictured above (faces blurred at their request) for their hard work and participation over three days from May 10th to the 13th, which saw 3000 plus brochures handed out to visitors. The Cardano booth was noticeably one of the busiest, garnering attention from a wide variety of onlookers and organisations in attendance, eager to learn more about the Cardano ecosystem.
Notable topics presented included, an introduction to Cardano explaining the roles of the Cardano Foundation, IOHK and EMURGO, and dcSpark’s Sebastien Guillemot on PAIMA studios. In addition, EMURGO also spoke on its initiatives in Africa!
Furthermore, an extra special bow of appreciation to all the sponsors, stakepools and our Cardano Ambassadors Yuta-san and Wakuda-san who helped corral everyone, in addition to Miyatake-san and his amazing ada man costume (gold costume pictured below) as well as EMURGO’s Co-CEO of EMURGO MEA Yoshida-san and Partnership & Marketing Manager Yuto-san for their participation and presentations. Here’s to another successful Cardano event and many more to come.
Pictures sourced from Emurgo Japan twitter account:
Ambassador Stories, Journal #37 Tien Nguyen Anh & Enrique Guasp
We are delighted to present two new Ambassador Stories this week. This time, we bring you the inspiring stories of Tien Nguyen Anh and Enrique Guasp, who have joined our Ambassador ranks, both as Meetup Organisers. 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
- Updates to CIP-1694, improving the Constitutional Committee’s framework by setting term limitations, defining minimum committee size, and clarifying its role mark an important step in the evolution of Cardano’s governance model.
- The Cardano blockchain is nearing max capacity, but we’re in good hands to continue to support massive growth! Join us as we reveal how Cardano developers plan to solve the blockchain scalability problem.
- Frederik Gregaard’s CEO letter for the Annual Report 2022 puts some 2022 achievements into the larger context of the Foundation’s strategy and looks to the future. See here also the full interview with Tim Harrison.
- Cardano Over Coffee twitter space with UNHCR & Alex Maaza to discuss how Cardano can change the world, and the value of Impactful staking. Wonderful Community Participation.
- HOSKY partners with WRFGS stake pool in support of UNHCR and forcibly displaced people.
- Large Cardano Community showup, including media, at the Cardano Foundation masterclass in London. Topic: “Unlocking the Future of Financial Systems.” The masterclass was followed by a well appreciated networking evening event.
- Frederik Gregaard, CEO of the Cardano Foundation, participates in the Financial Times’ Crypto and Digital Assets Summit in London. He is joined by Levan Davitashvili, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy of Georgia, in the panel “Building resilience with blockchain - can the use of blockchains curtail global disruption?”. Philip Stafford, Digital Finance News Editor of the Financial Times, moderates.
- Let’s talk Cardano, this time about Blockchain for Social Impact.
Cardano Reddit Top 10 Most Engaged Topics
Below are the most engaging topics on Reddit
- Layer-2 Protocol Hydra Head Goes Live on the Cardano Mainnet - Tokenist
- Atrium is an application that will aggregate the entire Cardano blockchain into one accessible experience that teaches you how to use it. We will onboard millions of users to Cardano, write open-source smart contracts we can all use, and set the standard for UI/UX.
- What is the Future of Money? Charles Hoskinson CEO #cardano
- UPDATE: You can now change your currency of choice on TapTools
- DEMU - A Music Rights Protocol. Built on Cardano
- Cardano Node 8.0.0 is out
- What excites you most about Cardano’s technology?
- Proposal to Rethink the Daily Threads of r/Cardano
- Cardano’s load 24 hours ago. What do we make of this?
- Cardano’s development over the year
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:
| * 27 March 2023 | Web3 & Brews #DRMZteam Cardano Meetup - San Diego (March 27th recap) 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 |
| * 3 May 2023 | Pacific Town Hall - May 3, 2023. More Info |
| * 6 May 2023 | Biggest Cardano Meetup in Taiwan - Ghost chain is not ghosting, We are on Cardano! More Info |
Recently held Ambassador Calls
- 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
- 10 May 2023 Open Moderator Call
- 15 May 2023 Open Translator 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)
- No new CIPs…
Continued Recommendations:
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This proposal stands to explain why allowing native tokens on Cardano to have a spending policy in addition to their minting policy is an idea that should be rejected.
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This problem statement aims to illustrate the problem of the discovery and trust for off-chain metadata.
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This is a common problem area for Blockchain systems.
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This proposal describes a decentralized communication method between dApps and wallets based on WebTorrent trackers and WebRTC.
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This has seen some decent engagement and is an interesting idea.
Next Meeting:
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CIP Editors Meeting #66:
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May 16th 9:30am UTC (tomorrow!).
Weekly CIP updates can be followed here.
Cardano Wiki
Cardano Partnership with UN Refugee Agency
A global NGO tackles the blockchain learning curve
Last November, the Cardano Foundation announced that it is partnering with Switzerland for UNHCR (the United Nations Refugee Agency). This partnership emerged from the second annual Global Impact Challenge, an opportunity for Cardano to forge new partnerships that showcase the ability of blockchain to impact the world for good.
The announcement was an exciting moment at the 2022 Cardano Summit in Lausanne, Switzerland. The project was launched with two basic parts:
First, Switzerland for UNHCR launched a new Cardano stake pool, ticker WRFGS, which stands for “With Refugees”. Pool rewards will fund the agency’s work with refugees and displaced people.
Second, the Cardano Foundation staked 3.5 million ada to the new WRFGS pool. This is enough to ensure that the pool starts minting blocks and earning rewards immediately.
As of this writing, the WRFGS pool has already minted 64 blocks.
However, this was just the beginning
The big dream isn’t that the Foundation will perpetually stake a few million ada to the pool just to keep it alive. Rather, the hope is that the WRFGS pool would become embedded in the community, kept flush with many more million ada from many delegators. This would produce a lasting and steady stream of rewards to fund UNHCR’s work with displaced men, women, and children all over the world. Furthermore, it would be an amazing success story that would pave the way for other organizations to undertake similar efforts.
So what stands between the spark of inception and the inspired end-goal? Well, there are a few things.
New Technology meets Old Wisdom
First, the WRFGS pool is currently set as a 100% margin pool, meaning that delegators don’t earn their own rewards – ALL rewards go to the pool. This is not unheard of, but when it’s done successfully it’s usually by an ISPO, which often offers delegators a Cardano native token or other perks in return for supporting the project by foregoing their rewards. The WRFGS pool lacks that type of incentive at this time, and while we all like to do a little good in the world, many ada holders simply aren’t attracted to the prospect of losing ALL their staking rewards, even if it’s going to a good cause.
To understand what was behind this decision, I spoke to Alvaro Cosi, Head of Innovation at Switzerland for UNHCR. He explained that one reason the pool is set to a 100% margin is that higher-ups at the agency had trouble understanding how a fundraising pool could ethically offer monetary rewards to participants. After all, when you donate to a typical charity, you don’t expect to get paid. Alvaro acknowledged that this really stems from where they are on the learning curve about how staking works. As an organization, they are learning that participant rewards are not really being “paid out” by the pool operator, and it’s not the same as getting paid for donating. It sounds like the possibility of changing the margin is absolutely on the table as one update the pool might make in the future to attract more stake.
Can we help you?
A second potential issue is that the WRFGS pool pledge is set to 0 ada, which is far from typical or ideal. Pool pledge represents a pool owner’s skin in the game. It’s an amount of their own ada that they pledge to leave locked in the pool. A pool owner with a large pledge is going to be highly motivated to make sure their pool is successful and minting blocks, because otherwise they won’t be earning any rewards on their own ada. Encouraging substantial pledges also reduces network risk – someone can’t easily launch and control dozens of successful pools all by themselves in order to gain control of the network, because it would require millions of ada in pledge to attract enough delegation to become a threat. Cardano’s rewards calculation also slightly favors pools with higher pledges with higher rewards, as another way to encourage beefy pledges.
This is another case where it seems that education and trust-building are going to pave the way forward. Alvaro explained that when they were able to get approval from the agency to try this newfangled fundraising strategy, they were NOT, in the same conversation, able to get approval to lock agency funds into crypto. In fact, one condition of participation was that ALL rewards raised by the pool would be converted immediately into fiat. No provision has yet been made for “holding” crypto assets, even for a pool pledge (“What in the world is a pool pledge?” wonder the TradFi bean counters….)…
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.
- Maestro Dapp Platform: Blockchain indexer, APIs and event management system for the Cardano blockchain.
- Pallas: Rust-native building blocks for the Cardano blockchain ecosystem.
- Plutonomicon: A developer-driven guide to the Plutus smart contract language in practice…
Network insights
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Many thanks, and greetings from the Community Team!