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
Valentine SECP Upgrade Goes Live on Cardano Mainnet
Cardano underwent yet another successful Hardfork Event.
The upgrade took place on February 14 at 21:44 UTC, at the beginning of epoch 394 at block height 8403208.
With the upgrade now live, the network is ready to provide a range of advanced features that make it easier for developers to build decentralized finance (DeFi) applications that can interact with other blockchains.
The upgrade’s most notable improvement is its ability to improve the network’s security and allow for genuine cross-chain interoperability by adding new built-in functions to Plutus to support ECDSA and Schnorr signatures. With the addition of new cryptographic primitives, Plutus developers will have the ability to use a variety of multi-signature or threshold signature designs in Cardano’s system, which will result in the most secure level of protection.
According to IOG, “Native support for SECP now fosters cross-chain interoperability while ensuring the highest level of security. With the cardano valentine upgrade, developers can now easily create cross-chain DApps that are secure, reliable, and cost-effective,”
Overall, the “Valentine” upgrade is a significant step towards creating a more secure, diverse, and user-friendly blockchain ecosystem. It is a testament to Cardano’s commitment to continuously improving its network and providing its users with the best possible experience.
Bitrue Twitter Space with Sebastian Bode
Sebastian Bode, the Cardano Foundation’s Director of Engineering, recently spoke in a Twitter Space with Robert Quartly Janeiro, CSO of Bitrue on all things Cardano and Cardano Foundation.
During their conversation, Sebastian shared his insights on a range of topics, including the goals of the Foundation, several use cases of Cardano, and the impressive achievements our network has made since its inception. He also spoke briefly about the Cardano Summit, how the Cardano Foundation deals with partnership inquiries, and how Cardano continues to develop during the bear market.
In addition, Sebastian offered a glimpse into Cardano’s 2023 focus areas, and the remarkable community that makes the project so special.
Listen to the full Twitter Space
Charles Hoskinson confirms Twitter Space on Contingent Staking
Charles Hoskinson has confirmed that a Twitter space conversation about Contingent Staking will occur on Tuesday, February 21, 2023 at 07:30 pm UTC.
The decision to host the Twitter Space was made after After receiving a whopping 8000+ votes (Twitter poll) from community members who are eager to take the conversation further on the topic of Contingent Staking.
Other Cardano related News
- The Cardano Foundation expands executive team with new COO and CLO.
- Blog post presenting and explaning the Cardano Foundation’s core focus areas.
- Weekly Reddit overview from the Army of Spies, covering topics such as Cardano Defi world, SundaeSwap governance, validator recovery in Cardano, and more.
- Cardano Pills, in their weekly newsletter, reports on contingent staking update, updates on wallet infrastructure, and cNFTJungle’s new tool for token forensics.
Cardano Reddit Top 10 Most Engaged Topics
Below are the most engaging topics on Reddit
- Texas Exploring No Taxes on Crypto Purchases
- SEC staking Enforcement Analysis Reveals that Cardano Has Fighting Chance Against SEC
- I have been staking my Cardano in Kraken and received this email. What is the major potential downside to this?
- Cardano Network is Set to Launch Its ‘Valentine’ Upgrade
- Join us this Friday to spread knowledge about the Cardano ecosystem and learn about Algorand’s
- Cardano Upgrade Aims to Improve Cross-Chain Features
- Cardano Gets ‘Valentine’ Upgrade: Here’s How it Benefits ADA Token - BITNEWS24
- You’ll soon be able to call Solidity smart contracts from any Cardano wallet thanks to Milkomeda
- SEC can’t stop Cardano
- Cardano makes TPS metric obsolete
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:
| 14 January 2023 | Cardano Meetup in Ghana. More Info |
|---|---|
| 27 January 2023 | Catalyst Africa Town Hall #1 2023. More Info |
| 4 February 2023 | Cardano Lisbon Meetup #1 More Info |
| 18 February 2023 | Cardano Campus Meetup - Ghana Edition #1 More information |
Recently held Ambassador Calls
| 1 February 2022 | Open Meetup Organizer Call |
|---|---|
| 1 February 2022 | Open Content Creator Call |
| 15 February 2022 | Open Moderator Call |
| 16 January 2023 | Monthly Ambassador 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)
- CIP-??? | Extendable dApp Connector [New Proposal]:
- This CIP proposes an alternative to CIP-30 for a base dApp-Wallet communication bridge whilst adding a scheme for how functionality can be enhanced.
CIP Editors Meeting #61 (Tuesday 14th) – my notes:
- CPS-03 | Smart Tokens:
- Should remove solution parts from the problem statement.
- Parts of the rejected CIP-70 to be merged in as these are closely aligned.
- Draft CPS-??? | Wallet UX:
- Some interesting ideas included - around shortcomings of CIP-30.
- No response from author to comments in three weeks - this should be closed for now.
- CIP-??? | Sums-of-products in Plutus Core:
- Author present to discuss.
- All comments have been responded to.
- Will move to last check for the next meeting.
- CIP-??? | Ledger evolution (meta):
- Keen to have this merged.
- Not too much discussion around this on Github - but that is nature of meta proposals.
- Moved to last check for the next call.
- CIP-??? | NFT Metadata Update Oracles:
- No major disputes present on this well articulated proposal.
- Asked author to be present for the following meeting to discuss.
- CIP-??? | Maybe Datum:
- This is waiting for author to respond to comments.
- This is ready to have a number applied in the meantime.
- Further reviews would be good.
- CIP-??? | Post Quantum signatures in Plutus:
- Author present and a long heathy discussion was had around this.
- Main question for this proposal: is it worth doing this now or in future?
- Perhaps need domain expert to weigh in along with Plutus team.
- Maybe a CPS could be added.
Next Meeting:
- CIP Editors Meeting #62:
- Feb 28th 9:30am UTC.
- Held on Discord - here.
- Agenda TBD.
Weekly CIP updates can be followed and reviewed here:
Cardano Wiki
Introducing: Catalyst Explorer
Distributed accountability for Everyone!
To date, Cardano’s Project Catalyst has inspired more than 2,500 people to submit more than 4300 project proposals for community consideration. An even wider circle of participants have served as Proposal Assessors and Veteran Proposal Assessors, rating and reviewing every single proposal before community voting. More than 1600 project proposals have won funding, to the tune of 39 million dollars in ada. Funded projects dutifully submit monthly reports and completion reports, while building websites, DApps, Discord channels, physical community hubs, and GitHub repos full of the fruits of their labors.
While all the data behind these amazing numbers - the people, the projects, the results - have always been hypothetically public, actually accessing and understanding it has been difficult. Disparate Google spreadsheets and web archives held voting results, proposal assessments, unfunded proposal records, and project reports - all in different places. If you could manage to track one down, it was still up to you to click through the many tabs and rows of raw data.
With the ability to understand our collective work comes the ability to inspire each other, to iterate on what has come before, to keep each other in check, to collaborate with like minds, to do the deep research that will lead to the next breakthrough. Knowledge is power, and the Catalyst community needed a way to harness this horse.
Introducing Catalyst Explorer
In Project Catalyst Fund 9, Lido Nation was funded to build out our Catalyst Explorer tool. The numbers in the opening paragraph of this article were found not by sifting, sorting and summing through umpteen assorted spreadsheets. Instead I simply toggled a few intuitive filters on Lido Nation’s Catalyst Explorer. Beyond the ability to do this kind of quick analysis, we hope this tool will help the Catalyst community to go deep, connect, and think big together.
Search and Filter
The first layer of exploration in Catalyst Explorer is like a super smooth shopping app: all the filters you need to find just what you are looking for. You can explore proposals, monthly reports, people, and groups. Filter proposals by funding status or budget size, Fund, Campaign, key words, and more. There are currently 11 filter layers, including community-contributed filters that identify women-led proposals, Impact proposals, and other community sourced data groupings. If you’re not sure what you’re even looking for, visit the Charts page to see some Catalyst stats and feed your curiosity about the people and projects behind them.
Claim your profile
New this month, people and teams can claim their profiles in Catalyst Explorer. Ownership verification happens through Ideascale. This provides secure confirmation that profiles are controlled by the right person. Once you have claimed your personal or team profile, you can edit it. You may wish to provide updated or more complete information about yourself, your team, or your work. You can provide links to your software repositories, YouTube, Discord, Twitter, Medium, or YouTube channels. When public users comment on your projects, you can receive notifications and respond. When you are working on your next Catalyst proposal and answering the question about “how the community can follow your progress”, you can just point them to Catalyst Explorer, and rack up new followers there! ……
For the full article, visit Source: https://www.lidonation.com/en/posts/introducing-catalyst-explorer
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.
- Finitum Bridge: Move supported tokens cross-chain, from BSC to Cardano and vice versa.
- BALANCE - Balance Analytics: A Blockchain Intelligence app dedicated to supporting the Cardano Blockchain Ecosystem.
- Peer Review Money: Pretty straight forward site about the economics of ada, the native currency of the Cardano blockchain.
Network insights
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