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
Vasil hard fork combinator event date confirmed
IOHK has now confirmed September 22nd, 2022 to be the long-awaited date of the Vasil hard fork.
Most major cryptocurrency exchanges have already begun upgrading their nodes in preparation for the imminent hard fork with both IOHK and the Cardano Foundation anticipating a seamless update.
There is also a new webpage for people interested in following the Vasil upgrade’s Ecosystem readiness level, allowing one to track the current status against three parameters that are required for launch:
Currently, stake pool operators create more than 75% of all mainnet blocks. The majority of the top 12 exchanges (in terms of liquidity) have already announced that they are upgrading, with several already ready and the major DApp platforms are all expected to be ready by launch date.
We recommend reading the following weblog for a better idea of what to expect from the Vasil upgrade:
https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2022/07/04/cardano-s-approaching-vasil-upgrade-what-to-expect/
Initial Improvements from Cardano Vasil upgrade already visible!
The Hard Fork Combinator (HFC) enables pool operators to deploy the updated codebase ahead of time. The consensus sections of it will subsequently be triggered at the stated RF time. Clio1 explained in this Twitter thread, using a variety of visualizations, how the block header pipelining in the Cardano mainnet has been considerably improved. The following graph depicts the real-time flow of several relay nodes in the Cardano Network. The aim is to distribute the block to all nodes globally in one second, which in this case performed quite well.
This time is reduced thanks to header pipelining. By computing the averages for all blocks in a day and putting them up for 60 days, you can observe how delivery times evolve.
As you can see in the graph, the delivery time has decreased significantly since mid-August when the pool operators began upgrading the nodes for Vasil.
Cardano takes No.1 spot in Top Brand Intimacy Report 2022
Garnering a quotient score of 52.6, Cardano has taken the top crypto brand spot, beating out Bitcoin in the MBLM Top Brand Intimacy 2022 report. The report marked the first time that cryptocurrencies were included in the list, with the cryptocurrency industry taking the eighth spot out of 19 industries.
Overall, Cardano ranked 26th, edging out other mainstream brands like Ford and IBM.
The MBLM’s Brand Intimacy Study focuses on the largest brands based on emotions, with research measuring intimacy by reviewing intensity, archetypes, and stages based on a quotient score between 0 and 100. The higher the score, the more intense the emotional relationship with a brand.
At the very least, the report demonstrates just how passionate the Cardano community is, and serves as a testament to how far the ecosystem has come as a result of all of the amazing contributions from our stellar community members.
Ambassador Stories, Journal #28: Sebastián Aravena & Theodoros Morisis
This week, we’re proud to once again present two new Ambassador Stories. This time we bring you the stories of Sebastián Aravena & Theodoros Morisis. Sebastián has joined the Ambassador ranks as a Content Creator, and Theodoros as a Meetup Organiser. Their stories not only give insight into how they contribute to the further advancement of our ecosystem, but also give you a small look into their personal lives. We hope you enjoy reading their stories as much as we did interviewing them.
Project Catalyst and accountability
“Project Catalyst is a series of community-managed funds that are launched every three months (give or take), and which seek to finance interesting and innovative ideas that are useful for the Cardano community. Funding is decided via weighted voting dependent on one’s ADA holdings.” (Source)
That means upon completion of a community-wide vote funds are distributed to individuals/groups to build out their ideas. As with many startups, an excellent plan or idea is sometimes not enough. Often building out complex solutions takes more time or resources than anticipated. That is a natural thing. So how can the Cardano community verify if projects deliver on their promises and see how many funds were granted?
1.How many funds have been awarded to a specific group in Project Catalyst?
You can find this information on the website https://www.lidonation.com/en/project-catalyst/groups built by our valuable Cardano Ambassador Darlington Wleh. This tool allows you to see the total amount of funds specific groups received from Project Catalyst. We highly recommend checking out the website.
2.How can the community verify if projects deliver on their promises?
You can find this information in this document. It provides an overview of all funded projects per fund and a separate sheet that includes information about which projects are already completed.
Holding projects accountable and monitoring their progress is crucial in enabling Project Catalyst’s long-term success.
Would you be interested in attending regular (monthly?) work group meetings for audit/oversight of projects on Cardano’s Project Catalyst? For more information, read here.
Cardano Reddit Top 10 Most Engaged Topics
Below are the most engaging topics on Reddit
- Cardano is now on Robinhood!
- Why cant someone just brute force wallets?
- Which Cardano native tokens should I look into?
- How is your experience with Eternl so far? How much do you rate it from 1 to 5 stars?
- Cardano creator Charles Hoskinson claims that the Vasil fork of ADA is about to happen during Ethereum’s merger.
- Today We Are Launching Saturn NFT! The Easiest way to create NFTs on Cardano!
- The amount of ADA in the Cardano Treasury is growing steadily
- Vasil is just around the corner. Let’s polish your crystal ball… and share what you see happening when it happens.
- A midweek #Vasil upgrade update!
- New Vasil 3rd party readiness page is live.
Cardano Forum Top 9 Top Referred Topics
Topics that have received the most clicks from external sources. (last 10 Days)
Topic Clicks
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A quick recap about Vasil Upgrade: Progress and Development
Update - Aug, 2022 327 -
Critical Indicators for the activation of the Vasil hard fork at
Cardano and their respective current status - 29 Aug, 2022 326 -
Missing blocks on 1.35.3 with fresh operational certificate 169
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One identity to rule them all—managing digital identities using
Blockchain 114 -
How to set up a POOL in a few minutes - and register using CNTOOLS 103
Cardano Blockchain insights
EVM: Ethereum virtual machine
A computing engine that functions as a decentralized computer with millions of projects that can be executed. It serves as the foundation for Ethereum’s complete operating system. EVM is the component of Ethereum that handles smart contract execution and deployment.
Recently held Meetups
Other meetups around the world:
- 29 June 2022 Decentralized Finance - DeFi on Cardano and other Layer 1
Blockchains. This MeetUp will be hosted on YouTube. For more information, please visit Meetup.com - 29 June 2022|Cardano Blockchain - DC/MD/VA (Now Virtual!). Meetup.com
- 05 July 2022|Cardano Catalyst Women: How can we address social & environmental issues thanks to blockchain?
- 16 July 2022|Cardano Seattle Meetup. Meetup.com
Here are two pictures from the Seattle meetup. For more pictures and a short description, see Cardano Forum
- 20 July 2022|Brisbane Cardano Meetup. Meetup.com
- 22 July 2022|Cardano South Florida Meetup. Meetup.com|
Upcoming Ecosystem (Internal/Public) Events
- 08 September 2022|Cardano Meetup Amsterdam. More info
- 8-9 October 2022|CNFT Con in Las Vegas. More info
- 14-15 October 2022|Rare Bloom event at the Gaylord Rockies, Colorado. More info
- 19-21 November 2022|Cardano Summit 2022. More info
Recently held Ambassador Calls
- 06 July 2022 Open Meetup Organizer Call
- 06 July 2022 Open Content Creator Call
- 27 July 2022 Open Content Creator Call
- 27 July 2022 Open Meetup Organizer Call
- 10 August 2022 Open Moderator Call
- 10 August 2022 Open Translator Call
- 17 August 2022 Open Meetup Organizer Call
- 17 August 2022 Open Content Creator Call
- 18 August 2022 Monthly Ambassador Call
- 31 August 2022 Open Translator Call
- 31 August 2022 Open Moderator 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.
Cardano Wiki
Luck (ouroboros)
The total stake of a pool consists of ADA coins of the pool operator (pledge) and delegated ADA coins. The size of the pool determines the chances of the pool to become a slot leader and create a new block in the assigned slots. However, the chance is not purely proportional to pool size. For the sake of protocol security, an element of chance comes into play.
Let’s say that, based on a calculation that takes into account the proportional size of pools, a given pool has 40 slots in an epoch in which it can create a new block. This is the expected number. However, due to randomness, it may happen that a pool is assigned a larger or smaller number of slots. In the end, the pool can create either 45 or 35 blocks. Pool performance is calculated as the number of blocks that a pool has produced in a given epoch, divided by the expected number of blocks.
When the pool has created 45 blocks, its performance is 112.5%. When it has only created 35 blocks, its performance is 87.5%. The pool reward per epoch reflects the performance of the pool, so it can be higher or lower. It is important to know that it does not matter whether a pool is currently above or below 100% of the expected performance. Within a longer period of time the randomness is fair so the performance is expected to be ~100% provided that the pool creates blocks in all assigned slots. 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.
- Flint Wallet is a friendly go-to wallet for DeFi and NFTs. As a light wallet, Flint allows you to easily manage multiple assets from different chains in your browser.
- NOWPayments payment gateway provider to accept ada payments and ada donations.
- Cardano Scan a combination of block explorer and pool tool, uses it’s own implementation of db-sync.
- Eternl the alternative Cardano light wallet in the browser. Aims to add features most requested by the Cardano community.
