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
Cardano Foundation’s core focus areas presented
Frederik Gregaard, CEO of the Cardano Foundation, recently presented the Foundation’s core focus areas: Operational Resilience, Education, and Adoption. During his presentation, Gregaard also highlighted some of the Foundation’s ongoing activities in each of the respective areas that are helping to increase the utility and adoption of the Cardano blockchain.
The active Cardano addresses almost doubled in 2 days
The recent launch of DJED by COTInetwork and Liqwid Finance has maybe resulted in a noticeable increase in the number of active Cardano addresses. Within two days, the number of active addresses on the Cardano network has nearly doubled, indicating increased interest and adoption of these new offerings.
DJED aims to provide a stablecoin solution that offers users a secure platform to store and transact digital assets. Meanwhile, Liqwid Labs has launched its Liqwid $ADA market contract on the mainnet, enabling lending and borrowing transactions. This allows users to earn additional income from Cardano stakes and provide APY by holding $qADA.
These developments highlight the growing interest in Cardano and the increasing demand for stablecoins and decentralized financial solutions. The increase in the number of active Cardano addresses reflects this trend and suggests positive growth for the Cardano (Defi) ecosystem in the future.
Liqwid Finance Goes Live on Cardano Mainnet,
Liqwid Finance, a lending and borrowing protocol, has gone live on the Cardano Mainnet. At present, only ada tokens can be supplied/borrowed. LQ, the native asset of Liqwid, staking is expected to become available within the next month through SundaeSwap’s infrastructure. However, there has been some dissatisfaction within the Cardano Community over the UX and limited functionality of the dApp. SCATDAO’s analysis of token emissions has also raised concerns about the future value of LQ. A vote to amend the emissions rate is currently taking place.
It is noteworthy that Liqwid’s multi-delegation Smart Contracts are now delegating to 16 different Stake Pools to help decentralize the Cardano network.
Other Cardano related News
- Weekly Reddit overview from the Army of Spies, covering topics such as Cardano Defi world, the Launch of Djed, SHEN, Liquid Finance protocol, and more.
- Ada Whale, in tihs week’s #LatestOnCardano includes, updates about the public testnet for anetaBTC on Ergo, the introduction of CIP-68 for SaturnNFTio, Xerberus_io, Coti, Liquid Finance and more.
- Cardano Pills, in their weekly newsletter, reports on Paima Studios joining Microsoft’s Web3 Game Development Initiative, Liqwid Finance now live on mainnet, CIP-0068 bringing dynamically programmable NFTs to Cardano and a call to all SPOs to upgrade nodes to version 1.35.5
- Special edition of the Cardano 360 with Shahaf Bar-Geffen, CEO of COTI Group on the latest regarding th launc of Djed and SHEN. SundaeSwap, Wingriders, MuesliSwap and Bitrue als dropped by to share a few words.
- Sooraj, provides an overview of a set of APIs designed to simplify the process of developing decentralized applications and smart contracts on Cardano.
Cardano Reddit Top 6 Most Engaged Topics
Below are the most engaging topics on Reddit
- Djed is now live on mainnet
- Already +25 million ADA / $10.000.000 locked within the first hours!! First milestone
- Cardano is about 100,803x more energy-efficient than Bitcoin
- Potential DJED risk. What am I missing?
- Is there a reason for almost all browers ext. wallets to run only on chrome and not on firefox?
- Could Djed become multi-collaterized and multi-pegged ecosystem?
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 December 2022 Meetup: Discussing Cardano Proof of Stake
-What is Proof of Stake?
-What is Ouroboros?
-How to delegate your ADA to Cardano?
-How does Cardano solve scalability, security and decentralization?
More info - Jan 14, 2023 Cardano Meetup in Ghana. More Info
- Jan 27, 2023 Catalyst Africa Town Hall #1 2023. More Info
Recently held Ambassador Calls
- 11 January 2023 Open Content Creator Call
- 12 January 2023 Open Moderator Call
- 19 January 2023 Monthly Ambassador Call
- 25 January 2022 Open Moderator Call
- 1 February 2022 Open Meetup Organizer Call
- 1 February 2022 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.
So, what happened in CIPs last week? ( by @RyanW )
- CIP-??? | Ledger evolution (meta) [New CIP Proposal]:
- This proposal formally enlists Cardano Ledger as a CIP category, describing guidance for future CIPs concerning the Cardano ledger.
- CIP-??? | Sums-of-products in Plutus Core [New CIP Proposal]:
- This CIP proposes to add native support for datatypes to Plutus Core, and to use that support to implement more efficient interchange of the script context between the ledger and scripts.
- Lots of engagement and discussion.
Continued Recommendations:
- CIP-56 | Treasury donations
- This CIP intends to diversity the treasury holdings and increase protocol revenue to the treasury by allowing Catalyst-funded private ventures to both diversity and increase Cardano’s treasury balance.
- Quite an interesting proposal.
- CIP-30 | Upgrade to latest format & propose version / extension scheme [CIP Update]:
- This amendment to CIP-30 (dApp-wallet bridge) proposes a method to extend the standard with future CIPs.
- Lots of good discussion and engagement around this.
Next Meeting:
- CIP Editors Meeting #61:
- Feb 14th 5pm UTC.
- (postponed from Jan 31st)
- Held on Discord - here.
- Agenda.
Cardano Wiki
Cardano and stablecoins will be the financial backbone of the future
There is nothing in the Bitcoin white paper that says the goal of the project is to make people rich. However, analysis of cryptocurrency holders shows that most people expect exactly that. Can an alternative financial world emerge from speculation? At this point, it seems unlikely. Algorithmic stablecoins will be a very important part of the financial future. They need decentralized smart contract platforms like Cardano to exist. They use native coins like ADA and deliver real use cases. Satoshi’s vision of an alternative financial world can come true through Cardano and projects like Djed.
TLDR
- Some cryptocurrency fans are its biggest enemies if they show people charts and promise the impossible.
- The most appropriate technology for building an alternative financial world will be one that cryptocurrencies.
- If people really care about decentralization, they need to start preferring it to financial speculation.
- People need to start looking beyond the contents of their own wallets.
- Speculation is the killer of utility
Cryptocurrency fans who show people charts and promise them riches are perhaps unwittingly their biggest enemies. They give the impression that cryptocurrencies must be bought and then wait for a new wave of buyers. With this approach, they have essentially put cryptocurrencies on par with stocks. If you feel the same way about cryptocurrencies, you will have a hard time listening to other fans’ advice that you should spend cryptocurrencies on goods and services.
The problem is that if holders buy cryptocurrencies and then wait to see what happens next, they are very likely planning to sell them. Watching the charts encourages this. Most influencers sell part of their portfolio on the new ATH and make videos about it. This behavior causes high volatility.
Certainly, don’t expect a new financial world to emerge on this speculative basis. People are forced to continue to use at currencies. There are even narratives that cryptocurrencies are better money and you need to spend the worse ones. They can lose money on cryptocurrencies if they don’t behave like professional investors. And a professional investor will always sell if it is profitable. A crypto holder who doesn’t sell on ATHs doesn’t use at currencies, and spends cryptocurrencies without hesitation is a mythical hero who almost doesn’t exist in the real world. Some people might even call such a hero a fool.
The only utility that people perceive, and many even claim it is the only possible utility, is speculation on market value growth. Let me tell If a particular cryptocurrency becomes too big, investors will need new horses to bet on. This is not at all about a particular technology that is best suited to digital gold or things like that. This is about the rational economic behavior of large investors who can manipulate the media and the market.
The most appropriate technology for building an alternative financial world will be one that insulates users from volatility and is useful.
Algorithmic stablecoins
Algorithmic stablecoins are a brilliant technological advance. They can create a stable value pegged to, say, the USD, or anything else that has a relatively stable value. Ideally, it would be best to use a basket of assets, their value balances each other.
Imagine once we tokenize the stocks of the big companies you find in the S&P index. These tokenized stocks can be used to create some sort of stablecoin whose value will be based on the performance of existing companies. People want the money to be backed by something real. Is this a good direction? We don’t have a clear answer.
Crypto assets such as ADA or BTC can be used as collateral. The stablecoin algorithm can handle volatility. The less volatile cryptocurrencies are, the more stable the values of stablecoins will be. An important aspect is that ADA, which is the native coin of the Cardano project, is used as collateral. Cardano enables the creation of stablecoins and is the necessary infrastructure for the entire mechanism.
Algorithmic stablecoins are decentralized and a third party has no control over them. Stablecoins retain all the properties of cryptocurrencies.
They allow self-custody. They can be used by anyone in the world without permission from a third party. Transactions cannot be censored. With the being built in the Cardano ecosystem.
Most important of all, stablecoins separate speculators from users. Users of stablecoins do not need to have ADA coins in their wallets. Cardano will allow you to pay transaction fees in native assets. The speculative nature of cryptocurrencies and the use of stable purchasing power or DeFi services will be two entirely separate worlds.
One day there may be more users of stablecoins than there are holders of volatile cryptocurrencies. It’s the equivalent of far more people on the planet using the Windows operating system than there are holders of Microsoft stock.
It will be possible to speculate on the success of stablecoins through ADA or the SHEN reserve token (and other similar tokens). Those who don’t want to speculate don’t have to. On the other hand, this option is open to everyone without distinction.
Thanks to stablecoins, DeFi services can emerge that will be completely insulated from volatility. Once decentralized identity (DID) becomes more widely used and regulation sets rules for its use, the door will be open for new decentralized banks to emerge.
Satoshi’s vision can be realized through stablecoins. Decentralized banks will not be able to abuse their position and change the terms of agreements. DeFi will remain available to all people without discrimination. Decentralized banks will not be able to charge excessive fees and, in many cases, collect client data…
For the full article, visit: Source: https://cexplorer.io/article/cardano-and-stablecoins-will-be-the-financial-backbone-of-the-future
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.
- NFTada.io: Simple web interface and sophisticated API for automated printing and distribution.
- Cardano Relay Map: Shows geographical distribution of Cardano stake pool relay nodes with flexible map features.
Network insights
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