Cardano Rumor Rundown 04.02.2021: Catalyst Fund 3 Winners!

Hey Everyone!

I've been obsessively consuming all the Cardano news and media on a daily basis for years now. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to share a list of what I'm seeing for anyone else who's interested. Feel free to make additions as you see fit. Many of your additions from yesterday are in the “Newly Covered” list for today. Also let me know if you think any of the “Previously Covered but Still Interesting” items are no longer interesting and should leave the list.

Check out the youtube companion to today’s post: https://youtu.be/cYqLI57nc7w

Let's go....

Newly covered today:

1. Cardano Youtuber Big Pey just did two really good videos on the developing NFT scene in Cardano and how to accomplish manual escrow in discord so that you don’t get scammed in the secondary market for Cardano NFTs. The focus here was on the SpaceBudz series of NFTs. These kinds of manual procedures are probably the best that can be done right now. They also highlight how much easier everything will be once we get smart contracts with Alonzo since simple escrow like this is a prime use case for simple smart contracts that at the outset seem like they should be accomplishable even just in Marlowe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8Yj_dvh7OA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-1TKq7okhs https://spacebudz.io/
2. Cardano hits 400k delegators! https://twitter.com/RichardMcCrackn/status/1377732956194766850
3. Graph blockchain has announced an acquisition of $300k in ADA for staking purposes. Once the corporate finance world finds understands the dynamic around staking in Cardano, we may see announcements like this with dollar values that are orders of magnitude higher. Right now the corporate world is considering holding BTC on their balance sheets. But, yield on ADA holdings might become hyperattractive to a wide spectrum of companies once they understand the dynamics of staking and that a compounding yield is available for capture. ttps://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/graph-blockchain-announces-acquisition-cardano-110000210.html
4. The Project Catalyst Fund 3 winners have been announced! There is a full discussion and analysis of each winner in the youtube video linked at the top. Congrats to all the dApp Challenge winners: Liqwid:Cardano DeFi Liquidity Pools, Ada Tx to Trigger IoT + IO HW Spins, Comprehensive NFT Framework Collab, Digital Asset Inheritance, Decentralized Accounting <- IFRS, Food traceability solution - Africa, Dapp for business contracts, and The Basket DApp - 売買カート. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1X6BnuFBvNO8yF2DeUgBqA3yyYSvqeKvg/view

Recently Covered (complete list at www.armyofspies.net):

1. Charles posts a pic of a taxidermy African bird called a Turacos. He follows up that post by saying "Guys sometimes a stuffed Ethiopian exotic bird next to an old identity book is just a stuffed Ethiopian exotic bird next to an old identity book. Stop reading into things". Everyone enjoys speculating what exactly this could mean with the obvious implication being that the African bird announcement involves digital identity in Ethiopia. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1369397063583227911 https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1369402020067766275
2. The “Cardano Pizza” event becomes an NFT. https://twitter.com/RichardMcCrackn/status/1370924728534376449
3. Bloomberg covers Cardano, Cites Charles as saying 100 Companies Coming Over https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-14/crypto-s-next-big-thing-raises-questions-while-the-price-surges
4. Cardano definition added to search function in Bloomberg Terminal https://twitter.com/CryptoJeromeFR/status/1371195771798884352
5. Commenter Report: Africa Special has finished recording
6. Cryptoviser apparently is not romantically in love with us. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1371097989968666626
7. There is a Part 2 to the IOHK EUTXO discussion we reported under item 39. Good read for verbally upstaging your ETH & BTC supporting co-workers. Be the king of the post-zoom call crypto banter! https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/03/12/cardanos-extended-utxo-accounting-model-part-2/
8. Commenter Report: the “metamask of Cardano” speculated about previously in item 30 is the “Yoroi dApp connector”. It’ll be rolled out “with Ergo first and Cardano once Plutus is released.” https://github.com/Emurgo/yoroi-ergo-connector
9. It looks like this Yoroi dApp Connector info has even been detailed by Sebastien and Rob on yt. Not sure if we can link directly to this video. But, here is the link to the link. Looks like the dApp Connector talk starts at 1:23:10. https://twitter.com/NicoArqueros/status/1353203943195734017
10. The visionaries among us are already thinking about advanced NFT derivative instruments (some even created by AI) in our ecosystem. https://twitter.com/NicoArqueros/status/1370150347113648132
11. Today is staking rewards day for Epoch 253! Let’s get those duckets!
12. Cardano is getting a disproportionate cut of the attention market compared to its CMC neighbors. https://twitter.com/CardanoRise/status/1371431289895665665
13. “Ask the Doctor” is switching from ERC-20 to Cardano. Note that Ask the Doctor is linked to FD7 Ventures in Item 7 below. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210315005744/en/Global-Healthcare-Platform-Ask-The-Doctor-to-Use-Cardano-for-World
14. We get another People of Input Output Global video. This one features Dan Friedman. He currently lives in Japan. But, the interview starts off with some very interesting stories about his youth in 1980s Kiev, Ukraine. His speaking and story-telling style is similar to the captain in a 1990s buddy cop movie (in a good way). Very interesting and compelling guy. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1371574441637937153
15. St. Patrick brings us the green today! The Liquidity Bird has landed!!!!!! We begin going live on Coinbase Pro tomorrow!!!! https://blog.coinbase.com/cardano-ada-is-launching-on-coinbase-pro-694b1cb8c778 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2gcNkeJ4Rk
16. Native Token Minting Workshop released on the Slack Dev Community Channel. https://files.slack.com/files-pri/T01G2PY2E1M-F01RF61QVQS/download/minting_native_tokens.mp4
17. This Minting Workshop above is a follow up after a previous Native Token Workshop from 03.04.2021. https://iohkdevcommunity.slack.com/files/U01H7BUQAKS/F01Q3GT4GP7/native_tokens_workshop.mp4
18. The Coinbase News is allowing us to retire rumors 11, 17, and 41 above.
19. Today is Coinbase day! Finally! Rejoice. Trading on Coinbase Pro is supposed to open at or after 9am Pacific! https://pro.coinbase.com/ https://blog.coinbase.com/cardano-ada-is-launching-on-coinbase-pro-694b1cb8c778
20. Charles finally gets the blue check on twitter. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1372182831430955008
21. Perceptions are shifting on which platform will be #1 for smart contracts over the next decade. Here’s the biggest crypto youtuber asking his co-host if he’s losing faith in the traditional #1. If you’re in Cardano, you can guess which coin his answer is shifting away from. https://youtu.be/4jRCmdWva40?t=3270
22. Even septuagenarians are getting in on Cardano. https://twitter.com/Emini_Scalper/status/1371061383975030787
23. Coinbase Pro did actually happen yesterday morning. Congratulations everyone. It’s been a long road and it was beautiful watching those initial candles build on the chart after all these years. https://pro.coinbase.com/
24. The Crypto Time Traveler mentioned last week (Item 49) has apparently left us and now gone back to the future. It definitely adds a touch of realism when they actually leave. https://twitter.com/CryptoTimeTrav2/status/1371492636884865029
25. Charles delivered his pre-recorded keynote address at the Blockchain Africa Conference. His remarks support the rumor that the initial Ethiopia project will be around identity. He specifically mentioned Atala Prism. There was talk of the digital identity being able to be linked to wallets, payment systems, and property. He also reasserted that the deals on the table in Africa would bring “millions of users” into the Cardano ecosystem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGEs99I6qV8
26. If you haven’t seen it in the past, the Atala Prism website has a demo that works with the mobile app showing how the identity solution (along with academic credentialing, health insurance, and proof of employment) would run on Cardano. https://www.atalaprism.io/
27. ADA is now live on coinbase.com as well as Coinbase Pro! So, you don’t even need to understand orderbooks to buy ADA now. https://blog.coinbase.com/cardano-ada-is-now-available-on-coinbase-dd30c1e0d93a
28. Tim Harrison of IOG sums up this week perfectly: “Glass of nice red tonight, I think. Quite a week.” https://twitter.com/timbharrison/status/1372985361794760705
29. Never imagined there would be a holiday light display that flashed “Screw Doge Coin; ADA is Best” to the original Doge music. Friendly rivalry is probably good in crypto. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM135pv72mY&t=31s
30. Charles doubles down on the declaration that Cardano’s defining moment will be when it can provide the rails for micro finance from the developed world to the developing world not as a form of charity but as a profitable financial activity for both lender and loan recipient. He thinks it will be the biggest transfer of wealth in the history of the world. He says the base infrastructure for this is being rolled out over the next 24-36 months. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMRGUCLQPYo
31. The ADA adoption numbers are looking really good lately! https://twitter.com/nierop_pieter/status/1372686310901747712
32. Max Keiser is also not romantically in love with us. Charles lays down the stick pretty hard on this one. I’m saying good. If you can’t take the heat...stay out of the Cardano kitchen, my man. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1373027224509542403
33. Cardano releases an infographic that sums up all the partnerships, deployments, startups, and functionality in the entire ecosystem. We got a lot going on! https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1373313974616215557
34. Here’s a really good article discussing decentralization in the context of Cardano core code maintenance. Really good job on this by cardanians.io. https://cardanojournal.com/who-will-maintain-cardano-129
35. The Cardano tattoo phenomenon continues to proliferate. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1373354182124531713
36. BlockFi to add ADA “as soon as we can.” https://twitter.com/SugarZeusCrypto/status/1372958662805708800
37. ADA Heart Pool made an awesome infographic guide to staking: https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1373310895544229892
38. Awesome comparative chart showing how much more decentralized Cardano is already compared to BTC. https://twitter.com/PoolGrow/status/1373492994645450752
39. Transactions are way up over the last several epochs! https://www.adatainment.com/index.php?lang=en&page=charts_onchain_metrics
40. Cardano 360 going down on Thursday March 25th. This is the big monthly streaming event where they tell us what’s going on. Save your spot here: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/cardano360-march/register
41. Critics think that lack of burned fees is a valid complaint against Cardano. But, good outcomes at scale only come with good incentives and free competition. So, if the fees aren’t paying the costs of transactions in these other protocols, the question goes begging: who is? In the end, the answer always turns out to be that the transaction costs have just been obfuscated under the guise of inflation via coin emission or some other hidden tax on someone in the ecosystem (usually the coin holders). https://twitter.com/avaxholder/status/1373336728010956801
42. We are starting to see cracks in the psychological armor of the Ethereum crowd. This anti-Cardano post was at 0 upvotes (at time of writing) while the fairly pro-Cardano response received triple figure upvotes. https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/maktuy/ist_charles_hoskinson_the_new_justin_sun/
43. When smart contracts go live with Alonzo (the final HFC event in Goguen), and we eventually have Babel Fees, it’s going to make almost zero sense for any developer to choose ETH over Cardano. This will apply especially to any project that sends tokens to its customers (e.g. NFT projects) and any project that involves significant computation or transaction loads on the network (e.g. DeFi projects).
44. Emurgo is thinking about supply chain solutions for the seafood industry. https://emurgo.io/blog/how-can-blockchain-deliver-benefits-to-the-seafood-industrys-supply-chain
45. Check out this very cool relay node global tracker form monadpool! Thanks for building this! https://monadpool.com/cardano.html
46. We now have a Backstreet Boy. Might not seem that important, until you notice he has 600k followers. Network effects...network effects. Thanks, Nick! https://twitter.com/nickcarter/status/1374347860834062340 https://twitter.com/nickcarter/status/1374466486018842624
47. A guy tried to use Charles’s reaction to the King Soopers tragedy in Boulder to criticize Cardano. Charles told him to go f*** himself and then auctioned off the tweet with proceeds going to the families of the victims. The auction price quickly hit four figures and closed at $7k. https://v.cent.co/tweet/1374207862646304773?s=u_a
48. Thursday is Cardano 360 and Friday will be “Get ADA Day” as staking rewards for Epoch 255 close. Gonna be an action packed close to the week. Enjoy!
49. Here was my favorite moonboi tweet of the last few days. Old photo, but excellent captioning work here. https://twitter.com/MaximilianXCIX/status/1373471841449304066
50. Great new interview with Sebastien! In this one he explains a lot about the dApp Connector being built by Emurgo. As reported by a commenter in one of our earlier threads, it will work with Ergo first and then Cardano. A very interesting tidbit was Sebastien’s explanation of how the Emurgo dApp Connector will actually be safer than Metamask (which fills a similar role in the ETH ecosystem). Very good info. Thanks to Sebastien and the Cardano Podcast! https://youtu.be/Dkw7hvFP6dY
51. Today is Cardano 360 day!!!! Watch it here at 10:30AM Pacific, 17:30 GMT, 18:30 CET. This is the live monthly streaming show from IOHK. Watch this one. Hopefully we’ll get a target date for Alonzo. That’ll tell us when we get smart contracts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQt7AjimaAg
52. Looks like the Cardano 360 show may highlight how Cardano will not experience some of the shortcomings that leading blockchains have in the past (like the time that bitcoin accidentally issued 184 billion BTC in one block). https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1374783084881608706
53. Catalyst Fund 5 will have a $2MM total budget! Included will be a very interesting $50k Metadata challenge in Fund 5. Metadata can be used to prove the existence of a certain document or event to third parties without necessarily revealing the data contained therein. This means you can do cool things on the blockchain without using smart contracts as in the prior New Balance anti-counterfeiting and Beefchain traceability Cardano projects.The winners of this challenge are actually going to be incubated and supported by the IOHK Metadata team! People waiting for Goguen and smart contracts are definitely sleeping on what can be done with metadata on Cardano today. https://www.crowdcast.io/e/fund4-6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pjg_u7Oeel0
54. There is a Catalyst Dashboard available that gives you all the stats on the current projects in Cardano’s multi-million dollar decentralized innovation fund (the world’s biggest). https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15R-Vbajy4t4fGs1TipNMfL1pEO9cwdn6WV13lKviX4Q/edit#gid=40774150
55. Charles says they are going to end up spending $15-30MM this year on research and they will hire 100-200 people. That’s an investment in the future of the ecosystem! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLwyFADws8w
56. Cardano 360 was yesterday! The big news first: it sounds like the Alonzo (smart contracts) testnet will launch around end of April or early May. It’s looking like Alonzo HFC event will happen on main net late July or August. The stream was over three hours long. They covered so much! Now, let’s get to the other details revealed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULBLgPgxtN8
57. Grigory Rosu from Runtime Verification gave a big rundown on the universality in programming languages that will be provided by K framework in Cardano. He said he should have some kind of proof of concept around six months from now.
58. Michael Peyton Jones and Manual Chakravarty (the architects of Plutus) talked about 1) the benefits of Cardano’s modern approach to designing Plutus TX and Plutus Core and how Plutus Core basically being lambda calculus allows for mathematical verification of software written in Plutus, 2) how UTXO (and EUTXO in Cardano) are much more battle proven than other ledger accounting systems like account balance system (e.g. ETH) which have had problems, 3) how non-fungible role tokens will be a thing, and 4) how they are now laying out a real development platform for builders instead of just throwing Plutus out into the world.
59. Lars Brünjes (Head of Education) laid out how they are going to train a group of developers through the Plutus Pioneers program. That group will help test the Alonzo test net after it launches.
60. Lars has also cloned Uniswap in Plutus with a graphical user interface and completely automated price discovery in the liquidity pools. He did this as a proof of concept to show the capabilities of Plutus. That was demoed right on the stream.
61. They then brought on people from three different Haskell development firms who will be building things on the testnet as a sort of “red team” test of Alonzo. They all seemed to be very capable in terms of Haskell development (note here that Plutus is basically Haskell).
62. Tom Lindeman (Chief Security Officer at Runtime Verification) then laid out how disastrous the last few years in Ethereum have been for smart contract security. But, Cardano has a solution. IOHK and Runtime Verification will partner to certify smart contracts as to security. Runtime Verification will do the security audits. This program will be called “Alpha Frontier”.
63. Charles then laid out the details of the timeline for Alonzo as described above. It sounds like they are targeting to be totally done and hit a code/feature freeze at the end of June. But, it will take Coinbase, Kraken, Binance et al. at least four weeks to update their systems before they can actually launch smart contracts on mainnet.
64. Collin Edwards and Duncan Couts then gave us an update on the stake pool world as we approach “D DAy” or d=0 which is full decentralization of block production. A stake pool operator Shawn McMurdo has made some Cardano Improvement proposals as to 1) a non-linear curved basis for a0 (pronounced a-naught, represents stake pool operator pledge) to affect rewards more greatly, 2) non-centralized rankings in Daedalus, and 3) an adjustment to minimum fees from fixed to variable. Collin and Duncan clarified there will be no changes to a0 (pledge) or k (max pool size) at the d=0 (full decentralization) event coming up. Duncan also laid out how they are going to launch P2P node testnet in early Q2. This will allow for information to flow directly between nodes and will accomplish automation of things like peer discovery that are currently manual on the network.
65. Dor Garbash then gave an update on Catalyst. As covered previously here, Catalyst has become a monster. There are 17k people in Ideascale and the treasury is worth more than $400MM. You heard that right, almost a half billion dollars in the Catalyst Treasury. We also heard from a bunch of the previous catalyst winners.
66. Someone paid $23k for the notorious “Your telling the CEO of IOHK…” tweet. https://v.cent.co/tweet/1374769078519300097?s=u_a
67. IOHK is rolling out a new team that will fight the scammers in crypto. In my mind this involves guys in polo shirts with popped collars and Ledger Nano Xs around their necks carrying these and hunting the bad guys while ‘90s action movie music plays. Probably Dwayne Johnson is their commander. Maybe that’s not what Charles has in mind. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1375473873651568640
68. Cardano is the Tesla of crypto. We’re just in that early stage right before the Model 3 launch where the Ford and GM guys are at peak fear/peak shit talking but we haven’t made that big move yet. “It’s an illusion, they’ll never release a sub $40k car.” We’ll see shortly, gentlemen...we’ll see.
69. Every once in a while I like to take stock of where the rest of the crypto space is on Cardano. So, let’s do a little review of what a few of the larger youtube crypto and other influencers are saying about Cardano right now.
70. The biggest crypto youtuber with 717k subscribers says “shame on you, Cardano community” for talking so badly about EIP 1559 (the latest Ethereum Improvement Proposal). Then in the same video he says he may tell people to sell their Ethereum for Cardano & DOT if things don’t improve by the end of April (with a bunch of caveats). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1OdprEpHfU.
71. Another youtuber with 587k subscribers posted a video called “Why I'm Dumping Ethereum For This Coin” and said that ETH would have “massive problems” if Cardano hits its deadline for smart contracts on mainnet. He’s actually recommending some other coins that aren’t ETH or Cardano, but made his lack of confidence in ETH in the face of Cardano’s challenge very clear if Cardano achieves its goals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p8LgjMQbyE
72. Lark Davis (256k subscribers) released a video called “Don’t Buy Cardano” in which he lays out the devil’s advocate argument against Cardano and then responds to those arguments. He finished by saying “I think that Cardano will prove the haters wrong this year…but...it will simply be a piece of the bigger picture of the cryptoverse.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-bB8gzUCMo This followed a video a few days ago that seemed to identify the delay of Ethereum’s layer 2 scaling solution as “probably the biggest crypto fail of 2021”. https://youtu.be/QCo5egQmiG8
73. That’s a collective 1.56 million subscribers. Of course, some overlap there. But, that’s a lot of potential viewers. It seems like the message being delivered to them is a lot of playing both sides of the fence. From my view, this is what it looks like when you hit a tipping point and the herd starts slowly capitulating on a consensus position.
74. Charles says they are actually going to hire investigators for the IOG anti-scammer team. People with a law enforcement or intelligence background should feel free to apply. Should have a report on the team’s first investigation soon. Hopefully, this will contribute to scammers actually actively avoiding (those alliterations tho!) Cardano. Could also be a nice basis for an intelligence apparatus and private military when we build the Cardano Citadel. I mean somebody is gonna have to man the watchtowers if we’re gonna keep out all the no-coiners and ETH people. Kidding...kidding. https://youtu.be/6God9Xtzuqs
75. Cardano hodler Ben Askren continues preparations for his boxing match with Jake Paul. Being a Cardano hodler, it is already a foregone conclusion that Askren’s aura will cause Jake Paul to refuse to fight before the opening bell even sounds. https://twitter.com/Benaskren/status/1286094545973846017 https://twitter.com/Benaskren/status/1376021472993480705
76. We hit 100% decentralization of block production tomorrow. Breath it in, friends. Taste the sweet completely decentralized air. Many crypto ecosystems will never know that feeling. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1376527930159816706
77. Charles has also announced that he will no longer go on podcasts that are primarily concerned with price and trading of cryptos (even if they are friends) as he feels it is irresponsible. Certain youtubers are gonna be sad about this. But, one can hope they realize that Cardano will always appreciate their steadfast support over the years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGWZ2HBSI7E
78. Today is D-Day, d=0, complete decentralization of block production as covered in preceding days. Enjoy it guys!!!
79. The Daedalus wallet now supports native tokens! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1376936748715020288
80. Charles recently mentioned Senegal in the Julian Hosp interview. I believe that is the first time this nation state has been discussed in the context of the pan-African strategy for Cardano. https://youtu.be/Zm6I1agqPWQ
81. Yesterday, there was a dev community Q&A call with native token engineering lead and Plutus expert, Polina Vinogradova. Lots of good info shared there on all things fungible and non-fungible (including verification in the token registry and babel fees) in the Cardano ecosystem. To drive accuracy, only the party with the private key corresponding to the token minting will be able to make changes in the token registry as to that token.
82. In the native token call there was also a very interesting characterization of babel transactions as incomplete transactions that will include offers to exchange as a means to complete the transactions. “So, you will do two transactions or no transactions.” These incomplete transactions are called “liability transactions”. A group of them is called a “liability group”. When they get completed they are called a “closed liability group”. Babel fees are still very much in the paper writing phase. The team is currently agnostic as to how these exchange offers will be announced to stake pool operators. For more details on babel fees, we’ll have to wait for the paper.

~Army of Spies