Cardano Rumor Rundown July 15, 2021

Hey Everyone!

Let's go...

Newly covered today:

1. In news that could have significant repercussions for many stablecoin reliant Cardano DeFi projects, Fed Chair Jerome Powell gave some hard signals that they will regulate stablecoins in House Committee testimony. He revealed that the Fed will issue its long-awated paper on stablecoins, CBDCs, and other digital assets in September. Powell also went as far as to say "You wouldn't need stable coins you wouldn't need cryptocurrencies if you had a digital US currency, I think that's one of the stronger arguments in its favor." https://twitter.com/Nate_DiCamillo/status/1415349008034418691
2. We experienced a successful fork to the Alonzo White testnet! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1415399456841863177
3. Very serious accusations are laid out against the Meld project. https://twitter.com/Bobme808/status/1415283648438358016

Previously Covered but still interesting:

1. Charles is helping to bring the cryptographer who broke SHA-1 to the University of Wyoming. The Cardano funded blockchain lab there could be on the road to be a powerhouse. https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1398290866419105802 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiqun_Lisa_Yin
2. We don’t often get to hear from the engineers behind Yoroi over at Emurgo. But, here’s a podcast with Vicente Almonacid from Emurgo. Check out 12:50 where he mentions the dApp Connector (Cardano’s Metamask Equivalent). https://twitter.com/vacuumlabs/status/1397847633696280576
3. Check out this great article from Cardanians.io on the work being done at the University of Wyoming on a physical chip for transfer of private keys in day-to-day cashlike transactions. https://cardanians.io/en/cardano-can-give-crypto-a-cash-like-experience-58
4. Professor Aggelos Kiayias recently dropped a video explaining exactly how Mithril (apparently neckbeard dungeon master talk for elf armor) is going to allow for Perfect Cardano (ADA) wallets that combine the ease of use and convenience of light wallets with the trustlessness of full node wallets. We also learned exactly how Mithril is going to work. https://youtu.be/LhepJFCyWRk
5. In proof-of-work, bootstrapping can be done with blockheaders. This won’t do in proof-of-stake since we need information about stakeholder distribution to confirm block validity.
6. Mithril fixes this by being a cryptographic construction that enables a population of stakeholders to issue a signature consistent with certain constraints.
7. For Mithril to work in proof-of-stake, it needs three crucial properties: 1) it needs to enforce a threshold ratio of stakeholders before the signature is issued; 2) the pre-signature fragments must be independently verified and subject to public aggregation; and 3) it must be efficient in the sense that the final signature is of constant size and is logarithmically dependent on the # of stakeholders.
8. Stakeholders will issue special Mithril keys along with the normal cryptographic key material. Then at regular intervals, full nodes will test whether they can produce a pre-signature fragment. Only a random subset of stakeholders will be eligible to produce a pre-signature fragment. When a sufficient # of pre-signature fragments have been issued by eligible stakeholders then it will be possible to aggregate the fragments into a final signature.
9. This will be a checkpoint that will be verifiable with respect to previous check points all the way back to the genesis block. Such checkpoints will be cryptographic commitments of the relevant UTXOs.
10. Since the checkpoints will be trustless, a light client (i.e. wallet) will only need to verify the sequence of checkpoints up to the current time to trustlessly bootstrap.
11. The ecosystem is growing so fast, it’s hard to keep up with all the projects without these infographics at this point. https://twitter.com/Dr_shwetaPHD/status/1398783893638103040
12. Epoch 268 is a wrap as of with 22.83 billion ADA staked. https://adapools.org/epochs
13. Check out the telegram AMA tomorrow with the CEO of World Mobile! https://twitter.com/ZwijBerg/status/1399377659105320962
14. A very interesting stat on Cardano user growth. https://twitter.com/cex_io/status/1398959088684445699
15. More and more people in the youtube sphere are jumping on the Cardano train. https://twitter.com/techleadhd/status/1399398373384351744
16. Reuters reports on an EU digital identity wallet project. https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/eu-step-up-digital-push-with-digital-identity-wallet-2021-06-01/?taid=60b6e171efd84f0001b64ae1&utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter
17. The U.S. Currently has Issued Sanctions on Ethiopia, but they are not all-encompassing economic sanctions as with rogue nations, they have just barred entry into the U.S. for certain government personnel. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/24/world/africa/ethiopia-us-sanctions-tigray.html
18. Vitalik is saying it’s highly unlikely we see ETH 2.0 before late 2022. I’m guessing that means mid 2023 which will be after two years of Cardano slaughtering the entire ETH user base. Things are looking so bad that Vitalik says he doesn’t even like using the ETH 2.0 label anymore since he knows the changes will be more incremental. This is what early capitulation sounds like guys. https://cointelegraph.com/news/even-vitalik-buterin-is-surprised-at-just-how-long-eth2-is-taking
19. Cardano-Nervos cross-chain bridge to be built. This would be at least the second cross-chain bridge after the Cardano-AGI bridge. https://www.coindesk.com/cardano-nervos-force-bridge-network-first
20. And….still! Kings of the github! https://twitter.com/CryptoDiffer/status/1400744567956180993
21. Binance has 63 stakepools charging 6%. Please stop paying so much for the right to stake your ADA. You don’t have to pay that much. You have a huge number of better options. You are literally giving away your ADA rewards to a large corporation. It’s easy: just download the Yoroi Chrome extension, send your ADA there, and pick from the 2k+ available stakepools right inside Yoroi. https://twitter.com/BraveHeartStak3/status/1401204563189940231 https://adapools.org/groups/binance-20 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.emurgo&hl=en_US&gl=US
22. Charles basically just laid out what 4th Gen Cryptos are going to be all about in his video yesterday. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkr1EKQrVeQ
23. Here’s a good Emurgo blog article on the use of Emurgo Trace in the Oil and gas industry. https://twitter.com/emurgo_io/status/1402339278097502210
24. IOHK gives us a closer look at everything being upgraded for Alonzo. https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/06/08/a-close-look-at-the-software-running-cardano/
25. We’re currently at 71.52% of ADA staked. This is a pretty incredible ratio and shows the strength of the Cardano community. https://twitter.com/CardanoPoolPeek/status/1402378400803794950
26. El Salvador passes the statute to make Bitcoin legal tender in the country. https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1402827595339681794
27. Cardano gets more positive coverage on the Nasdaq website with a second article following the one from April 7 earlier this year. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/be-part-of-a-historic-crypto-moment-with-cardano-2021-06-08
28. Prof. Aggelos Kiayias releases an article on a tri-coin system called Stablefees that could fix the problem of appreciating transaction fees in crypto. https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/06/10/stablefees-and-the-decentralized-reserve-system/
29. The mid-month Alonzo development update from IOHK is out. Alonzo blue is in full swing and they are working on “hello world round trips” going from the node to the ledger and back. Plutus Partners (third party functional dev firms) are working on different use cases ahead of the Alonzo launch. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1403314932968574981
30. Miniswap gives us the dev perspective on why Cardano’s Plutus is such an improvement over Ethereum’s Solidity. https://twitter.com/MinswapDEX/status/1403411522110427137
31. Here’s a great ETH vs. Cardano DeFi project comparison infographic. https://twitter.com/Coin98Analytics/status/1403397242707320835
32. The Marlowe Webinar with Shruti is now available on youtube. Very interesting discussion of DeFi in general and also specific topics like “deep interoperability” in DeFi. Cardano is obviously already doing the very involved thinking about the future of DeFi. https://youtu.be/vzsUSG5CSj0
33. John O’Connor recently tweeted about a day where he “wrote a letter to a president” and “found a million users to bring into Cardano”. Sounds like the Cardano train is rolling along as smoothly as ever in Africa. https://twitter.com/jjtoconnor/status/1402565547716399104
34. Zach Guzman and Mike Novogratz get an opportunity to prove once again how extremely threatened they are by the fact that they can’t frontrun Cardano at this point. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1404100510525841408
35. John O’Connor appeared on the Disrupt Network Podcast. bit.ly/3znqyB7
36. President of Tanzania calls on the central bank to prepare for the adoption of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. I wonder what crypto ecosystem already has experience working with an African government on a big crypto project and has partnered with a mobile company that is already bringing connectivity to rural Tanzania? https://twitter.com/DocumentingBTC/status/1404126444863766533
37. Hedgefund Billionaire Paul Tudor Jones tells the world to buy crypto and certain other assets if the Fed doesn’t address inflation in their policy meeting that concludes on Wednesday. JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon concurs that the current inflation is very likely not transitory. This could be tremendously good timing for Cardano given our top five status and the impending mainnet launch of smart contracts. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/14/paul-tudor-jones-says-bet-heavily-on-every-inflation-trade-if-fed-keeps-ignoring-higher-prices.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/14/jamie-dimon-jpmorgan-is-hoarding-cash-because-very-good-chance-inflation-here-to-stay.html
38. With exploits like this one being all too common in the legacy smart contract networks, we’re not even going to have sell the Cardano use case for DeFi. The competitor networks have already made the case that something better must be on the way. https://twitter.com/zapper_fi/status/1404429179794362369
39. World Mobile CEO tweets out a tantalizing response to the Tanzanian President’s call for her nation’s central bank to prepare for crypto. https://twitter.com/MrTelecoms/status/1404375153191141377
40. If you are new to Cardano and you would like to get a handle on the terminology involved in the ecosystem, you may want to check out these Cardano flashcards produced by Coconut Pool. https://twitter.com/coconut_pool/status/1403442954434269185
41. While renewable energy is certainly a wonderful thing, there may be a problem with your technology when your path to compete on clean energy consumption involves you talking about harnessing the power of a whole series of volcanoes. Maybe just use fewer volcano’s and more proof-of-stake? https://twitter.com/_eLaPs_/status/1404125569093029889 https://twitter.com/gladstein/status/1402718041557725184
42. The Charles/Lex Fridman podcast has dropped. This is a big deal. This is a fairly mainstream podcast with over 1 million subscribers. https://youtu.be/FKh8hjJNhWc
43. Politicians in the legislative branches of Panama and Paraguay have now announced intentions to introduce crypto-related bills into their respective legislative assemblies. https://twitter.com/gabrielsilva8_7/status/1401965129051389958
44. New algorithmic stablecoin paper coming in the next few weeks from IOHK. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1405737563030183936
45. The bank of England is getting very serious about how it “may wish to limit migration” of money from the legacy system to stablecoins. Wow. Just another example of why it’s such an asset (no pun intended) that Cardano is prepared for regulation. https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1405712468823842816
46. Check out the newly “pimped up” Cardano documentation. https://twitter.com/theSavaSavic/status/1405526615585480730 https://docs.cardano.org/
47. The Cardano Development Update for this week is out. https://roadmap.cardano.org/en/status-updates/update/2021-06-18/
48. Runtime Verification (architects of K Framework which powers Cardano’s IELE & KEVM) just raised $5.3MM in a round that included Cardano’s C Fund. https://runtimeverification.com/blog/runtime-verification-raises-5-3-million-to-advance-blockchain-security https://twitter.com/RosuGrigore/status/1405917218035097600
49. It’s a good sign that the top two crypto communities are spending so much time talking negatively about Cardano. You only focus your hatred on that which is most threatening. I’m glad to see we’re the biggest threat on their radar. https://twitter.com/nic__carter/status/1405194146063736840
50. Bloomberg just published a piece called “America Should Become a Nation of Renters”. While this statement is probably extremely polarizing for Americans, it can also be argued that the death of homes as the primary investment vehicle of Americans may open up a new wave of adoption in crypto as an alternative. https://twitter.com/bopinion/status/1405609396302979074
51. We are crushing all the competitors in terms of assets staked! https://twitter.com/CryptoDiffer/status/1405854686209622018
52. All 345,501 of the people who have watched the Lex Fridman/Charles episode as of writing are realizing that Cardano could be the first project to put voting on the blockchain in a U.S. state. https://www.atalaprism.io/app
53. Days like today in Cardano and the greater crypto space always reminds me that there have been other great adoption stories that went through periods like this.https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1407077949774442499
54. It looks like the second biggest ETH stakepool or it's custody provider has lost it’s users private keys to $75MM in ETH. Cardano doesn’t have this problem. We get to keep custody of our crypto because we found a better way than slashing. https://stakehound.com/blog-post/fireblocks-eth-2-key-management-incident/ https://twitter.com/JamesSpediacci/status/1407465311180255236
55. Draft table of contents for Mastering Cardano has been revealed. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1407165366355124225
56. COTI (a project with very close ties to Cardano) is coming to Ledger. https://medium.com/cotinetwork/coti-native-is-coming-to-ledger-c56b04df1253
57. The June Cardano 360 is currently available on Youtube. https://youtu.be/al5m14299ww
58. We saw segments on various newer partner entities like Nervos, Orion Protocol, and Revuto. Nervos is a UTXO proof-of-work blockchain which is building a cross-chain bridge with Cardano so that you can use your ADA on Nervos dApps and vice versa. Interoperability is a big theme for Nervos and they plan to have a working testnet within a month. Orion Protocol is building a terminal that will allow for decentralized non-custodial trading across centralized and decentralized exchanges. They say this would not require you to KYC or even have an account with any of these exchanges. Revuto is an online subscription management service that recently completed a $10MM token sale on Cardano.
59. It was also revealed that Wolfram Labs, COTI, and IOHK have a three-way partnership (a ménage à tech) to build an NFT auction site. The people from Wolfram were talking about very interesting things including live minting during streaming events and automated upload to IPFS. COTI will be building out auction and bidding mechanisms in ADAPay.
60. Professor Aggelos Kiayias gave us an update on research including that Ouroboros Chronos and Hydra papers have both been accepted into conferences/journals. Chronos will provide Cardano with a global concept of time that doesn’t rely on any outside timekeeper. Prof. Kiayias also pointed out that Hydra is distinguishable from other layer two protocols in that the scripting language is identical to that of the base layer in Cardano such that any dApp that can run on Cardano will run on the Hydra L2. This is a huge plus and superior to many other layer two solutions in other ecosystems where the base layer dApps will not run on layer two. Finally, the Mithril paper has been submitted for peer review. It will provide Cardano light wallets with Succinct Non-interactive Arguments of Knowledge that will give us the best of both worlds: no delays for syncing as in full node wallets while still preserving trustlessness.
61. Finally, the Goguen Summit will be in late September. Sign up now at summit.cardano.org.
62. The Fed is once again STRONGLY signalling to us that they are going to regulate stablecoins. The Fed is also specifically calling out Tether for the first time. You need to be thinking about how stablecoin regulation might affect your favorite Cardano DeFi or other project. https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1408500265397985282 https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1408572624125534212
63. People are starting to realize that the Stakehound private key loss in ETH may attract unwanted regulatory attention to Ethereum 2.0 while this problem could never have occurred in Cardano. Also, only a few days later another ETH stakepool (this time SharedStake...the sixth biggest ETH Stakepool) allegedly experiences a rugpull that some are valuing at over $30MM. This is another problem that could not happen in Cardano staking. It feels like we stepped into the ring, they rang the bell, and ETH just started punching itself in the head. Eventually it’s going to KO itself. https://twitter.com/Madror7/status/1408505144984051716 https://twitter.com/JamesSpediacci/status/1407761823143645189 https://twitter.com/MeiTrades/status/1408117430656905219 https://sharedstake.medium.com/the-sharedstake-story-by-kairos-44d37aa7837a
64. Here’s another great Cardano data site. This one is from the Cardano Fans stakepool. https://datastudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/3136c55b-635e-4f46-8e4b-b8ab54f2d460/page/r2LQC
65. John O’Connor of IOHK points out that France still controls the monetary policy of 14 countries in Africa. There is definitely a built in market on the continent for a project that delivers monetary sovereignty to the people. https://twitter.com/jjtoconnor/status/1408978882129272832
66. Here’s a great new interview with the CEO of World Mobile from Cardano Chats. https://youtu.be/w0Z2RP6a9HE
67. New article from the Cardano Foundation on Governance. https://forum.cardano.org/t/blockchain-governance-what-it-is-and-why-it-matters/65493
68. Sebastien explains some Alonzo HFC event changes. https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1409485560012414978
69. IOG Research update from Prof. Aggelos Kiayias. Really interesting bit right at the beginning on the history of cryptography as a field of study. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UAL_6f7PFw
70. Sebastien of dcSpark submits a Cardano Improvement Proposal to allow wallets to implement collateral. https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1409910858117877763
71. New Plutus Pioneers Class starting July 1!
72. Charles says it looks like we will hit Alonzo white on Monday. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1410279529021648896
73. Coti update from Shahaf Bar-Geffen. https://twitter.com/COTInetwork/status/1410644013863124992
74. The Mithril paper (allows for trustless light wallets) is now available for your reading pleasure. https://iohk.io/en/research/library/papers/mithrilstake-based-threshold-multisignatures/
75. The Ouroboros Chronos paper (allows for the blockchain to be its own timekeeper) is also now available. https://iohk.io/en/research/library/papers/ouroboros-chronospermissionless-clock-synchronization-via-proof-of-stake/
76. Cardano is now a small part of Grayscale’s Digital Large Cap Fund. They actually sold off current holdings in other coins to buy ADA. This is big for institutional adoption! https://twitter.com/Grayscale/status/1410945118228692994
77. Catalyst Fund 4 results are here. https://adapulse.io/fund-4-results-are-here/
78. Lars has posted the first class for the second Plutus Pioneers cohort . https://twitter.com/LarsBrunjes/status/1410677447805308935
79. Robert Kornacki of dcSpark releases an article on why every Cardano dApp will use NFTs. The article contains some very interesting discussion on smart contracts in the EUTXO context including language instructing that “UTXOs have smart contracts attached to them and not the other way around” and “[...]the simplest way to think about it is that when a UTXO is created it has the option to have a smart contract attached to it.” https://medium.com/dcspark/every-eutxo-dapp-will-use-nfts-and-heres-why-fd87e6a8c9a6
80. A very interesting medium article on the concurrency problem in eUTxO blockchains such as Cardano. (Article by Occam Fi....thanks to Muggy Pool for sending it my way). https://medium.com/occam-finance/the-occam-fi-technical-series-on-concurrency-cd5bee0b850c
81. The concurrency issue in plutus smart contracts has also been recently commented on by Lars and Sebastien. https://twitter.com/LarsBrunjes/status/1390331642103877633 https://twitter.com/LarsBrunjes/status/1403761666383306757 https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1410983827481108480
82. The Cardano Foundation has released a video on its short and long-term strategies to get to one billion users by 2026. https://twitter.com/CardanoStiftung/status/1412137365318127626
83. Ben O’Hanlon sets the record straight on developer interest in Cardano. https://twitter.com/benohanlon/status/1412136150404370432
84. As always, Cardano is straight killing the competition in terms of assets staked. https://twitter.com/StakingRewards/status/1412389781003194395
85. Once again, we are also the Github activity champions! https://twitter.com/CryptoDiffer/status/1412333951830605824
86. Between Cohort 1 and Cohort 2 of the Plutus Pioneers program there have been 4,300 potential future Cardano developers involved. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1412465643245424649
87. Here’s an interesting chart purporting to show the dates on which various Cardano DeFi projects might have finished products. https://twitter.com/Cryptokev84/status/1412343821757730820/photo/2
88. IOG says they have started onboarding new SPOs and developers to Alonzo White this week. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1412847798274478084
89. Charles also confirms that Alonzo White may start Friday but probably Monday due to a natural (and warranted) desire to avoid executing a rollout at the start of a weekend. https://youtu.be/yd1eg4QopV8
90. Daedalus 4.2.0 now adds Ledger & Trezor Catalyst Registration. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1413176419186774018
91. Yoroi 4.5.7 extension release now adds Ledger Catalyst Registration. https://twitter.com/YoroiWallet/status/1413128256836997120
92. Here’s the voter registration schedule for Catalyst Fund 5! Get yourself registered now even if you’re in cold storage on a hardware wallet! https://iohk.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/900006490763-Project-Catalyst-FAQ
93. Cardano Gainz Calculator now has a graph showing 10 year growth. https://twitter.com/lesquive1/status/1413249312465866757
94. Emurgo has released a guide on how to register for Catalyst voting with your Ledger Hardware Wallet. https://github.com/Emurgo/yoroi-mobile/blob/develop/catalyst5-instruction.md
95. Great new interview with World Mobile’s Mickey Watkins, Charles, and John O’Connor. https://youtu.be/WSSpI8Rtif0
96. The IOHK Development Update is out! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1413448054892494850
97. This infographic shows just how big the Cardano DeFi space is getting. https://twitter.com/BPE_Crypto/status/1413973912396963840
98. This infographic shows just how much DeFi volume is out there for Cardano to steal. https://twitter.com/Coin98Analytics/status/1413514041029394439/photo/1
99. There is a new stakepool explorer available. https://www.cardanoworld.io/
100. Very interesting timing with a) Grayscale Buying $50MM ETCG, b) Grayscale adding ADA, and c) Charles joining the ETC Cooperative board given that two of the members of the ETC Cooperative board seem to come from Grayscale and DCG. Maybe the world is starting to understand just what Charles and IOHK have been able to accomplish over the last few years. https://twitter.com/ETCCooperative/status/1410439775950082051 https://twitter.com/ETCCooperative/status/1413328106568421377 https://twitter.com/Grayscale/status/1410945118228692994
101. There is a new Cardano wallet being introduced by u/berry_ales from the Berry Pool. I have no idea if it will be good or bad at protecting your ADA. Just reporting that it exists. https://twitter.com/berry_ales/status/1414548062207361025
102. There is currently a lawsuit challenging the notion that staking rewards should be taxed as income. The plaintiff argues that newly created property isn’t taxed as income and that this should also apply to staking rewards. A win here would be very nice for Cardano delegators. https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-staking-rewards-and-their-unfair-taxation-in-the-us
103. The Cardano Foundation’s Cardano Developer Portal is now up and running. https://twitter.com/CardanoStiftung/status/1414640913612255234
104. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s party has won re-election in a landslide election. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-57791868
105. Avanti Bank of Wyoming files comments with the Federal Reserve on their new guidelines that could massively impact how the traditional banking system interacts with cryptocurrencies like Cardano. Given what role ADA is likely to play in the future of crypto financial transactions, this is extremely relevant for ADA holders. https://avantibank.com/press/avanti-submits-comments-to-federal-reserve https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1414783323193364482
106. Cardano is still destroying everyone in terms of value staked! https://twitter.com/StakingRewards/status/1414895205384327168
107. The Cardano ecosystem maps keep getting bigger and more complicated. https://poolg.de/Eco/CardanoEcosystemMap.html

~Army of Spies