Cardano Rumor Rundown September 3, 2021

Hey Everyone!

Let's go...

Newly covered today:

1. Charles is on CNBC talking about how crypto could be used to resist the Taliban in Afghanistan. https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/09/01/cryptos-will-play-larger-role-in-afghanistan-after-us-exit-ethereum.html
2. The first solution for custom Cardano wallet addresses seems to be picking up steam. https://twitter.com/adahandle
3. One of Cardano’s competitors continued to have additional “performance degradation” and “instability” issues on it’s mainnet today (Sept 2). https://twitter.com/SolanaStatus/status/1433438629020454917 https://twitter.com/SolanaStatus/status/1433429598230876173 https://twitter.com/SolanaStatus/status/1367189272797798404

Previously Covered but still interesting:

1. Adam Dean brings us open source code to accept ADA in your Woo Commerce store. https://twitter.com/adamKDean/status/1419495005983371264
2. Weiss Crypto has very good things to say about Cardano. https://twitter.com/WeissCrypto/status/1419685634566938634
3. Check out this new bot that tweets every time it discovers a Cardano Giveaway Scam! The tweets show ISP and geolocation info for the scammers. Follow this bot and report the scammers! Brought to us by @nicknikiforakis. Thanks for building this, Nick! https://twitter.com/CardanoPhishing
4. The regulatory purge of stablecoins is getting into full swing now with Bloomberg running a piece on a DOJ criminal probe of the Tether founders. Of particular note for the Cardano ecosystem is that the first attack surface for regulators is the relationship of the stablecoin with legacy banking institutions. This is something that Cardano ecosystem stablecoin, Djed, may already fix with its own crypto backed reserve system. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-26/tether-executives-said-to-face-criminal-probe-into-bank-fraud?srnd=economics-vp
5. Nami Wallet now allows you to mint NFTs for no extra fees (only Cardano network fees) inside the wallet. https://twitter.com/NamiWallet/status/1420031000017608717
6. More pressure for Crypto regulation is coming to bear today in the U.S. This time it comes in the form of a letter from Senator Elizabethe Warren to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (in her position as Chair of the Financial Stability Oversight Council which brings together 10 different financial regulators including the SEC, CFTC, and the Federal Reserve). The letter was sent after a Senate Banking Committee hearing titled “Cryptocurrencies: What are they good for?” https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/27/elizabeth-warren-presses-yellen-financial-regulator-to-manage-crypto.html
7. Stephen Wolfram does the first NFT liveminting event where he creates NFTs of cellular automata from the computational universe while live on stream. The first two created were “Crashing Waves” and “Down Arrows”. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1420087229104283656
8. A new Cardano NFT Marketplace is now live and receiving a lot of attention. https://twitter.com/CNFT_IO/status/1419655915226152961
9. Project Catalyst now has 30k members! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1420474342253678599
10. Emurgo has released an article about what we can expect from the Yoroi dApp Connector. https://emurgo.io/blog/emurgo-is-thrilled-to-announce-the-yoroi-dapp-connector
11. Reports are coming in that the new bipartisan Infrastructure Bill contains new provisions that might require a whole host of actors within crypto ecosystems like Cardano to report transactions over $10k. https://www.coindesk.com/new-infrastructure-bill-looks-to-raise-30b-through-crypto-tax https://www.marketwatch.com/story/crypto-allies-rally-against-ignorant-new-tax-rules-in-bipartisan-infrastructure-deal-11627578844 https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1420724068286926853
12. But this bill is an even bigger deal. If passed as-is, we can probably say RIP to the Wild West Era of crypto (2009-2021). https://beyer.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=5307
13. The July Cardano 360 can now be viewed on Youtube. https://youtu.be/AG5DspF9tuA
14. John O’Connor was on SkyNews discussing the Ethiopian Ministry of Education project! He stressed that this was not a profit center for IOHK, and had a chance to refute the “crypto colonialism” strain of thought. https://vimeo.com/581137605
15. We are kings of the github commits once again! https://twitter.com/ProofofGitHub/status/1421138529908842502
16. The differences between the currently dominant smart contract blockchain and Cardano’s upcoming smart contract architecture keep getting highlighted by dramatic failures of the former. https://twitter.com/WeissCrypto/status/1421064543900418048
17. Don’t forget that registration for the Cardano Summit is live. https://summit.cardano.org
18. In case you missed the July Cardano 360 and don’t have a lot of time. Here is the always great Cardano 360 Mini! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1421803459997835266
19. Reports are coming in that we’ve got final language from the crypto tax reporting piece of the Infrastructure Bill. It’s better but not great or even good. https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1422002228102107142
20. The Charles AMAs returned on August 1 after a brief break. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKY6VwVq02s
21. A quarter million votes were cast in Catalyst Fund 5 voting! Apparently, this is over 10x what we saw in Fund 2. https://twitter.com/danny_cryptofay/status/1422253955816505345
22. Here’s a very good read on one vision for prosperity via CBDC and how such a currency should interact with existing blockchains like Cardano. https://twitter.com/RealNatashaChe/status/1422270993498705921
23. Cardano has been listed by Bitpoint in Japan! https://www.bitpoint.co.jp/news/info/info-2021080301/
24. Senators Wyden and Toomey are trying to fix the crypto provisions in the Infrastructure Bill! https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-03/crypto-rules-in-infrastructure-bill-eyed-for-bipartisan-rewrite
25. SEC Chair Gensler gave another speech strongly signaling that a lot of stablecoins, lending platforms, synthetics platforms, and other DeFi projects are probably non-compliant in the eyes of the SEC. I would heed this warning very carefully if I were one of those projects. https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/gensler-aspen-security-forum-2021-08-03 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tusQLLCgrDs
26. The Yoroi Wallet is already making improvements in preparation for the dApp Connector release! https://twitter.com/YoroiWallet/status/1422905221793996809
27. We’re now up to 5 different states that are getting after BlockFi for their crypto lending activities. Reportedly, this includes New Jersey, Vermont, Alabama, Kentucky, & Texas. Probably relevant for those building lending solutions on Cardano. https://www.coindesk.com/blockfi-receives-fifth-cease-and-desist-from-kentucky-financial-regulator
28. Charles dropped an update to let us know that Light Purple Alonzo will come next week. That will bring in exchange partners. Mid-month there will be an update with official dates given for a primary date and a fallback date for triggering the hardfork combinator event. The fallback date will likely be one epoch (five days later). Part of this depends on how the exchange partners are doing with their integrations. Charles says it looks like late August or the first week of September. There will be a live HFC party where they will deploy “some things” minutes after the HFC. The Plutus Application Backend (PAB) might be integrated on something like September 10th. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y261_eImsE
29. Cardano’s closest competitor, Ethereum, carries out it’s EIP-1559 London Fork which creates a new transaction fee scheme including some burning of fees and a more predictable base fee with an additional tip option on top. While the long term impact is unclear, the immediate aftermath of the fork seems to be even higher fees. We’ll see if this is just due to high transaction volume at the moment. Of course, part of this is already solved by Cardano’s deterministic fee system enabled by its local state as opposed to the global state in the Ethereum system. https://twitter.com/Birdson64827145/status/1423324771303972867
30. Senators Toomey, Wyden, & Lummis took to the Senate Floor to plead for a vote on their amendment which would fix the overly broad crypto tax reporting provisions in the Infrastructure Bill. https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1423381402905726983 https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1423413806634577922
31. The Toomey, Lummis, Wyden Amendment was then challenged by a competing amendment from Senators Warner, Portman, and Sinema which only excluded proof-of-work block validators and sellers of wallets from the tax reporting requirements. This terrible competing amendment was then immediately endorsed by the White House. This is a serious danger to our industry! Please call your Senators and ask them to support the Toomey/Wyden/Lummis Amendment! https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1423429377459736577 https://twitter.com/WardDPatrick/status/1423464991441702912
32. Charles announces the Alonzo Purple testnet is out! Many new segments of partners and others will be onboarding with availability to any developer soon! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1423704788512952331 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTExHbqVHAM
33. It turns out that Janet Yellen lobbied lawmakers on Thursday against the Wyden-Toomey-Lummis Amendment according to the Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/06/crypto-bitcoin-infrastructure-senat
34. Check out this awesome “12 Facts” style article about Alonzo from Sebastien Guillemot form dcSpark. https://medium.com/dcspark/do-you-know-what-is-included-in-cardanos-alonzo-hardfork-changes-96cde16a8305
35. Senator Warner made not one but two revisions to his amendment to the crypto provisions in the Infrastructure Bill. Both revisions were good for Cardano since they included proof-of-stake implicitly and then explicitly. https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1424040216961114112 https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1424074177770921992
36. Both Gene Simmons and Ted Cruz came out in support of the competing Wyden-Lummis-Toomey Amendment to the Infrastructure Bill. Gene Simmons has previously revealed his Cardano purchases. https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1424097173172637697
37. After the Senate called it a day on the Infrastructure Bill Amendment debate, it sounded like there might have been some dealmaking going on among Wyden, Portman, Warner, and Toomey. The Senate will be back at it tomorrow at Noon. https://twitter.com/mikedebonis/status/1424143941914566659
38. No agreement on an amendment to the crypto tax reporting provisions of the Infrastructure Bill materialized today. https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1424543439396429828
39. Senator Lummis (a co-sponsor of the proposed crypto-friendly Toomey-Lummis-Wyden Amendment) is holding out hope that they may be able to get a vote on amendments tomorrow. https://twitter.com/SenLummis/status/1424556793506635776
40. Charles is already planning a strategy for dealing with the bill once it’s in the House of Representatives. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1424561446973628421
41. Very action packed day today (Aug 9). The Toomey-Lummis-Portman-Sinema came together and proposed a compromise amendment to the crypto tax reporting provisions in the Infrastructure Bill. They were not able to include any section for exclusion of developers from the “broker” definition but did cover the previous progress on transaction validators and wallet sellers. https://twitter.com/SenToomey/status/1424777137500864513
42. Toomey-Lummis-Portman-Sinema sought the required unanimous consent, but their attempt was thwarted by a disagreement over $50 billion in defense spending. https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1424832132204138503
43. Several co-chairs of the Blockchain Caucus have already written a letter to all the members of the House of Representatives letting them know of the dire need to fix these crypto provisions once the bill hits the House. https://twitter.com/RepTomEmmer/status/1424845416697323522
44. There’s a new CIP to create an off-chain metadata standard from Matthias Benkort, Michael Peyton Jones, and Polina Vinogradova. https://twitter.com/_KtorZ_/status/1425162918363111425 https://github.com/cardano-foundation/CIPs/pull/112
45. The Biggest Lobster Trap Harvest ever!!! A hacker decided to harvest over $600 million from the Polynetwork Bridge. We learned this lesson in the 2016 DAO Hack, but it’s really time that people stop giving up custody of their coins. https://twitter.com/ksatyarth2/status/1425140128784084994
46. Senator Shelby laughably tried to claim he actually supported the crypto amendment in a tweet. The derision from the crypto community flowed like water out of the Amazon. https://twitter.com/SenShelby/status/1425142857199980550
47. IOHK’s “Essential Cardano” list of projects keeps growing! https://github.com/input-output-hk/essential-cardano/blob/main/essential-cardano-list.md
48. dcSpark is hiring for a few non-programmer positions. https://twitter.com/dcspark_io/status/1425490454787739649
49. We got some coverage in Forbes over the Alonzo date reveal. https://twitter.com/ForbesCrypto/status/1425409227594555393
50. Over $1 million in NFTs has now been sold on cnft.io. https://twitter.com/CNFT_IO/status/1425550638507769859
51. This graphic pretty much sums up all the Cardano criticism. https://twitter.com/SmaugPool/status/1425403742925565956
52. Emurgo has published an article about the status of Yoroi as the Metamask of Cardano. https://emurgo.io/blog/yoroi-wallet-what-it-means-to-be-the-metamask-wallet-of-cardano
53. We’ll get the August mid-Month Development Update today (Aug 13) and we’ll also find out the exact date for Alonzo! https://twitter.com/timbharrison/status/1425791321168568330
54. Alonzo (smart contracts on mainnet) is scheduled for the 12th of September! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1426182060683796483
55. The Cardano Ecosystem Infographics are still getting bigger and bigger. https://twitter.com/Coin98Analytics/status/1426051817876586499
56. The rankings looked a little different today! https://twitter.com/RichardMcCrackn/status/1426331710107619328
57. An insane amount of native assets have been issued on Cardano already. https://twitter.com/matiwinnetou/status/1426692124448333826
58. We may see treasury guidelines on the tax reporting provisions soon (as of Aug 14). https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-13/treasury-seeks-to-quell-fears-crypto-tax-rules-are-overly-broad
59. Senator Lummis is asking for requests if anyone wants to hear about what actually happened with the Senate mayhem. https://twitter.com/CynthiaMLummis/status/1426631432223481860
60. The maximalists of other projects seem to be really loving us lately. https://twitter.com/Bquittem/status/1426639546616254469 https://twitter.com/novogratz/status/1426757593737879552 https://twitter.com/joebirks/status/1426920500249481220
61. The Cardano Community breathes a collective sigh of relief that it doesn’t suffer from the incredibly high fees seen on Ethereum recently. https://twitter.com/RichardMcCrackn/status/1427006419463778307
62. The Cardano treasury is getting unbelievably huge at almost $1 Billion! https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1426789664338284546
63. Looks like 40% of crypto holders in Singapore have Cardano according to the Gemini 2021 Crypto in Singapore report. https://www.gemini.com/state-of-sg-crypto
64. The Wyoming Blockchain Stampede will be going on at the same time as the Cardano Summit and in the preceding days. If you’re going to Wyoming, you may consider attending both. https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1427316556476866561
65. Apparently a “huge increase in user base” is responsible for the Yoroi downtime. That doesn’t sound all bad! https://twitter.com/YoroiWallet/status/1427283658432417794
66. The Plutus Mainnet Candidate has been released to the Node Team. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1427359174220996612
67. Weiss Crypto really loves the Cardano consensus protocol. https://twitter.com/WeissCrypto/status/1427646299936014337
68. Applications are now open to be a local Cardano Meet-Up host for the Cardano Summit 2020. https://twitter.com/Cardano/status/1427309534226300928
69. Anticipation for Cardano smart contracts keeps growing stronger as more and more ETH users are publicly venting frustration over fees and throwing their support behind Cardano. https://twitter.com/RandCorp_/status/1427473742742052865
70. CNFT.io is back in action after a brief period of absence! https://twitter.com/CNFT_IO/status/142808300944668262
71. The Djed Stablecoin paper and an explanatory article are now out. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1427933093210607619
72. In larger nation-state crypto adoption news (an area that is very relevant to Cardano), it looks like the Salvadorean Finance Minister is now saying that Bitcoin acceptance by merchants in El Salvador will actually be optional despite the language in the law. https://www.coindesk.com/el-salvador-bitcoin-not-mandatory-businesses
73. Various rankings websites are called out for what seems to be an unbelievable number of errors that imply an anti-Cardano bias. https://twitter.com/TheADAApe/status/1428312666569904129
74. Coinbase is going to invest $500M into crypto and 10% of all profit going forward (probably increasing with time) according to Brian Armstrong. Since Cardano is listed on Coinbase and it’s a good guess they will invest in the coins they list, this is probably very relevant for Cardano. https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1428489591665856512
75. If Google translate is correct, it looks like Bitpoint (a Japanese exchange) will begin its listing of ADA on August 25th. https://www.bitpoint.co.jp/news/info/info-2021081801/
76. It never ends. We are the Perma-Techno-Kings of the Github Commit! https://twitter.com/ProofofGitHub/status/1428748675032010758
77. It’s looking like the Cardano Summit is going to be huge. https://twitter.com/I_Am_DTaylor/status/1428791321440002054
78. The Essential Cardano List has grown even larger! https://github.com/input-output-hk/essential-cardano/blob/main/essential-cardano-list.md
79. Cardano is still crushing everyone else in terms of dollars staked. https://twitter.com/CryptoDiffer/status/1428368524745973773
80. The August Cardano 360 will be this Thursday August 26th. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1428756331423571972
81. There is now an Eastern Hemisphere Catalyst Town Hall every Thursday with Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Indonesian language hosts. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1428649776111886336
82. We generally think of Cardano competitors being other blockchains or big tech. In one part of the world, the advent of CBDCs might make it “tokenless blockchains”. https://twitter.com/sinoglobalcap/status/1429430262102822920
83. If Web 3 will really be a building of new economies out of online communities and the units of value of those economies will be tokens and NFTs, it seems like a blockchain like Cardano that can generate those assets natively without smart contracts is going to be a central player. https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/1429585831899983876
84. The ADA treasury is worth $1.6 Billion right now?????? https://twitter.com/nierop_pieter/status/1429656224732225536
85. There will be a crypto regulatory conference on the 23rd of September in Wyoming as part of the Wyohackathon just before the Cardano Summit. https://twitter.com/wyohackathon/status/1428718655362281479
86. Neel Kashkari of the Fed posts an anti-crypto tweet and gets heavily outliked by more than one pro-crypto response including a retweet from Charles. https://twitter.com/neelkashkari/status/1429886278942736385 https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1429947349103742978
87. Forbes runs an article about how various cryptos including ADA could replace fiat according to a Deloitte survey of bank execs. https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2021/08/23/bankers-issue-seismic-warning-bitcoin-ethereum-bnb-cardano-and-xrp-could-replace-the-dollar-in-just-five-years-as-crypto-market-price-adds-1-trillion/
88. ADA is officially on Bitpoint Exchange in Japan! https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1430317131699163140
89. Charles gave us a brief update on Aug 24. Sounds like everything is right on schedule for smart contract launch on September 12. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1430230604071636994
90. Messari is reporting that Cardano moved more transaction volume over the last 24 hours than ETH. The amazing part was how much cheaper those transactions were on Cardano. https://twitter.com/TheADAApe/status/1430128107332280321
91. dcSpark is unveiling a sidechain project called Milkomeda that will use wrapped ADA and so-called “wrapped smart contracts”. The first sidechain, M1, will be an Ethereum Virtual Machine sidechain. This means Solidity devs can deploy their current smart contract code in M1 and those smart contracts will be accessible to Cardano users. This is “the pond”. This will be HUGE! Good work dcSpark! You guys are killing it! https://medium.com/dcspark/dcspark-announces-development-of-new-sidechain-protocol-milkomeda-cc28ed764a89
92. IOHK partners with European Business University of Luxembourg to offer scholarships including instruction in Haskell and Plutus to students across 25 countries in Africa. https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/08/24/making-education-in-africa-more-accessible-affordable-and-equitable/
93. It’s interesting to note that (as pointed out by @Rob98550139) on June 23rd, EBU of Luxembourg also offered 5,000 scholarship’s in “Plutus Blockchain programming for Cardano Blockchain” to Nayib Bukele for El Salvador. Something unannounced going on there? https://twitter.com/EBULuxembourg/status/1407594850199953410
94. The August Cardano 360 is out! Another great job by Tim Harrison and company! https://youtu.be/baS9efSa2F8
95. The Cardano Foundation is reporting they have now received 440 applications to host local Cardano Summit meetups and that applications are now closed. Registration for the local meetups will come out soon. https://twitter.com/CardanoStiftung/status/1430954186607415310
96. The “Buy Cardano” keyword hits a three month high on Google. https://twitter.com/OldPaSink/status/1430946116359516160
97. Cardano competitor Ethereum suffered a consensus bug today (Aug 27) that impacted 54% of nodes. Apparently they were able to upgrade the version of Geth being run by a majority of the pools in time to head off a majority supported fork to the bad chain. But, the go ethereum developer in the link described it as “a really close shave”. https://twitter.com/mhswende/status/1431259601530458112 https://twitter.com/TimBeiko/status/1431278258222338056
98. IOHK has initiated the testnet fork (Aug 27)! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1431286232278085634
99. The “go/no-go” meeting was today (Aug 27) on initiating the Alonzo hardfork combinator event for the 12th. The result was a “go”! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1431286232278085634
100. Here’s a good side-by-side of the size of the ecosystem in the past and now. https://twitter.com/CardanoRise/status/1431703062486392837
101. Fortune ran a very positive piece on Cardano today (Aug. 20). https://fortune.com/2021/08/20/cardano-ath-price-biggest-cryptos/
102. It looks like the details of the extremely mysterious “Cardano City” project should come to light today. https://twitter.com/CardanoCity/status/1431338443381092355
103. The Wall Street Journal runs a Cardano article. https://www.wsj.com/articles/cardanos-ada-is-the-latest-cryptocurrency-to-surge-heres-what-you-need-to-know-11630143002
104. The COTI/Wolfram/IOHK project to build an NFT Auction Site is now live. https://twitter.com/COTInetwork/status/1431971503093002243
105. CNBC runs an article on the effect the grassroots effort to the fix the crypto tax provisions has had on policy makers in Washington, D.C. These policies will affect Cardano and every other crypto. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/28/tax-reporting-proposal-creates-defining-moment-for-crypto-industry-.html
106. Beware of FlanoWallet and Flano Swap!!!!!!!! They are accused of malicious code that harvests your recovery phrase. https://twitter.com/bigpeyYT/status/1432450913487183874
107. Sebastien confirms that dcSpark is getting a ton of interest from developers wanting to work in Cardano. https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1432416579107495942
108. Charles talks about Cardano compliance functionality and confirms that he perceives heavy regulation coming for DeFi in the next 24 months based on EU and US Treasury comments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ESn46Hj9Y4
109. A new John O’Connor interview is scheduled for today (Aug 31). You may want to tune in to get the latest on Cardano’s Africa Operations from the man himself. https://twitter.com/jjtoconnor/status/1432395067185106951
110. The Public Testnet will be forked to Alonzo today (Sept 1)! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1432769865958531080
111. Some future Cardano dApps have so many followers on twitter that ETH maximalists are publicly expressing their disbelief. https://twitter.com/Southrye/status/1432515727433601024
112. Even prior to the launch of smart contracts, Cardano is generating quite an impressive amount of transaction fees. https://twitter.com/DCdoso/status/1432761425089470469
113. The Cardano Testnet has now officially forked to Alonzo allowing Plutus smart contracts. We are on track for the mainnet hardfork combinator event on Sept 12th. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1433166757620064260
114. IOHK is changing their delegation process. They will be taking applications from SPOs and asking that they recommend two other pools based on contributions in terms of building, creating, or educating. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1433104060647985157
115. Another signpost for Cardano DeFi projects. Gary Gensler (SEC Head) tells the Financial Times that in his view DeFi platforms have “a fair amount of centralisation” and “[i]t’s a misnomer to say they are just software they put out in the web...” https://www.ft.com/content/fb126d79-2e60-4002-8aba-b08887fca609
116. Cardano gets positive coverage on French Television for being “ecological”. https://twitter.com/YoadaStakepool/status/1433127940334792708

~Army of Spies