Cardano Rumor Rundown September 30, 2021

Hey Everyone!

Let's go...

Newly covered today:

1. The ecosystem map continues getting bigger and bigger (Sept 29). https://twitter.com/seal_kiman/status/1441418051237425153/photo/1
2. dcSpark has dropped a new video explaining Fracada and the future of NFTs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FvKUlh7Fs8&t=4s
3. The CFTC hits Kraken with a $1.25 Million fine for it’s margin products. Cardano DeFi projects planning to offer some kind of margin trading take note. https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8433-21

Previously Covered but still interesting:

1. The Essential Cardano List has grown even larger! https://github.com/input-output-hk/essential-cardano/blob/main/essential-cardano-list.md
2. 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
3. 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
4. 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
5. The ADA treasury is worth $1.6 Billion right now?????? https://twitter.com/nierop_pieter/status/1429656224732225536
6. 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
7. 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
8. 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/
9. ADA is officially on Bitpoint Exchange in Japan! https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1430317131699163140
10. 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
11. 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
12. 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
13. 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/
14. 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
15. The August Cardano 360 is out! Another great job by Tim Harrison and company! https://youtu.be/baS9efSa2F8
16. 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
17. The “Buy Cardano” keyword hits a three month high on Google. https://twitter.com/OldPaSink/status/1430946116359516160
18. 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
19. IOHK has initiated the testnet fork (Aug 27)! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1431286232278085634
20. 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
21. Here’s a good side-by-side of the size of the ecosystem in the past and now. https://twitter.com/CardanoRise/status/1431703062486392837
22. Fortune ran a very positive piece on Cardano today (Aug. 20). https://fortune.com/2021/08/20/cardano-ath-price-biggest-cryptos/
23. It looks like the details of the extremely mysterious “Cardano City” project should come to light today. https://twitter.com/CardanoCity/status/1431338443381092355
24. 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
25. The COTI/Wolfram/IOHK project to build an NFT Auction Site is now live. https://twitter.com/COTInetwork/status/1431971503093002243
26. 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
27. Beware of FlanoWallet and Flano Swap!!!!!!!! They are accused of malicious code that harvests your recovery phrase. https://twitter.com/bigpeyYT/status/1432450913487183874
28. Sebastien confirms that dcSpark is getting a ton of interest from developers wanting to work in Cardano. https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1432416579107495942
29. 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
30. 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
31. The Public Testnet will be forked to Alonzo today (Sept 1)! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1432769865958531080
32. Some future Cardano dApps have so many followers on twitter that ETH maximalists are publicly expressing their disbelief. https://twitter.com/Southrye/status/1432515727433601024
33. Even prior to the launch of smart contracts, Cardano is generating quite an impressive amount of transaction fees. https://twitter.com/DCdoso/status/1432761425089470469
34. 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
35. 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
36. 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
37. Cardano gets positive coverage on French Television for being “ecological”. https://twitter.com/YoadaStakepool/status/1433127940334792708
38. 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
39. The first solution for custom Cardano wallet addresses seems to be picking up steam. https://twitter.com/adahandle
40. 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
41. The SEC is investigating Uniswap. This is a very big deal! https://www.wsj.com/articles/regulators-investigate-crypto-exchange-developer-uniswap-labs-11630666800
42. Another Japanese exchange appears to be adding ADA on the 7th. https://twitter.com/sentosumosaba/status/1433714023468437508
43. We are always the github champions (again as of Sept 3). https://twitter.com/ProofofGitHub/status/1433822104634408966
44. Yet another Cardano project drops their account of how they’ve already handled concurrency. https://twitter.com/SundaeSwap/status/1434304535061729281
45. Here are two other Cardano projects explaining that they’ve already handled concurrency. https://cointelegraph.com/press-releases/cardano-decentralized-exchange-occamx-reaches-key-technical-milestone https://twitter.com/CardanoMaladex/status/1434115402725052418
46. Only one more week until smart contracts on mainnet (as of Aug 5)! Get your whiskey ready!
47. IOHK releases a detailed thread on concurrency and upcoming documentation to help quell some of the misinformation currently circulating on this topic. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1434518391465943048
48. Only 5 more days to Alonzo (as of Sept. 7)!
49. Despite all the negative posting about Cardano smart contracts on eUTxO, it ironically looks like some in the ETH community are actually trying to build ETH L2 on UTXO. https://twitter.com/matiwinnetou/status/1434570158853529606
50. Here’s a great article on Cardano’s Determinism by IOG’s Polina Vinogradova. https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/09/06/no-surprises-transaction-validation-on-cardano/
51. World Mobile has released a new video of towers going up in Zanzibar! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoGx_hwupsc
52. Charles releases a new video on the Alonzo Update Proposal (on Aug. 7) being submitted so that we can go live on the 12th. He also gives some hints as to his thoughts on the short-term planning of some “flavor of the week” blockchains vs. the long term planning of Cardano. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhujKbMpTEA
53. Weiss Crypto lays down yet another very positive thread about Cardano. They acknowledge that they can’t see the future of Cardano, but they vehemently reject a lot of the anti-hype. https://twitter.com/WeissCrypto/status/1435261343456768005
54. Coinbase reveals they received a Wells Notice from the SEC on their crypto loan product. This is relevant for Cardano loan projects. A low professor subsequently posted a takedown of the Coinbase Chief Legal Officer’s view on the SEC notice. https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1435439291715358721 https://twitter.com/AdamLevitin/status/1435650584271589376
55. We just saw a record number of daily transactions on Cardano (Sept 7)! https://twitter.com/matiwinnetou/status/1435559731133825031
56. Messari has updated its “Initial Token Distribution” chart to include a previously missing project and Cardano is still among the very best in the Gen 3 space in terms of broad public coin ownership. https://twitter.com/CryptoIRELAND1/status/1435708439951552513
57. After lots of criticism of Cardano layer 2 possibilities by ETH maximalists, Vitalik has ironically announced that ETH NFTs need to be moved to layer 2. https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1435413681588736007
58. We seem to already have at least five projects who have worked out their approach to eUTxO concurrency. https://twitter.com/SmaugPool/status/1435928968423673859 https://www.yahoo.com/now/cardano-decentralized-exchange-occamx-reaches-163000898.html
59. Here’s the tweet with the link for the Alonzo smart contract launch watch party tomorrow (Sept 12) at 21:30 UTC. This is going to be fun! Enjoy it, guys! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1436325831199141888
60. A Weiss Crypto analyst calls the smart contract launch an alleged event and also doesn’t realize we already have NFTS. The Cardano community was quick to correct the analyst. Weiss was then also quick to apologize. https://twitter.com/WeissCrypto/status/1436369016545857566 https://twitter.com/WeissCrypto/status/1436402039085576193
61. There is still the mystery of the lobster. Will it end up being connected to a fun smart contract to be launched tomorrow by IOHK? https://twitter.com/crypto_reflect/status/1435738017608740866
62. Over 100 smart contracts are already running on Cardano Mainnet! https://twitter.com/IOHKMedia/status/1437821632307994628
63. One of Cardano’s biggest competitors is once again suffering network problems. This time it started out as just being characterized as (more) “instability”, then they started saying that something had caused the blockchain to “start forking”. This followed their September 2 “instability” and “performance degradation” event. It’ll be interesting to see how well their community tolerates this in the future if it’s happening with their planned slashing model in effect. https://twitter.com/SolanaStatus/status/1437856638279487493 https://twitter.com/SolanaStatus/status/1437757547235131396 https://twitter.com/SolanaStatus/status/1433429598230876173
64. The Cardano Foundation subtly hints (okay just straight up says) it has some mindblowing partnerships to announce at the Cardano Summit. https://twitter.com/SidneyVollmer/status/1437855888237338627
65. Gary Gensler says that there are probably many tokens traded on Coinbase that are securities. https://youtu.be/XLc4c7vL3rM
66. Looks like Cardano Summit segments are being recorded and completed. https://twitter.com/ch1bo_/status/1437803839319691271
67. In macro news that could impact Cardano & all of crypto, it has been announced that China’s Evergrande Group will not be able to make interest payments on its loans in a few days. https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1438143063306690560 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-09-15/evergrande-gives-china-an-impossible-equation-to-solve-with-its-liquidity-crunch
68. It looks like we’ll get some news about further collaboration with Baia’s Wine of Georgia at the Cardano Summit. https://twitter.com/ThornhillPublic/status/1438157239982956545
69. Now one of Cardano’s most highly visible critics is implying that the Cardano community has something in common with anti-vaxxers. Unfortunately for him, it was one of his pet blockchains that was down a few days ago while Cardano just kept healthily trucking right along. https://twitter.com/spudiot1/status/1438402783040790532
70. Cardano is still crushing it in terms of daily transaction volume. https://twitter.com/Eilert/status/1438521555638644746
71. We might have gotten a peek at the virtual world that will be part of the Cardano Summit this month. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1438668061813342209/photo/1
72. Smaug gives us a rundown of how many actual Plutus scripts (19)are running on mainnet vs. timelock scripts (21k) as of Sept 17 and explains simple definitions for both. But, he also mentions down below how many Plutus scripts (213) are reportedly running on “the main testnet” not counting “other Alonzo testnets”. https://twitter.com/SmaugPool/status/1438816898234343432
73. The weekly IOHK development update is out for Sept 17. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1438921968590499843
74. Now the TX and NJ state securities regulators are after Celsius for crypto loans (BlockFi already got this treatment). Cardano loan projects should probably take note. https://www.njoag.gov/new-jersey-bureau-of-securities-orders-cryptocurrency-firm-celsius-to-halt-the-offer-and-sale-of-unregistered-interest-bearing-investments/ https://www.ssb.texas.gov/sites/default/files/2021-09/20210917_FINAL_Celsius_NOH_js_signed.pdf
75. After the Senate hearing on Tuesday September 14th, Gary Gensler (SEC Chairman) gave a quote to a crypto publication indicating that custodial lending and possibly even staking platforms might be considered securities. This is very relevant for Cardano since it has non-custodial staking whereas many of its competitors have the kind of custodial staking that Gensler may have been contemplating. https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/117675/crypto-lending-staking-custody-gensler-sec
76. New IOHK blog entry on Hydra (Sept 17)! https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/09/17/hydra-cardano-s-solution-for-ultimate-scalability/
77. It looks like we may get an announcement of a new Cardano/COTI product at the Summit. https://twitter.com/theCOTIinvestor/status/1439551052764925957
78. We’re inching closer to the 500 votes required to name the lobster. https://twitter.com/Ada4Soil/status/1439745733079355394
79. Here’s a great description from Sebastien on where ADA staking rewards come from. https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1439542246764793857
80. Apparently the SEC is now serving crypto people at crypto conferences. Gensler is getting serious. https://twitter.com/gogoSlava/status/1439972015910408195 https://mainnet.events/agenda-2021/
81. Accusations of wash trading surface in the Cardano NFT scene. https://twitter.com/mintaCNFT/status/1439752114276904960
82. Christine Lagarde (European Central Bank President) goes on the offensive and tries to tell the world that cryptocurrencies are not currencies. https://twitter.com/BloombergTV/status/1438498107965288449
83. DIGI tweets out a great infographic explaining how Hydra layer two solution works. https://twitter.com/DIGI_StakePool/status/1440322046869737482
84. Senators Lummis & Sinema are planning to introduce a bill for responsible innovation in crypto. Caitlin Long says it will focus on (1) definitions to clarify regulatory jurisdiction, (2) consumer protection, (3) digital asset custody requirements https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1440327869293465600
85. The Hoskinson Center for Formal Mathematics has been established at Carnegie Mellon. Given the blockchain activity at the university it seems like the Cardano founder having ties there can’t really hurt us. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1440443081183019017
86. dcSpark is launching a new wallet called Flint that will be able to interact with Cardano dApps. https://youtu.be/dDwuwVR75HU https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1440659191731945482
87. The AWS Exec has clarified his tweet about the Cardano Summit to express that people shouldn’t read too much into it. https://twitter.com/theCOTIinvestor/status/1440662585309745152
88. There’s a fresh blog and video on the Cardano Smart Contract Certification standards and new Plutus dApp Store. https://twitter.com/timbharrison/status/1440799199684022283
89. Apparently RuntimeVerification is now in the Cardano audit business! This is awesome to see! We’’ll take some NASA mission-critical level auditing for our ecosystem’s projects. https://twitter.com/SundaeSwap/status/1441077920215310343
90. The Summit Agenda is now out. https://summit.cardano.org/agenda
91. dcSpark’s new open source project Fracada will allow you to fractionalize NFTs. https://twitter.com/dcspark_io/status/1441043274911866880
92. dcSpark has released Fracada which is an open source Plutus dApp for fractionalizing NFTs. https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1443011920349462533
93. The Wall Street Journal runs a Cardano 101 type video on their main youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBKnEZYCkTo
94. Senator Toomey and SEC Chair Powell have an interesting exchange about how a US CBDC should be formulated and how it should be sharing the space with private cryptos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-46kqEn6JLc
95. As promised at the Cardano Summit, Emurgo has already made seed investments into Milkomeda from dcSpark, Adanian Labs, & ADAverse. https://twitter.com/emurgo_io/status/1442210147405684745

~Army of Spies