Cardano Rumor Rundown October 13, 2021

Hey Everyone!

Let's go...

Newly covered today:

1. Catalyst Fund 6 has 711 projects on the ballot! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1448015757216976903
2. Coinbase is launching an NFT market. How will this impact the CNFT scene? Coinbase tells us: “...initial launch will support Ethereum based ERC-721 and ERC-1155 standards with multi-chain support planned soon after.” https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-nft-is-coming-soon-join-the-waitlist-today-for-early-access-cc7bac29fd72 https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/12/coinbase-is-launching-a-marketplace-for-nfts.html
3. Eric Rosengren (who recently left the Boston Fed) let’s us know that the Fed/MIT CBDC project is pretty far along and will release a working paper soon. This would obviously be impactful for all of crypto and for Cardano. https://youtu.be/ivqFo9C2Jdo?t=409

Previously Covered but still interesting:

1. 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
2. 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/
3. 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
4. The August Cardano 360 is out! Another great job by Tim Harrison and company! https://youtu.be/baS9efSa2F8
5. The “Buy Cardano” keyword hits a three month high on Google. https://twitter.com/OldPaSink/status/1430946116359516160
6. 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
7. Here’s a good side-by-side of the size of the ecosystem in the past and now. https://twitter.com/CardanoRise/status/1431703062486392837
8. Fortune ran a very positive piece on Cardano today (Aug. 20). https://fortune.com/2021/08/20/cardano-ath-price-biggest-cryptos/
9. It looks like the details of the extremely mysterious “Cardano City” project should come to light today. https://twitter.com/CardanoCity/status/1431338443381092355
10. 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
11. The COTI/Wolfram/IOHK project to build an NFT Auction Site is now live. https://twitter.com/COTInetwork/status/1431971503093002243
12. 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
13. Beware of FlanoWallet and Flano Swap!!!!!!!! They are accused of malicious code that harvests your recovery phrase. https://twitter.com/bigpeyYT/status/1432450913487183874
14. Sebastien confirms that dcSpark is getting a ton of interest from developers wanting to work in Cardano. https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1432416579107495942
15. 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
16. 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
17. The Public Testnet will be forked to Alonzo today (Sept 1)! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1432769865958531080
18. Some future Cardano dApps have so many followers on twitter that ETH maximalists are publicly expressing their disbelief. https://twitter.com/Southrye/status/1432515727433601024
19. Even prior to the launch of smart contracts, Cardano is generating quite an impressive amount of transaction fees. https://twitter.com/DCdoso/status/1432761425089470469
20. 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
21. 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
22. 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
23. Cardano gets positive coverage on French Television for being “ecological”. https://twitter.com/YoadaStakepool/status/1433127940334792708
24. 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
25. The first solution for custom Cardano wallet addresses seems to be picking up steam. https://twitter.com/adahandle
26. 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
27. The SEC is investigating Uniswap. This is a very big deal! https://www.wsj.com/articles/regulators-investigate-crypto-exchange-developer-uniswap-labs-11630666800
28. Another Japanese exchange appears to be adding ADA on the 7th. https://twitter.com/sentosumosaba/status/1433714023468437508
29. We are always the github champions (again as of Sept 3). https://twitter.com/ProofofGitHub/status/1433822104634408966
30. Yet another Cardano project drops their account of how they’ve already handled concurrency. https://twitter.com/SundaeSwap/status/1434304535061729281
31. 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
32. Only one more week until smart contracts on mainnet (as of Aug 5)! Get your whiskey ready!
33. 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
34. Only 5 more days to Alonzo (as of Sept. 7)!
35. 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
36. 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/
37. World Mobile has released a new video of towers going up in Zanzibar! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoGx_hwupsc
38. 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
39. 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
40. 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
41. We just saw a record number of daily transactions on Cardano (Sept 7)! https://twitter.com/matiwinnetou/status/1435559731133825031
42. 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
43. 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
44. 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
45. 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
46. 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
47. 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
48. Over 100 smart contracts are already running on Cardano Mainnet! https://twitter.com/IOHKMedia/status/1437821632307994628
49. 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
50. 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
51. Gary Gensler says that there are probably many tokens traded on Coinbase that are securities. https://youtu.be/XLc4c7vL3rM
52. Looks like Cardano Summit segments are being recorded and completed. https://twitter.com/ch1bo_/status/1437803839319691271
53. 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
54. 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
55. 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
56. Cardano is still crushing it in terms of daily transaction volume. https://twitter.com/Eilert/status/1438521555638644746
57. 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
58. 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
59. The weekly IOHK development update is out for Sept 17. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1438921968590499843
60. 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
61. 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
62. New IOHK blog entry on Hydra (Sept 17)! https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/09/17/hydra-cardano-s-solution-for-ultimate-scalability/
63. It looks like we may get an announcement of a new Cardano/COTI product at the Summit. https://twitter.com/theCOTIinvestor/status/1439551052764925957
64. We’re inching closer to the 500 votes required to name the lobster. https://twitter.com/Ada4Soil/status/1439745733079355394
65. Here’s a great description from Sebastien on where ADA staking rewards come from. https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1439542246764793857
66. 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/
67. Accusations of wash trading surface in the Cardano NFT scene. https://twitter.com/mintaCNFT/status/1439752114276904960
68. 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
69. DIGI tweets out a great infographic explaining how Hydra layer two solution works. https://twitter.com/DIGI_StakePool/status/1440322046869737482
70. 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
71. 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
72. 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
73. 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
74. 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
75. 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
76. The Summit Agenda is now out. https://summit.cardano.org/agenda
77. dcSpark’s new open source project Fracada will allow you to fractionalize NFTs. https://twitter.com/dcspark_io/status/1441043274911866880
78. dcSpark has released Fracada which is an open source Plutus dApp for fractionalizing NFTs. https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1443011920349462533
79. The Wall Street Journal runs a Cardano 101 type video on their main youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBKnEZYCkTo
80. 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
81. 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
82. The ecosystem map continues getting bigger and bigger (Sept 29). https://twitter.com/seal_kiman/status/1441418051237425153/photo/1
83. dcSpark has dropped a new video explaining Fracada and the future of NFTs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FvKUlh7Fs8&t=4s
84. 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
85. In late 2008/early 2009 it turns out Hal Finney was learning Haskell and trying to figure out how to reduce C02 emissions from a (future) widely used Bitcoin. That sounds a lot like Cardano. https://twitter.com/seal_kiman/status/1443593563846193155
86. Adam Dean gives us a great post-mortem on the network load created yesterday by the NFT drop(s). https://twitter.com/adamKDean/status/1443599818845081600
87. Wow! It’s looking like Meld has landed a partnership with a mobile provider in Nigeria with nine million customers. Not many details out at this point (Sept 30). But, that certainly sounds like it could be gigantic. https://twitter.com/MELD_labs/status/1443548879966949382
88. Two factor authentication via SMS once again turns out to be a bad bet. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/hackers-rob-thousands-coinbase-customers-sms-mfa-flaw
89. Grayscale releases a report on Cardano which shocks many due to its (actually) fair reporting. https://twitter.com/Grayscale/status/1443625454146097152 https://twitter.com/cardano_whale/status/1443786596721967104
90. The Wall Street Journal has dropped a video on stablecoins. A lot of the video surrounds the Tether dollar reserve controversy. It’s notable that Cardano’s Djed solves this. https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-administration-seeks-to-regulate-stablecoin-issuers-as-banks-11633103156
91. The Biden Administration has announced they are investigating the prospect of regulating stablecoin providers like banks. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/stablecoin-regulation-cryptocurrency-banks-biden-treasury-bitcoin-circle-tether-binance-2021-10
92. Cardano users on twitter piece together that Charles was talking about visiting u/Pezesha_Africa (in regard to microfinance) in Kenya. This is big because Pezesha operates in countries with a combined population of over $300MM. https://twitter.com/thr33strikes/status/1444898320070086659
93. Crypto twitter users try to depict US Whitehouse comments out of context to fuel an economic doom narrative. However, if you listen to the whole press briefing, you will understand that these comments were based on a “what if” scenario involving the US debt ceiling somehow not being raised. https://twitter.com/100trillionUSD/status/1445059673401528328
94. The so-called “Pandora Papers” reveal globally widespread cases of wealth concealment by public officials and bring up the question of whether blockchains like Cardano should take this into account when dealing with nation-state regimes as partners. https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/
95. Remember! There is no mobile Daedalus wallet. There is no browser extension version of Daedalus. These are fakes! They will steal your ADA. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1445380773096398853
96. A human readable address project is launching on Cardano on Saturday at 4pm UTC.https://medium.com/ada-handle/creating-a-fair-beta-launch-discord-community-is-live-7f580cd98235
97. Brazil is looking to follow the El Salvador example and accept crypto as legal tender with a new bill to be voted within days. While the crypto in question is BTC and not ADA, we can hope that the biggest market cap project is just our gateway drug. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-set-become-legal-payment-154644863.html
98. The “Zombie Lobster” collaboration between Charles Hoskinson and Paul Oakenfold is actually getting coverage by the EDM media outlets! https://edm.com/news/paul-oakenfold-album-cardano-blockchain
99. Sounds like we are getting close to the Cardano Summit NFT winners being announced. It’s still unclear how many actual winners there will be. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1445672250435248131
100. dcSpark releases some mockups from the experimental version of its upcoming Flint Wallet. The mockups seem to indicate that the wallet will allow for dApp interaction from hardware wallets. https://twitter.com/FlintWallet/status/1444902727956508674
101. Charles is interviewed in the Harvard International Review. https://hir.harvard.edu/charles-hoskinson-1/
102. We now have a PAB (Plutus Application Backend) pre-release. Hopefully that means PAB soon! https://twitter.com/matiwinnetou/status/1446589902674665473
103. The Biden Administration has revealed that it is considering an executive order to establish a government wide approach to crypto regulation. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-08/white-house-weighs-wide-ranging-push-for-crypto-oversight
104. The New York Times is now talking about the difficult balancing act the Fed has before it with high inflation and less than promising jobs data creating conflicting priorities. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/08/business/economy/fed-jobs-full-employment-inflation.html
105. Representative Tom Emmer clashes with SEC Head Gensler over the direction of crypto regulation. However, it’s unclear how much Rep. Emmer’s solution (his Securities Clarity Act bill) would solve the problem given that it only relieves issuers of securities regulation burdens after they have already complied with the “registration or exemption” hurdle. https://twitter.com/RepTomEmmer/status/1445465912375590913 https://emmer.house.gov/2021/7/emmer-introduces-legislation-to-provide-certainty-for-digital-assets-under-securities-law
106. Caitlin Long revisits the articles she wrote years ago about fears of circulation credit in crypto markets. Spoiler: it came and crypto did it to itself. https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1446874905241210880
107. COTI is a licensed payment institution in Singapore. This could get very interesting given their status as the issuer of Djed and the ongoing Monetary Authority of Singapore Blockchain Challenge in which Cardano is a finalist. https://cotinetwork.medium.com/coti-lists-as-a-payment-institution-in-singapore-666c6fcaaab4
108. Goldman says Evergrande is nothing compared to the potential $8.2 Trillion problem with local government financing vehicles in China. https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampesek/2021/09/30/goldman-flags-82-trillion-threat-worse-than-china-evergrande/?sh=3296c9d515cc https://www.wsj.com/articles/beyond-evergrande-chinas-property-market-faces-a-5-trillion-reckoning-11633882048
109. Cardano isn’t wrong about Africa. It’s just first. Google is investing $1 Billion in African internet access over the next five years. https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/06/google-confirms-1b-investment-into-africa-including-subsea-cable-for-faster-internet/ https://twitter.com/ghostchainer/status/1445964578257395714
110. SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce (cryptomom) delivers an opinion piece that investors should be allowed to make their own decisions without SEC paternalism. https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/11/perspectives/sec-commissioner-investors-regulators/index.html
111. COTI has another AMA that reveals there may be more news soon for Djed. https://twitter.com/theCOTIinvestor/status/1447546724868935684
112. Heads up: scammers are posing as Yoroi support staff! https://twitter.com/YoroiWallet/status/1446554949782016009

~Army of Spies