Cardano Rumor Rundown October 27, 2021

Hey Everyone!

Let's go...

Newly covered today:

1. We now have a memorandum of understanding with Burundi! https://twitter.com/jjtoconnor/status/1453087264461017092
2. Fans of certain other Gen 3 blockchains are still getting hilariously worked up when they are confronted with the Messari chart on massive VC ownership of their blockchains. https://twitter.com/TamaraHaasen/status/1452924338047496193
3. The new IOG stake pool delegations are out. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1453041459477819398
4. Cardano Fans is putting out some really good pieces posed as “Conversations with a Junior Blockchain Developer”. Very educational on the technical advantages of Cardano over other Gen 3 blockchains. https://twitter.com/matiwinnetou/status/1452911202913464328

Previously Covered but still interesting:

1. 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/
2. World Mobile has released a new video of towers going up in Zanzibar! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoGx_hwupsc
3. 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
4. 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
5. 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
6. We just saw a record number of daily transactions on Cardano (Sept 7)! https://twitter.com/matiwinnetou/status/1435559731133825031
7. 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
8. 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
9. 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
10. 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
11. 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
12. 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
13. Over 100 smart contracts are already running on Cardano Mainnet! https://twitter.com/IOHKMedia/status/1437821632307994628
14. 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
15. 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
16. Gary Gensler says that there are probably many tokens traded on Coinbase that are securities. https://youtu.be/XLc4c7vL3rM
17. Looks like Cardano Summit segments are being recorded and completed. https://twitter.com/ch1bo_/status/1437803839319691271
18. 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
19. 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
20. 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
21. Cardano is still crushing it in terms of daily transaction volume. https://twitter.com/Eilert/status/1438521555638644746
22. 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
23. 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
24. The weekly IOHK development update is out for Sept 17. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1438921968590499843
25. 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
26. 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
27. New IOHK blog entry on Hydra (Sept 17)! https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/09/17/hydra-cardano-s-solution-for-ultimate-scalability/
28. It looks like we may get an announcement of a new Cardano/COTI product at the Summit. https://twitter.com/theCOTIinvestor/status/1439551052764925957
29. We’re inching closer to the 500 votes required to name the lobster. https://twitter.com/Ada4Soil/status/1439745733079355394
30. Here’s a great description from Sebastien on where ADA staking rewards come from. https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1439542246764793857
31. 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/
32. Accusations of wash trading surface in the Cardano NFT scene. https://twitter.com/mintaCNFT/status/1439752114276904960
33. 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
34. DIGI tweets out a great infographic explaining how Hydra layer two solution works. https://twitter.com/DIGI_StakePool/status/1440322046869737482
35. 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
36. 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
37. 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
38. 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
39. 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
40. 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
41. The Summit Agenda is now out. https://summit.cardano.org/agenda
42. dcSpark’s new open source project Fracada will allow you to fractionalize NFTs. https://twitter.com/dcspark_io/status/1441043274911866880
43. dcSpark has released Fracada which is an open source Plutus dApp for fractionalizing NFTs. https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1443011920349462533
44. The Wall Street Journal runs a Cardano 101 type video on their main youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBKnEZYCkTo
45. 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
46. 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
47. The ecosystem map continues getting bigger and bigger (Sept 29). https://twitter.com/seal_kiman/status/1441418051237425153/photo/1
48. dcSpark has dropped a new video explaining Fracada and the future of NFTs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FvKUlh7Fs8&t=4s
49. 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
50. 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
51. 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
52. 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
53. 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
54. 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
55. 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
56. 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
57. 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
58. 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
59. 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/
60. 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
61. 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
62. 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
63. 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
64. 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
65. 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
66. Charles is interviewed in the Harvard International Review. https://hir.harvard.edu/charles-hoskinson-1/
67. We now have a PAB (Plutus Application Backend) pre-release. Hopefully that means PAB soon! https://twitter.com/matiwinnetou/status/1446589902674665473
68. 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
69. 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
70. 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
71. 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
72. 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
73. 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
74. 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
75. 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
76. COTI has another AMA that reveals there may be more news soon for Djed. https://twitter.com/theCOTIinvestor/status/1447546724868935684
77. Heads up: scammers are posing as Yoroi support staff! https://twitter.com/YoroiWallet/status/1446554949782016009
78. Catalyst Fund 6 has 711 projects on the ballot! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1448015757216976903
79. 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
80. 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
81. The first project that actually looks like it may one day be a virtual world launches on Cardano and it already has a community built parcel explorer. https://pavia.luiscarlos.pt/
82. SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce (cryptomom) gave a polite but scathing speech at the Texas Blockchain Summit where she laid bare all the problems with the SEC’s current approach to crypto. After her recent opinion piece and this speech, it’s fair to say that she and SEC Chairman Gensler are in open war over crypto. How this gets resolved will determine the regulatory landscape for Cardano and all of crypto going forward. Sadly, Gensler is in charge and not vice versa. https://twitter.com/HesterPeirce/status/1448011388841037830 https://www.sec.gov/news/speech/peirce-2021-10-08
83. The Fed may begin tapering it’s Treasury and mortgage backed securities purchases in mid November. This is relevant for the whole economy including crypto. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/13/federal-reserve-releases-minutes-from-its-september-policy-meeting.html
84. Sounds like the Milkomeda sidechain is making good progress. https://twitter.com/NicoArqueros/status/1448447729689059332
85. Apparently, Putin kind of accepts that crypto might choose to exist. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-14/putin-defends-cryptocurrencies-amid-global-regulation-push
86. Don’t forget: today (Oct 15) is the October Mid-Month Development Update! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1448715241961963520
87. Sounds like Binance was not allowing ADA withdrawals for some period of time. https://twitter.com/Katsumoto87/status/1449723293632634882
88. The Cardano Africa Tour has commenced with Charles popping up in South Africa. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1449304264849993731
89. We got a nice Triple H update from Harrison/Hemsley/Hammond joined by Jan Müller in the October mid-Month Dev Update. We learned that we’ll have a maintenance upgrade toward the end of October and then PAB a few weeks later. This is extremely important since it will finally allow for the last bits of dApp buildout. The PAB is already available on the tesnet. The test dApp the team is using is an NFT marketplace. The team is watching as we see high loads around events like NFT drops. But, the network is reacting as expected. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzdTyV5Jejc
90. Here’s video of the Fireside chat with Charles, Dynal Patel, and John O’Connor at the Cape Innovation & Technology Initiative in South Africa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmuJFc5Qrr4&t
91. A brief update dropped from Charles this morning in Africa. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1450124410095030280
92. Duncan & Sebastien have an interesting discussion on Github that fuels Cardanophobia on the part of ETH maximalists about three weeks later. https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano-node/issues/3247
93. The Cardano Foundation is changing its delegation strategy. They will go from primarily delegating to promote decentralization to a new framework focused on delegating to promote ecosystem buildout. https://forum.cardano.org/t/cardano-foundations-new-delegation-methodology-supporting-the-architects-of-the-future/79594
94. Shahaf Bar-Geffen gives us some more details about the Djed launch. He says IOHK is doing the coding and COTI is doing the business side. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlPmIgJ0tE0
95. In the Cap Innovation & Technology Initiative Fireside Q&A, Charles mentioned he is talking to Colossol Labs about the possibility of having the Mammoth DeExtinction Project take place on his bison ranch. There are probably some obvious NFT or tokenization use cases there. https://colossal.com/mammoth/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmuJFc5Qrr4
96. Three U.S. Senators ask Facebook to discontinue its Novi crypto wallet which just launched. https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/19/22735171/facebook-novi-diem-libra-calibra-cryptocurrency-digital-wallet-zuckerberg-senate https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/19/facebook-scales-back-its-crypto-ambitions-once-again/
97. There’s a new Frederik Gregaard interview out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJdRAclhL0Q
98. People are buying luxury real estate in Portugal with Cardano. https://twitter.com/danny_cryptofay/status/1451113239669092356
99. Over 292,000 votes were cast in Catalyst Fund 6. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1451269575140589577
100. IOHK announces a partnership with Bondly to create an NFT bridge so that users can move their non-fungible tokens back and forth between Cardano and Ethereum. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1451251954496180229
101. Interesting small thread on how further stumbles by the Chinese economy could affect the global economy which in turn might impact crypto and Cardano. https://twitter.com/i/events/1452290004433125378
102. Here’s a very nice overview of the Maladex Whitepaper by ADA Whale that breaks down the hidden strengths of eUTxO for DeFi including programmable swaps composability. https://twitter.com/cardano_whale/status/1451835809913470986
103. The Cardano ecosystem maps are getting so big and dense that they can’t even display logos for the projects anymore. https://twitter.com/Meapool1/status/1450576470133379072/photo/1
104. There is a report that unstaked ADA is at an all time low of under 8MM ADA. https://twitter.com/IbanxStaking/status/1451944344294883331
105. Check out this medium article explaining the validator underlying the Spacebudz Market. It’s very elegantly and concisely explained if you have no Haskell/Plutus understanding. It’s even more interesting if you have a tiny bit of understanding of Haskell. https://spacebudz.medium.com/spacebudz-market-71e79d1bbf34
106. Atala Prism named a top 50 Most Influential Project by PMI. https://twitter.com/IOHKMedia/status/1452544441005248514
107. Pavia Game Jam is coming. It sounds like they are looking to hire some Unity (game engine) developers and 3D artists. This produce interesting results in a few years. https://twitter.com/Pavia_io/status/1451596816659763213
108. Charles is releasing some images of meetings with heads of state on his Africa tour. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1452671287977971726 https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1452672734580838409/photo/2
109. There is currently ongoing discussion about the possibility of unexpected tax liability from participation in even Fair Initial Stake Pool Offerings where there are accompanying Initial Dex Offerings. There is even discussion about the potential of exploits that could amplify this unexpected tax liability for all participants. https://twitter.com/mikerogero/status/1452502065381404675 https://medium.com/@mikerogero/tax-implications-of-the-minswap-ido-on-fiso-delegators-and-the-cardano-community-4db219ea8932

~Army of Spies