Cardano Rumor Rundown September 23, 2021

Hey Everyone!

Let's go...

Newly covered today:

1. 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
2. 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
3. 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

Previously Covered but still interesting:

1. 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
2. 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
3. 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
4. The Plutus Mainnet Candidate has been released to the Node Team. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1427359174220996612
5. Weiss Crypto really loves the Cardano consensus protocol. https://twitter.com/WeissCrypto/status/1427646299936014337
6. Applications are now open to be a local Cardano Meet-Up host for the Cardano Summit 2020. https://twitter.com/Cardano/status/1427309534226300928
7. 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
8. CNFT.io is back in action after a brief period of absence! https://twitter.com/CNFT_IO/status/142808300944668262
9. The Djed Stablecoin paper and an explanatory article are now out. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1427933093210607619
10. 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
11. 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
12. 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
13. 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/
14. It never ends. We are the Perma-Techno-Kings of the Github Commit! https://twitter.com/ProofofGitHub/status/1428748675032010758
15. It’s looking like the Cardano Summit is going to be huge. https://twitter.com/I_Am_DTaylor/status/1428791321440002054
16. The Essential Cardano List has grown even larger! https://github.com/input-output-hk/essential-cardano/blob/main/essential-cardano-list.md
17. Cardano is still crushing everyone else in terms of dollars staked. https://twitter.com/CryptoDiffer/status/1428368524745973773
18. The August Cardano 360 will be this Thursday August 26th. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1428756331423571972
19. 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
20. 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
21. 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
22. The ADA treasury is worth $1.6 Billion right now?????? https://twitter.com/nierop_pieter/status/1429656224732225536
23. 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
24. 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
25. 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/
26. ADA is officially on Bitpoint Exchange in Japan! https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1430317131699163140
27. 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
28. 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
29. 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
30. 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/
31. 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
32. The August Cardano 360 is out! Another great job by Tim Harrison and company! https://youtu.be/baS9efSa2F8
33. 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
34. The “Buy Cardano” keyword hits a three month high on Google. https://twitter.com/OldPaSink/status/1430946116359516160
35. 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
36. IOHK has initiated the testnet fork (Aug 27)! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1431286232278085634
37. 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
38. Here’s a good side-by-side of the size of the ecosystem in the past and now. https://twitter.com/CardanoRise/status/1431703062486392837
39. Fortune ran a very positive piece on Cardano today (Aug. 20). https://fortune.com/2021/08/20/cardano-ath-price-biggest-cryptos/
40. It looks like the details of the extremely mysterious “Cardano City” project should come to light today. https://twitter.com/CardanoCity/status/1431338443381092355
41. 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
42. The COTI/Wolfram/IOHK project to build an NFT Auction Site is now live. https://twitter.com/COTInetwork/status/1431971503093002243
43. 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
44. Beware of FlanoWallet and Flano Swap!!!!!!!! They are accused of malicious code that harvests your recovery phrase. https://twitter.com/bigpeyYT/status/1432450913487183874
45. Sebastien confirms that dcSpark is getting a ton of interest from developers wanting to work in Cardano. https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1432416579107495942
46. 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
47. 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
48. The Public Testnet will be forked to Alonzo today (Sept 1)! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1432769865958531080
49. Some future Cardano dApps have so many followers on twitter that ETH maximalists are publicly expressing their disbelief. https://twitter.com/Southrye/status/1432515727433601024
50. Even prior to the launch of smart contracts, Cardano is generating quite an impressive amount of transaction fees. https://twitter.com/DCdoso/status/1432761425089470469
51. 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
52. 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
53. 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
54. Cardano gets positive coverage on French Television for being “ecological”. https://twitter.com/YoadaStakepool/status/1433127940334792708
55. 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
56. The first solution for custom Cardano wallet addresses seems to be picking up steam. https://twitter.com/adahandle
57. 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
58. The SEC is investigating Uniswap. This is a very big deal! https://www.wsj.com/articles/regulators-investigate-crypto-exchange-developer-uniswap-labs-11630666800
59. Another Japanese exchange appears to be adding ADA on the 7th. https://twitter.com/sentosumosaba/status/1433714023468437508
60. We are always the github champions (again as of Sept 3). https://twitter.com/ProofofGitHub/status/1433822104634408966
61. Yet another Cardano project drops their account of how they’ve already handled concurrency. https://twitter.com/SundaeSwap/status/1434304535061729281
62. 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
63. Only one more week until smart contracts on mainnet (as of Aug 5)! Get your whiskey ready!
64. 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
65. Only 5 more days to Alonzo (as of Sept. 7)!
66. 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
67. 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/
68. World Mobile has released a new video of towers going up in Zanzibar! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoGx_hwupsc
69. 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
70. 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
71. 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
72. We just saw a record number of daily transactions on Cardano (Sept 7)! https://twitter.com/matiwinnetou/status/1435559731133825031
73. 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
74. 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
75. 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
76. 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
77. 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
78. 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
79. Over 100 smart contracts are already running on Cardano Mainnet! https://twitter.com/IOHKMedia/status/1437821632307994628
80. 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
81. 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
82. Gary Gensler says that there are probably many tokens traded on Coinbase that are securities. https://youtu.be/XLc4c7vL3rM
83. Looks like Cardano Summit segments are being recorded and completed. https://twitter.com/ch1bo_/status/1437803839319691271
84. 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
85. 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
86. 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
87. Cardano is still crushing it in terms of daily transaction volume. https://twitter.com/Eilert/status/1438521555638644746
88. 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
89. 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
90. The weekly IOHK development update is out for Sept 17. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1438921968590499843
91. 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
92. 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
93. New IOHK blog entry on Hydra (Sept 17)! https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/09/17/hydra-cardano-s-solution-for-ultimate-scalability/
94. It looks like we may get an announcement of a new Cardano/COTI product at the Summit. https://twitter.com/theCOTIinvestor/status/1439551052764925957
95. We’re inching closer to the 500 votes required to name the lobster. https://twitter.com/Ada4Soil/status/1439745733079355394
96. Here’s a great description from Sebastien on where ADA staking rewards come from. https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1439542246764793857
97. 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/
98. Accusations of wash trading surface in the Cardano NFT scene. https://twitter.com/mintaCNFT/status/1439752114276904960
99. 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
100. DIGI tweets out a great infographic explaining how Hydra layer two solution works. https://twitter.com/DIGI_StakePool/status/1440322046869737482
101. 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
102. 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

~Army of Spies