EVM Heating Up On Cardano, USDC Goes Live On Mainnet

Cardano will now be competing directly with Ethereum due to brand new EVM compatibility.

Covered:

Why the EVM Rules Crypto
ERC-20 Stable Coins Go Live on Cardano
Cardano Now Competes with Ethereum Directly

Why the EVM Rules Crypto

The recent launch of Milkomeda, a Cardano side-chain and bridging protocol that connects non-EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) chains to Ethereum was a major step for the ADA ecosystem. Just weeks after its launch, the growth of Milkomeda is impressive, with nearly $100 million TVL.

It is critical to understand that blockchains that are not compatible with the EVM are at a severe disadvantage. Why? Nearly all smart contract programming to create dApps is coded in Solidity, the native programming language on Ethereum.

#Milkomeda Ecosystem Overview@Milkomeda_com is a layer-2 protocol delivering EVM capabilities to #Cardano ecosystem, officially went live on Mar 28.

Let's see how it's going 10 days after launch 👇 pic.twitter.com/FhpBkGstqq

— Cardano Daily (@cardano_daily) April 6, 2022

Over 200,000 developers use Solidity to program smart contracts and dApps. When the smart contracts are written in Solidity, they are compiled to the EVM that is embedded in each Ethereum node. This is required so that the nodes agree on executing the same instructions in the smart contracts and keeping the “state” current.

Most blockchains have tailored their design primitives to be EVM compatible in order to access the vast pool of Solidity developers and thus the bulk of DeFi activity. Ethereum’s sticky first-mover advantage is directly correlated to the devs who use Solidity.

Because Cardano has its own native programming language, Haskell, it is not EVM compatible “out of the box.” This means dApps that have most of the market share, like Curv, Aave, or Sushiswap could not be “ported over” to Cardano.

Milkomeda has now made this possible. Interoperability is a necessary component of any smart contract chain, and Cardano will undoubtedly benefit from this EVM compatibility. These are still the early days of interoperability, as we have witnessed with the massive attacks on bridges.

🔥@Milkomeda_com went live on Cardano mainnet, opening the gate for #Ethereum dApps to be deployed in the #Cardano ecosystem.https://t.co/v1624xp8xQ

— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) April 5, 2022

ERC-20 Stable Coins Go Live on Cardano

The main benefit of Milkomeda is the ability for Solidity developers to deploy a solidity smart contract on the EVM that is instantly compatible with Cardano. They don’t need to learn Haskell, which has a very nascent developer pool, hindering growth.

As noted above, it will also allow developers to “port over” Ethereum dApps easily onto Cardano and use Layer 2 rollup technology to help scale. As their website states: “All the tooling of Ethereum works out of the box.”

One new DeFi protocol is already reaping the benefits of this. Wingriders, a Dex on Cardano, announced on Tuesday they have partnered with Milkomeda. The details of the partnership can be read in their medium post.

The major outcome of this partnership is that ERC20 stable-coins like USDC and USDT will soon go live on the Cardano. In fact, the first-ever USDC transaction on Cardano mainnet took place two days ago—a pretty big deal for the UTXO modeled chain.

Congrats to WingRiders on their launch and for being the first to offer stablecoins such as USDC and USDT to the Cardano mainnet through the use Milkomeda. https://t.co/w9mYBp07p5

— Milkomeda (there is no token) (@Milkomeda_com) April 12, 2022

Wingriders has already skyrocketed in TVL, up to $46 million in TVL since April 2nd. Stablecoin usage boosts network adoption massively, and the UTXO model Cardano uses has hitherto made this onboarding impossible.

Now that this is solved, the EVM capability and ability to bridge ERC20 tokens will accelerate liquidity on Cardano, bringing it on par with the major chains like Solana, Avalanche, Terra, and Ethereum.

Cardano Now Competes With Ethereum Directly

All these developments are huge for Cardano. Charles and ADA will now be competing directly against Vitalik and ETH for all the value that lives via the Ethereum Virtual Machine. How many Ethereum dApps will move over to Cardano? How much TVL will they swipe off the table?

The smart contract battle is just heating up. Milkomeda is ready to launch the same iteration of the sidechain rollup on Algorand, Solana, and Terra, creating a non-EVM alliance of sorts. (You can keep an eye on the Milkomeda roadmap here.)

This is not meant to wall off these chains from Ethereum, but rather to create interoperability between non-EVM chains themselves while leveraging the EVM and its developer pool and liquidity. In the next year or so, we will witness whether or not mass adoption for non-EVM chains will occur. Get the popcorn ready.

Now tracking @Milkomeda_com

Milkomeda seeks be the backbone for achieving and maintaining mass adoption for promising non-EVM cryptocurrencies, empowering them with well integrated sidechains that provide seamless UX for both developers & general usershttps://t.co/JteTcvlPOR pic.twitter.com/rNjaiyEkdB

— DefiLlama.com (@DefiLlama) March 29, 2022