“The Biggest Blockchain Event Ever”

Last weekend, the Cardano Summit was hailed as “the biggest blockchain event ever”. The event was held in person across six hubs in Africa, Europe, the United States, and virtually. Online, customisable avatars represented the participants of the meeting. Which, in turn, also highlighted the many ADA fans scattered across the globe. The online event featured seven different virtual worlds, limited edition NFTs, and exciting new partnerships announcements.

Ardana Featured at the Cardano Summit

At the event, Ardana’s founder and CEO, Ryan Matovu, spoke about Ardana’s stablecoins and DEX that will soon launch on Cardano. Ardana is building a decentralised stablecoin ecosystem for the Cardano blockchain. Ardana’s purpose will be to provide a stablecoin that can be used anywhere on Cardano. Ardana’s ecosystem will be split into two parts; the decentralised stablecoin and the decentralised exchange (DEX). The DEX (Danaswap) is built specifically for stablecoins and offers up to a 100X increase in capital efficiency when swapping from one stablecoin to another. The increase is due to substantially lower slippage and transactions fees.

More interesting features available on Ardana were also discussed, along with Ryan taking questions from the audience. Please click the link here if you would like to access the live stream recording (the YouTube video is timestamped in the description).

The Partnership Announcements

A lot was happening at the Cardano summit, so we have put together some of the most significant announcements below.

DISH and IOHK Partnership

During his introductory statement, the founder of Cardano, Charles Hoskinson, announced a strategic relationship between Dish and Input-Output. Dish Network is a Fortune 200 corporation that also owns Boost Mobile. It is based in the United States that handles satellite television infrastructure. Hoskinson dubbed DISH the “telecommunications space rebel”. In addition, IOHK will collaborate with DISH on product development.

Despite the limitations of implementing blockchain technology in the field, the IOHK founder believes that the partnership will transform the entire model of the telecom industry. Millions of DISH subscribers will be able to join the Cardano network without the intervention of centralised corporations. If it is effective, it may become the standard business model for the telecom industry.

Although it is unclear which products IOHK will develop, “bandwidth proofing” and decentralised identity and loyalty programs are on the cards. Chris Ergen, co-founder and chairman of DISH’s innovation unit, stated, “Blockchains are useless without connectivity.” Ergen also said that by combining technology, they would be “exponentially greater.”

Chainlink Partnership — Oracles for Real-Time Market Data

IOHK also announced a partnership with Chainlink, a decentralised blockchain oracle network. Cardano will integrate Chainlink’s oracles to enable developers as they prepare to start constructing smart contracts for decentralised financial (DeFi) applications. Niki Ariyasinghe, head of blockchain partnerships at Chainlink Labs, said the oracle network has a “tremendous amount of respect for the Cardano ecosystem,” particularly the technical team behind the project and the community’s collaborative character.

Because smart contracts are still new to Cardano, the timing is ideal for the partnership as Chainlink helps transfer tamper-proof data from off-chain sources to on-chain smart contracts.

Cardano Partners With COTI To Launch New DeFi Stablecoin

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson and COTI CEO Shahaf Bar-Geffen announced on September 26th at the Cardano Summit that Djed, a new DeFi-focused stablecoin for the Cardano community, would be the official issuer. The Djed stablecoin, according to Hoskinson, has the potential to be a game-changer in the crypto world since it appeals to a “whole new audience at a time when the industry is already undergoing astronomical growth.”

The news comes after COTI collaborated with Ardana, Cardano’s stablecoin hub, to transmit decentralised stablecoin funds to AdaPay, a Cardano (ADA) fee gateway that accepts over thirty fiat currencies.

Atala Prism and Digital Identity

Atala PRISM is IOHK’s identity solution. It brings additional capabilities to Cardano, adding a decentralised identity component while maintaining features of the underlying protocol. The product suite is made up of four applications, including a smart card, mobile application, management consoles and browser wallet. Users can add and revoke information as they wish and can also make their information viewable to others at their discretion. The purpose of Atala Prism is to give crypto holders control over their identity through the app that is connected to the Cardano blockchain.

Partnership with Esports Giant Rival

Cardano has also teamed up with Rival, a renowned esports and gaming platform, to create agnostic NFT marketplaces, fan rewards, and other features for Rival and its partners. Additionally, Cardano will help Rival facilitate the ability to develop and distribute NFTs and the redemption of NFTs for physical goods and marketplace-based royalties.

Veritree Cardano Impact Challenge

Due to its low energy consumption, Cardano is regarded as a “green” blockchain. The Cardano Foundation is taking that a step further by harnessing the expertise of the Climate Neutral Cardano stake pool in developing an exclusive relationship with Veritree to restore our world through reforestation. All who donate will see what kind of tree is planted, where it is planted, who planted it, and how the site is maintained. This is possible through remote access to a blockchain tool, local community interaction, and remote sensing.

Singularity Net AI and Grace

The Cardano blockchain has been selected to power the AI modules of a humanoid robot named Grace. The robot was created by Awakening Health and SingularityNET and is bilingual in English and Korean. It can be used both in eldercare and general healthcare.

AI-powered Grace can simulate 48 facial muscles, allowing it to conduct meaningful social interactions with patients. In addition, the Cardano integration will significantly improve the robot’s performance and allow it to process biodata faster. The Cardano blockchain will also make it easier to secure private medical records.

SingularityNET CEO Ben Goertzel commented that the Plutus smart contract platform’s capabilities would allow his company to accomplish “many exciting things” that Solidity’s restrictions prevented. During his participation at the summit, he also stated that they were “not far away” from deploying the AGIX token on the Cardano mainnet.

OASIS Pro Markets Partnership

The first US-regulated alternative trading system (ATS) to trade digital blockchain assets is Oasis Pro Markets. By utilising blockchain and smart contract technology to expedite asset transfers and settlements, the company hopes to bridge the gap between traditional finance and decentralised finance worlds and become a pioneer in digital securities innovation.

IOHK and Oasis Pro have partnered up to develop an alternative trading system that will use blockchain technology to open up participation in primary bond markets to developing countries. This will be made possible through a bond issuance platform.

The aim of the partnership is to democratise the financial services sector and to make it more inclusive for all.

Cardano Team Up with UBX Stake Pool

Cardano has also teamed up with UBX to boost DeFi activity on the network. UBX is the regulated financial technology venture studio and fund of UnionBank of the Philippines.

UBX has built its own public stake pool based on Cardano. UBX stakers can now earn incentives on their ADA as part of their mission to assist safeguard and maintain the Cardano network.

Cardano Injected $6 Million to Support Africa’s Innovators, and EMURGO Launched a $100 Million Investment Fund for Projects Building on Cardano.

A new African fund is investing $6 million in the continent’s most promising blockchain ventures. The fund was established in acknowledgement of Africa’s opportunities for innovation. The fund is geared towards blockchain technology since African governments and enterprises face fewer barriers to adopting next-generation technology than those in the West due to the lack of firmly ingrained legacy infrastructure.

The fund will provide funding to the most progressive African start-ups interested in developing on Cardano. In collaboration with the fund, IOHK will ensure that successful initiatives receive training, funding, and ongoing support.

EMURGO also invested $100 million into Cardano to accelerate DeFi, NFT solutions and blockchain education. EMURGO is one of Cardano’s founding entities. The new funding will help Cardano expand its footprint in the rapidly emerging DeFi and NFT market.

UTXO Alliance

The UTXO alliance has been established to bring in contributions from developers and blockchain companies to see how they can improve and evolve the current UTXO solution on Cardano.

IOHK’s Twitter stated:

“The UTXO Alliance aims to drive innovation and collaboration within the UTXO ecosystem and encourage greater collaboration by bringing a wealth of research, expertise & new shared tools to the development community. The UTXO ledger model, battle-tested by Bitcoin, remains the gold standard for security and scalability. The eUTXO model takes this a step further for enhanced blockchain scalability, programmability & interoperability. The UTXO Alliance is an initiative created to kickstart collaboration with individuals and organisations working to make the UTXO model more scalable, secure, and interoperable.”

Other Exciting Announcements

During the summit, it was announced that Liqwid Finance would provide a platform for decentralised lending through Cardano. In addition, SundaeSwap (a decentralised crypto exchange) will soon be available to the public. It was also announced that Cardano would be launching a new light wallet called Project 1, and there will be a mobile and web version available.

The Cardano team, IOHK (the corporation behind Cardano), and Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson were the majority of the presenters for each topic. Cardano is working on a variety of projects, including operating with national currencies. Separately, Hoskinson stated that the Cardano ecosystem is working on various initiatives, including voting, payments, and even ways to mine nation-state currencies.

Ardana

Ardana is Cardano’s stablecoin hub which will bring the necessary DeFi primitives needed to bootstrap & maintain any economy to Cardano. Ardana offers an on-chain asset-backed stablecoin and a decentralised stable-asset DEX. The stablecoin is verifiably backed by an excess of on-chain collateral and will enable borrowers to take leverage on their ADA or other supported assets. The DEX is a highly capital efficient exchange enabling swaps with minimal slippage & fees while providing low-risk yield opportunities to liquidity providers.