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Cardano Working With SA Blockchain Alliance to Free African Enterprise from Politically Entrenched Legacy Banking Systems

The Cardano Foundation has partnered with the South African National Blockchain Alliance (SANBA) in a bid to expand blockchain adoption and bring financial inclusion to the country of 59 million.

According to an announcement by the Foundation on April 7, Cardano and SANBA, a fast-tracking blockchain initiative with government support, aim to promote socio-economic growth in South Africa by empowering people and enterprise against legacy financial systems through blockchain technology.

Breaking Ties with Legacy Systems Entrenched in Politics

Cardano highlights the South African market as a potential launching pad to building a distributed network across the country that amalgamates the networks used by government authorities, institutions and enterprises.

Per the release, “Blockchain technology lets developing nations break ties with legacy banking systems, costly middlemen and entrenched political structures.”

Due to the entangled history of African financial infrastructure and its ties to corruption, Cardano cites blockchain technology as a way to guarantee greater transparency and reduce illicit behaviour.

Together SANBA and Cardano aim to build a digital identity infrastructure that will comply with KYC and AML, as well as boost developing economies through digital currencies.

Laying the Foundation For Africa

South Africa appears to be the first step for Cardano on the continent, as the release stated that the Foundation hopes to boost the entire African FinTech ecosystem.

Last year, the Foundation began its expansion efforts in Africa to build blockchain governance with the aim of future-proofing the continents’s sustainable growth and development which it cites as being “in line with its mission to shape legislation and commercial standards.”

Cardano’s Shelley Mainnet Code Launch at Virtual Summit Could be a Catalyst for ADA Price Rally

Cardano (ADA) price has shown a bearish trend in the past few days, according to on-chain data. However, Cardano has been the third best-performing cryptocurrency in the top 30 according to market capitalization in terms of price gain in the past month, behind Crypto.com, and VeChain.

Cardano describes itself as a third-generation blockchain platform, aiming to significantly improve shortcomings of the first generation, Bitcoin, and the second generation, Ethereum, including smart contracts.

The IOHK team, one of the leading entities contributing to the development of Cardano, is taking ADA to its next milestone. Two teams of developers from IOHK have been developing two different systems of the staking protocol, including the Byron-derived version, which is currently in use, and a Haskell-based Shelley system.

Taking on a scientific approach, Cardano has learned the limitations of the two prior generations. According to Charles Hoskinson, the founder of IOHK as well as one of the co-founders of Ethereum, he understands the importance of the long-term evolution of the platform in areas such as scalability, governance, and extensibility when making decisions around architecture.

The Shelley upgrade

Prior to the bearish slump, Cardano’s ADA cryptocurrency has risen around 50% since late May 2020, in light of the news of its Shelley upgrade. The Shelley mainnet is a decentralized network of community nodes operating on a proof-of-stake consensus protocol, with less central governance coming from the developers. In other words, the Cardano ecosystem is moving from a centralized network to a distributed network system.

As the anticipation for Cardano to introduce its upcoming Shelley mainnet, ADA’s price has benefited from the announcement and successful testnet before its launch. The launch of the Cardano Shelley mainnet remains on schedule, and IOHK is already in the final and crucial phase, with no major bugs found so far.

Ethereum killer to be announced?

IOHK will be hosting a virtual summit on July 2 – 3 for the launch of Cardano’s Shelley code. The virtual event will allow participants to attend free of charge, and according to Hoskinson, there will be a lot of “cool” announcements during the summit.

One of the new “cool” announcements to be expected is the new multi-asset standard from Cardano, which is said to be much superior to Ethereum’s ERC20 standard. Hoskinson recently presented Prism, an identity solution that uses decentralized IDs, to compete with products from Microsoft.

A new roadmap for Cardano’s developments will also be presented, as well as a presentation of how Cardano can be used commercially. These new announcements could jumpstart a new rally for ADA price. With a new range of commercial uses to be presented by Cardano, further crypto adoption could be expected.

Cardano joins Hyperledger Consortium

Earlier this month, IOHK announced that the company has joined the Hyperledger Consortium, an open-source community focused on developing a set of frameworks for enterprise blockchains. Hyperledger consortium has more than 250 member companies, with industry leaders in the financial services, technology, and other related fields.

IOHK will be collaborating with other companies in the blockchain ecosystem, to expand its interoperability with the other projects in the consortium.

Charles Hoskinson to Airdrop Kanye Coin and Pierce Coin to Demonstrate Cardano’s Multi-Asset Standard

With the recent new announcements of US presidential candidates, Kanye West, and Brock Pierce, crypto venture capitalist, and former child star, Cardano’s Charles Hoskinson made new announcements.

Just one more day to go with the availability of participants being able to interact with the Shelley mainnet launched on June, 30; Charles Hoskinson, the founder, and CEO of Input Output (IOHK), the blockchain engineering firm behind the Cardano blockchain, took it to his “Ask me anything” (AMA) session on YouTube, addressing the recent news on the US Presidential candidates, Kanye West and Brock Pierce.

“If it’s not a joke, when Cardano has native assets, to demonstrate the power uniqueness of native assets, we will issue Kanye Coin, and the circulation will be 1 token for each vote that Kanye gets in the election.”

He added that they could be collector’s items and Cardano will airdrop them proportionally to all the ADA holders. “We wish you very well, Kanye,” he said.

Backing Kanye West’s wish to run for president is technology multi-billionaire Elon Musk, who tweeted a reply to Kanye’s post. He stipulated enthusiastically that the American rapper had his full support.

In addition to the Kanye Coin, Hoskinson mentioned that he is also old friends with crypto venture capitalist Brock Pierce, and he is committing to doing the same for Pierce. The Founder and CEO of IOHK mentioned that it is a good way of demonstrating how multi-asset standard works, and connections through real-life events. This will require an oracle, and Cardano will look to build one to get it running, hopefully before the election, said Hoskinson.

Charles Hoskinson’s Surprise AMA July 6, 2020 on YouTube.

The multi-asset standard is expected to be released within 120 days, as announced at the recent Cardano Virtual Summit Shelley Edition. The event was held on July 2-3, with a massive turnout of about 10,000 participants, according to Hoskinson.

“We got 120 days to kick it into overdrive, I don’t like to lose. I like to win. […] We have the momentum and the wins at our back, and if we really commit and push in with the community in the ecosystem, we’re going to wake up at the end of the year and it’s going to be inevitable and I’m going to be able to make that tweet—GG, V. Then, we go for number 1.”

To have a prediction market in place, Cardano could leverage the cFund, its technology ecosystem fund launched alongside Wave Financial, with investments made globally with a typical size of $250,000-$500,000. Participants can make predictions of which coin will have a higher circulation—Kanye Coin or Pierce Coin.

The fund will total in $20 million which will provide money for companies and projects in the Cardano ecosystem. IOHK will be committing to half of the fund, $10 million, while Wave will be raising the other half.

Cardano’s potential “own monetary policy”

According to Hoskinson, Cardano is likely to conduct two experiments, one on ERGO, and a likely a joint venture between ERGO and Emurgo, as the company is almost finished with its due diligence. The other experiment would be a basket coin, which is made up of a collection of pre-existing stablecoins, hold them on reserve on a cryptocurrency, and then use an oracle to “inject that basket on Cardano.”

The projects are still in their early days, and the stablecoin could be under its own monetary policy rather than the US dollar.

Cardano Announces Shelley Mainnet Launch for a More Secure and Fully Decentralized Future Leading to the “Voltaire” Era

When is the Cardano Shelley era coming?

The blockchain engineering company behind Cardano, Input-Output (IOHK) announced in a blog post that the Shelley code was successfully implemented in Cardano’s mainnet. This announcement marks the biggest upgrade to the Cardano blockchain so far, with the deployment of the Shelley code confirmed to have been successfully released on the mainnet on June 30.

According to IOHK, Cardano is taking a step closer to full decentralization, and participants on the network will be able to interact with the mainnet from July 7. Holders of the Cardano cryptocurrency, ADA can transfer their funds to the upgraded Shelley wallet, for staking rewards on the mainnet. These announcements were made prior to the Cardano Virtual Summit, held on July 2-3, 2020.

Starting off the Cardano Virtual Summit, Charles Hoskinson, the CEO of IOHK and co-founder of Ethereum gave an introductory speech to kick off the virtual event.

Charles Hoskinson, CEO of IOHK at the Cardano Virtual Summit: Shelley Edition 2020

Cardano released a detailed outline of how it will implement its smart contracts using the extended unspent transaction output (UTXO) model. Referring to the update made to Cardano, Hoskinson said, “we found that the things that go on the blockchain are important as things that are off the chain.” He further added that the listing experience and for issuing Cardano will be “beautiful and easy.”

A new level of security—Ouroboros Praos

Cardano went through a hard fork on February 20, which switched the mainnet from the original consensus protocol Ouroboros Classic to Ouroboros BFT, which is a slimmed-down version of the protocol in preparation for the switch to Praos. Ouroboros Praos is another milestone for Cardano, as major steps and advances were taken with the implementation of this proof-of-stake consensus protocol.

The previous two consensus protocols, Ouroborus Classic and Ouroboros BFT allowed users to calculate who the next block leader would be. This would create a significant security loophole, where bad actors would be able to know who to attack, possibly with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. However, Cardano’s new consensus protocol Ouroboros Praos provides a major security advantage, by not making this information public, only the next block leader would know of his or her position, making it harder for bad actors to attack, not knowing who to target specifically.

Hoskinson emphasized that users should not suffer when mistakes are made on the technical side, but rather, the protocol should protect users from attackers.

Charles Hoskinson said in a press release shared with Blockchain.News:

“The community has always been central in the development of Cardano, so we’re excited to be entering a new phase of the blockchain, with users more able than ever to participate in and shape the network.”

Prism: A decentralized digital identity system without the government involved

According to Hoskinson, the teams behind Cardano realized early on that value and assets “were not enough,” and since presented Atala Prism, a decentralized identity management system. Prism is an additional product member of the Cardano ecosystem and aims to provide “unbanked” people a blockchain-based economic ID and boosting consumer data privacy and security with “self-sovereign” digital identities.

As BigTech intermediaries usually are able to access, store, and share personal data, Prism aims to combat the growing issue of cybersecurity and data privacy risks. Prism enables users to be able to create and control their own digital identities without third parties, intermediaries, or government parties involved.

Prism could operate in regulated environments, as a platform for all kinds of medical records to be used in the supply chain and to identify people and to determine whether counterparties are credible to work with. IOHK has been exploring cross-blockchain standards, CSS, HTML, and built a framework on top of Cardano. Prism will have authenticated addresses, for people to withdraw funds from those authenticated accounts, and will also satisfy the Financial Action Task Force (FATF)’s Travel Rule.

The future of Cardano: Full decentralization and the “Voltaire era”

The Shelley hard fork, a remaining step towards full decentralization on the Cardano blockchain is expected on July 29, which marks another significant milestone for IOHK.

IOHK recently announced that it is launching a technology ecosystem fund—cFund, with Wave Financial Group, with investments made globally with a typical size of $250,000-$500,000. In partnership with the crypto asset management fund Wave, the fund will total in $20 million which will provide money for companies and projects in the Cardano ecosystem. IOHK will be committing to half of the fund, $10 million, while Wave will be raising the other half.

Hoskinson spoke briefly about the “Voltaire” era of Cardano, which has the goal for the Cardano network to become truly decentralized, which requires the distributed infrastructure introduced in the Shelley era. Hoskinson added:

“The Voltaire testnet, launching along with Shelley, will get funding that they need, grow the voting mechanics, get funding where it needs to go.”

Cardano expects the future of the network to be in the hands of the community, “who will have everything they need to grow and evolve Cardano from the secure, decentralized basis established by IOHK,” according to the Cardano roadmap.

Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson Addresses an Alleged ADA Scam in China

Scammers are capitalizing on the recent success of Cardano’s cryptocurrency, ADA, and using it for their own personal gain. For the first time in over a year, ADA has moved above $0.10, and has picked up by over 200 percent.

According to a video footage shot by cryptocurrency podcaster and founder of Boxmining Michael Gu, a group of farmers in China is being hustled with Cardano and ADA. The fraudsters, operating under the name of “Asian Dragons,” was purported to be seen advertising Cardano merch and ADA. In the video, one can see Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson plastered at the front for the audience to see.

Since the incident, Cardano Foundation and CEO Charles Hoskinson have come out publicly and addressed the incident, making it absolutely clear that they are not in any way associated with the cryptocurrency sales pitch.

Hoskinson even went further and filmed a YouTube video, inputting his two cents on scams and illegal activities. He states that he has also seen every ICO scam under the moon, as he has been in the business for quite some time. Hoskinson shares that it is unfortunate that his hard work was plagiarised and dumbed down to a mere marketing scam:

“You work five years on something, you put your heart and soul into it, you just have a giant event that 10,000 people attend. Then you see floating around Telegram, Twitter, some video — some scammers in China using my face, our company’s logo, the Cardano Foundation’s logo who have absolutely no affiliation with us.”

As the altcoin ADA skyrocketed in the month of July, market experts have disclosed that it is the highest price level it’s been at since June 2019. Currently, ADA is experiencing a 200% year-to-date gain, making it the biggest news on crypto markets. ADA’s counterpart Bitcoin, which is the top cryptocurrency on crypto markets, only saw a surge of 30% this year.

On top of his recent success with his blockchain firm, Input Output (IOHK) CEO Hoskinson also spoke up in support of Kanye West’s recent announcement that the rap star wished to run for presidency. Hoskinson took to his YouTube platform once again and said,

“If it’s not a joke, when Cardano has native assets, to demonstrate the power uniqueness of native assets, we will issue Kanye Coin, and the circulation will be 1 token for each vote that Kanye gets in the election.”

Cardano Flags Suspicious Investment Claims of Individuals Posing as BTCNEXT Employees

The Cardano Foundation recently announced on their forum that they have received reports of suspicious claims from a group of individuals operating under the company BTCNEXT, a cryptocurrency exchange located in the Caribbean.

The individuals claimed to work for the Caribbean crypto exchange and declared that investments made with them were safe. They backed their claims by claiming to know the core head members of the Cardano Foundation.

While BTCNEXT has not yet personally come forward to speak about the subject matter, Cardano was quick to refute these claims. The blockchain company made it clear that they had nothing to do with the individuals, and urged all ADA investors not to believe false claims from third-party entities claiming affiliation with Cardano:

“We strongly urge you not to send your ADA to any third-party entities which claim to have partnerships with Cardano or officials from the entities within the Cardano ecosystem. We will never ask you to send your funds (assets) to us.”

The crypto foundation went on to reiterate that they took scams and fraudulent information seriously and that this was a huge violation to the crypto community. This is not the first time that Cardano Foundation has come forward to regulate crypto scams. Since their official cryptocurrency’s success on the crypto market, various scammers have capitalized on Cardano’s success and used the foundation’s name to gain trust from their victims to carry out fraudulent schemes.

CEO of Cardano Foundation Charles Hoskinson has addressed this matter publicly and expressed his disgust:

“You work five years on something, you put your heart and soul into it, you just have a giant event that 10,000 people attend. Then you see floating around Telegram, Twitter, some video — some scammers in China using my face, our company’s logo, the Cardano Foundation’s logo who have absolutely no affiliation with us.”

Cardano Addresses Fake ADA Giveaway Claims on YouTube

Cardano CEO Charles Hoskinson has once again come forward to address the issue of cryptocurrency scams targeting his ADA empire and has been quick to refute any associations phishers made with the Cardano Foundation.

Phishing for Money

Recently, there have been cases where ads run by scammers on YouTube promoted fake ADA giveaways. A way cyber fraudsters operated was to reproduce the speeches of important crypto figures such as Vitalik Buterin, Charles Hoskinson, and Changpeng Zhao (respectively the co-creator of Ethereum, the CEO founder of Cardano, and the CEO of Binance Exchange). In the video, there was also an airdrop or a cashback link that was promoted. Scammers often would then link their own wallet address in order to collect the funds.

On July 12, Hoskinson tweeted that it has come to his attention that a scam floating around YouTube was using his conference keynote to promote a giveaway. He emphasized that it was indeed a scam, and to whoever came across it to report the fraudulent link to YouTube. Speaking on behalf of Cardano Foundation, he also added that his firm will take legal action if needed be, against the cyber phishers. The upload has since been removed by YouTube regulators.

How to Not Fall Prey to Money Launderers

In an official blog post by Cardano Foundation, the blockchain company addressed the issue of online scamming and fraudulent individuals who associated themselves with Cardano. This dilemma seems to be on the rise recently. The crypto company explained to their audience how to track fraudulent claims, and added that they would never ask someone to send one own’s funds to them. They also advised ADA investors to be careful:

“We strongly urge you not to send your ADA to any third-party entities which claim to have partnerships with Cardano or officials from the entities within the Cardano ecosystem.”

Cardano Foundation on the Rise

It appears as though Cardano has been hit with a lot of scams since their recent success with their altcoin ADA. The cryptocurrency skyrocketed this July, surprising crypto market experts. It is the highest price level the ADA has seen since its fluctuation in 2019. Currently, ADA is experiencing a 200% year-to-date gain, making it the biggest news on crypto markets. Cardano’s ADA cryptocurrency has been one of the top-performing tokens this year and has become the sixth-largest crypto according to CoinMarketCap.

Cardano Launches Project Catalyst—One Step Closer to Fully Decentralized Era Voltaire

IOHK, the blockchain engineering company behind Cardano has launched “Project Catalyst” in part of the network’s transformation into a self-sustaining system. Cardano aims to build a set of governance tools and processes that puts the future of the network in every ADA holder.

A lot of developments have been made since Cardano’s network has forked from Byron to Shelley, in anticipation of more decentralized milestones to come. Cardano’s last and final phase — Voltaire, aims to explore utilities, concepts, voting, and experiments on the network to reach a “fair” consensus for Cardano’s native crypto ADA holders. Voltaire enables the Cardano community to decide on software updates, technical improvements, and project funding.

IOHK announced that the launch of the decentralized governance program Project Catalyst for Cardano has been launched, kicking off with the first exploratory phase, Fund 1. The first exploratory phase consists of 50 volunteers that would support the design of the program structure. IOHK explained:

“The challenge set for this first Fund 1 phase is to gather ideas and proposals on how to encourage developers and entrepreneurs to build dApps and businesses on top of Cardano, within the next six months.”

Cardano will also be exploring areas related to decentralized democracy, voting, and governance, and how these features could be implemented. An incubation space for members’ funding proposals will be voted on in the next round later this summer, as part of Fund 2.

IOHK elaborated that the Project Catalyst would focus on making the treasury stem a reality while sustaining the Cardano community’s democratic culture.

Cardano’s Project Catalyst will ensure the funds are used well, and to enable innovation in the decentralized network. IOHK previously stated that the company is building a decentralized financial system, to address the world’s needs — starting with Voltaire.

Cardano is currently in the Shelley hybrid era

As Cardano is still on track to become fully decentralized, Cardano’s founder Charles Hoskinson previously explained Cardano’s state and introduced Cardano’s D parameter.

Cardano’s D parameter, which stands for “decentralization,” is currently set to 1. The network will be fully decentralized when D equals to 0.

Unique to Cardano, the network will never have to run another hard fork again, with its hard fork combinator, allowing Cardano to run both sets of ledger rules. The hard fork combinator combines two protocols into one protocol, while the first protocol runs for a while and switches to the second protocol.

With the hard fork combinator, Cardano will be able to implement the Goguen style features including native assets, and Plutus foundations.

Cardano’s Shelley Mainnet Enters Epoch 3 With Two Major Milestones Accomplished

The Cardano Shelley mainnet has already reached two significant milestones ahead of epoch 3 — reaching the target of 1,000 registered stake pools and having the first block produced by an external party other than Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) and Emurgo.

Cardano’s Shelley entered epoch 3 just recently and has witnessed two significant milestones in epoch 2. With the start of epoch 3, external stake pools were authorized to validate blocks for the first time.

The first block produced by an external stake pool was by “1percentpool.eu.” As of press time, Cardano has already over 75 unique stake pools that have produced blocks. Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson added, “It’s truly extraordinary to see all this come together.”

External stake pool operators would be able to produce blocks from epoch 3 and other epochs that come after, and eventually, all blocks will be produced by external stake pools as Cardano transitions to be fully decentralized. Charles Hoskinson recently announced Cardano’s first block produced by an external stake pool in excitement:

“This is the first moment where they actually do that, on a real live production mainnet. So cool. I don’t want to forget this moment, it’s a big thing for me. I hope it’s a big thing for you guys too.”

Epoch 3 is the beginning of the era where community-driven stake pools will validate 10 percent of all blocks, and the federated nodes will create the other 90 percent. Federated nodes will decreasingly produce blocks as Cardano moves from its current federal system into a fully decentralized network.

The second milestone, as explained by Charles Hoskinson, is that the Cardano mainnet has now over 1,000 registered stake pools, which is much quicker than expected. Hoskinson stated:

“I think we just crossed the threshold of 1,000 registered stake pools. And these are coming down a lot faster than I expected them. […] It is amazing to see decentralization so quickly. And it gonna be so cool to see actual performance data come and be able to apply this non-myopic stuff that we developed out of Oxford into the system.”

Cardano also recently launched Project Catalyst — a new experimental treasury system combining proposal and voting procedures for Cardano’s last and final phase, Voltaire. IOHK elaborated that the Project Catalyst would focus on making the treasury stem a reality while sustaining the Cardano community’s democratic culture.

Cardano Will be “Extremely Competitive” in the DeFi Space With Upcoming Goguen Rollout

Cardano’s Shelley upgrade has been released over a month ago, and the next phase, Goguen, is expected to launch in September 2020. IOHK CEO Charles Hoskinson laid out the roadmap for September, including multiple performance improvements, and new wallet functions.

What can we expect from Goguen?

Cardano’s next phase, Goguen consists of three main features, including native assets, the Plutus Foundation, and the Plutus Application Framework. According to Hoskinson, the upcoming release of Goguen would make Cardano “extremely competitive” in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space. Stablecoins, oracles, and decentralized exchanges are part of the roadmap.

Native assets take Cardano from a single asset ledger to a multi-asset ledger. The Plutus Foundation takes the extended unspent transaction output (UTXO) and the Plutus model into Cardano. This means that smart contracts can now be a fully programmable experience. The Plutus Application Framework leverages 35 years of best practices and knowledge in the Haskell ecosystem, as explained by Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson.

The Goguen team has been working on the specifications and tasks for the upcoming launch. The release of Shelley made it easier for the next era, Goguen, to begin its work with native assets, and the partnership to work on the Plutus Application Framework.

Cardano recently released Daedalus version 2.2, its progress has been confirmed by the Cardano community. Hoskinson explained that through Cardano’s full-node wallet, Daedalus, IOHK is currently working on multisig, the hardware wallet center, and delegation portfolios. Hoskinson added that there are plans to incorporate Yubikeys, Qr code center, and shielded paper wallets into the ecosystem.

Hoskinson introduced a user-driven concept to benefit smaller stake pools, which he calls “delegation portfolios.” In the Daedalus wallet interface, there are small tiles that represent stake pools, where users will be able to select the ratios and different stake pools to delegate to, which then creates a portfolio.

Staying competitive in the DeFi space

Hoskinson stated that the rollout of the new features in Goguen will enable Cardano to be extremely competitive in the DeFi sector. He added that IOHK has been in discussion with partners to identify the first useful use cases including stablecoins, oracles, and decentralized exchanges. He said:

“Once you have these three things, we are extremely competitive for DeFi. There will be a lot of cool things that will make Cardano the desired platform for a beautiful DeFi portfolio.”

With the upcoming new features to be rolled out, Cardano will also focus on marketing activities. Anticipating a strong pipeline, Hoskinson said in excitement:

“2020 is going to close very strong. 2021 is going to open up and it is going to be a clash of the titans. There’s a lot of great competitors out there like Polkadot, Tezos, EOS, Algorand. […] We have a great strategy, and people are going to be really excited to be building on 35 years of legacy, and with some of the brightest computer scientists in the world.”

Polkadot has received a lot of attention from the crypto community lately, as it recently became the sixth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, overtaking Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Cardano (ADA).