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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 to Launch ERC-20 Converter and Cross-Chain Communication for Interoperability Between Networks Including Bitcoin

Cardano founder and IOHK CEO Charles Hoskinson recently announced in his YouTube video that the current roadmap for the Shelley hard fork will be going according to plan, scheduled on July 29, 2020.

The Shelley update code was implemented to the Cardano mainnet on June 30, 2020. However, the Shelley hard fork is expected on July 29. The incentivized testnet (ITN) rewards are to launch on August 3, and the staking functions on August 18, as Cardano’s upcoming milestones.

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.

Cardano’s ERC-20 Converter to be launched

On top of the Shelley hard fork, Cardano is also launching an ERC-20 converter that will allow Ethereum ERC-20 tokens to be transferred from the Ethereum network to Cardano.

“I’m also going to contract a firm on a fixed cost contract to do ERC-20 converter, […] this team is going to go in Ethereum, take all the existing ERC-20 tokens, and build a converter to redeploy them on our testnet once we have the native asset standard deployed.”

This would act as a proof-of-concept of how to import in the ERC-20 token to Cardano’s native asset standard.

Cardano’s Smart Contracts and Dapps

The aim for Plutus foundations is that that will enable people to write rich smart contracts, and build a lot of off-chain projects.

The commercial team and the cFund — its technology ecosystem fund, will be following a strategy called ACID. ACID stands for Adoption, Collaboration, Incentives, including cFund, CII, DCFund, Emurgo, and Deployment (Atlas). Anyone who wants to write a Dapp on Cardano will find themselves following the strategy Cardano made available to them.

“We have this beautiful release cadence with Voltaire, where [it] just keeps evolving, it keeps growing, the funds get larger, the participation will get larger, the innovation management will get more sophisticated, you’ll have a whole class of experts materialized from within the community who are incentivized to participate and improve things.”

Hoskinson mentioned that he would leave Cardano at some point to allow the ecosystem to function in a completely decentralized manner. IOHK’s contract was set to be over in December 2020, but Hoskinson stated that he will not be leaving until “what’s done is done.” Shelley has a few milestones yet to reach, while the next phase, Goguen is still yet to roll out. He added that he would leave Cardano at some point to allow the ecosystem to function in a completely decentralized manner.

Cross-chain communication

Cardano has allocated a cross-chain communication team that is trying to build a network that will allow people to use Hydra to send value to and from other major networks such as Bitcoin and Litecoin, to improve the interoperability between blockchains. This will be enabled by intelligent clients, which are still under development.

Hoskinson mentioned that there will be a next Cardano Summit, Goguen Edition, and will be announcing the date soon. He added,

“In the meantime, hold on to your butts because it’s going to move pretty quickly, […] every month thereafter there’s going to be a crazy cadence of news and a lot of community activity.”

Cardano’s Shelley Hard Fork Countdown Has Begun, Tests Have Been Positive So Far

Cardano founder Charles Hoskison announced today that IOHK’s Director of DevOps Samuel Leathers has initiated the update proposal for Cardano’s Shelley hard fork.

The countdown for the long-awaited Shelley hard fork on Cardano’s main network has begun and will take five days, as scheduled on July 29. Hoskinson said:

“Cardano began in 2015 as a dream. We wanted to build something that could deliver the promises that Bitcoin had back in 2009. Not as an experiment, but as a system that could evolve over time to meet the needs of billions of people and provide an economic identity to those billions of people. With power pushed to the edges, always getting more decentralized and always getting faster, more capable, and ultimately better for us all.”

The hard fork will take Cardano from its Byron era, to Shelley, which will enable Cardano to be more decentralized. The Shelley code was confirmed to have been successfully released on the mainnet on June 30. At the time of the hard fork, Cardano will remain with the Ouroboros Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus, while the staking would begin on August 18, along with the block creation from stake pools.

Hoskinson mentioned that the engineers on the team would be conducting an exhaustive 72-hour burn-in to go through all the checklists before the hard fork. He added, “If all goes well, the update will be endorsed, the fork will occur without delay or disruption on the 29th.”

According to the Cardano founder, the tests seem to be going well, and the hard fork will most likely take place on July 29. Hoskinson reflected, “This is in many ways a small step towards that vision, and in other ways, it’s a giant leap forward because unlike every other update in the history of the project, we are now moving from a static and federated system to a dynamic and decentralized system. Our community has proven beyond a reason of doubt over the last six months that they are well more than capable of taking custody of this dream, and taking it to the next level.”

Cardano will be continuing to rolling out native assets, smart contracts, and overlay protocols, amongst other new capabilities. Hoskinson added that the Shelley hard fork will be the last time Cardano will see an upgrade “this profound.” He stated:

“Cardano is the best cryptocurrency on market when we think about it compared to Bitcoin. As soon as we get native assets and smart contracts, we’re the best cryptocurrency bar none.”

What happens after the Shelley hard fork?

Cardano’s Goguen era, which marks the next period after Shelley, will be the era of implementing smart contracts and enabling decentralized applications (Dapps) on the network. The Goguen era is Cardano’s third development phase, which is expected to start in the third quarter of 2020 with the release of its testnet.

Aimed at developers, the Goguen platform caters to the cohort with the foundation and tools they need to build applications on Cardano. According to Vojvodic, mobile, web, desktop application developers, blockchain protocol developers, embedded developers, fintech developers, and smart contract developers will be able to use Goguen and this will help with the exploration of building alternative environments on the Network and grow the developer community.

When Goguen launches, Cardano will become a multi-asset ledger that allows users to define, forge, and transfer their custom tokens on the network. The Goguen update will also bring applications including Plutus and Marlowe contracts.

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’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 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).

Cardano (ADA) Price Surges Over 75 Percent as the Crypto Becomes the 8th Largest by Market Cap

Bitcoin has made a slight recovery in the past 24 hours, gaining over 3 percent and is now trading at $18,458. Altcoins, including Ethereum, Chainlink, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Polkadot, and Cardano have seen a considerable climb in the past 24 hours.

Cardano has been trading up by over 12.8 percent in the past week, and up 62 percent in the past two weeks. In just under a month, Cardano’s native cryptocurrency, ADA, has surged by over 75 percent.

Apart from the stellar performance from Stellar Lumens and Ripple’s XRP tokens, ADA’s price has had a substantial surge compared to the other altcoins. Cardano’s ADA market capitalization has also ballooned as its price sat comfortably above $0.16 for some time. Cardano currently ranks eighth by market capitalization, according to CoinMarketCap.

Cardano is currently trading at $0.162899 and has slightly retraced by 1.5 percent in the past hour. Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) the blockchain development company behind the Cardano blockchain has recently released updates for Goguen, its next phase in the path for full decentralization for the network.

The Goguen era, which marks the next period after Shelley, will be the era of implementing smart contracts and enabling decentralized applications (Dapps) on the network.

The Goguen update will not prioritize ADA transactions and contracts over other tokens issued on Cardano, unlike Ethereum; where the blockchain prioritizes ETH over other ERC-20 tokens on the network. Developers would be able to use Cardano at ease, as tokens on the network will inherit all security and smart contract behaviors of Cardano’s native crypto, ADA.

Developers from IOHK mentioned the introduction of native Cardano tokens, and an ERC-20 converter to swap tokens from the Ethereum network to the Cardano network.

Charles Hoskinson, the CEO of IOHK and the founder of Cardano previously mentioned 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.

Cardano Successfully Changes K Parameter to 500, Blocks Assigned to Community Pools Increased by 6%

Cardano has successfully changed its k parameter to 500, from 150 on Dec. 6, as announced by Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), the blockchain development company behind the Cardano blockchain.

The k parameter on the Cardano blockchain is the reward scheme that sets the “soft-cap” on the pool size. Assuming rational participants and no external factors, at equilibrium, the Cardano stakeholders’ best response behavior converges to k pools of equal size. This would ensure the delivery of the same level of rewards per unit of stake to their delegates.

Cardano’s k parameter was previously set at k=150, when the Shelley update was deployed on the Cardano mainnet earlier this year. When k=150, the pool size was limited to 210 million ADA. After Shelley was launched on the Cardano mainnet, the rise of interest in the community led to more pools, and IOHK then decided that the k parameter needed to be adjusted to a higher value.

IOHK also decided to increase the percentage of blocks assigned to Cardano community pools, increasing by 6% while entering into epoch 234. The blockchain development company explained that this was due to operational reasons, due to St. Nicholas day. The usual rate of increase for Cardano’s community pools is 2% per epoch. IOHK’s announcement read:

“So we have now successfully moved k to 500 – #Decentralization continues apace! Some of you may also have noticed that the percentage of blocks assigned to #Cardano community pools has increased today by 6% instead of the usual rate of 2% per epoch.”

IOHk also noted that the d parameter will also be paused during the holiday season, which remains at over 68%. When the d parameter reaches 100%, the Cardano blockchain will be completely decentralized. The d parameter percentage would be increased after the holidays, in January 2021. IOHK further explained:

“For operational reasons, we have delivered this larger increase early (well, it is St Nicholas’ day – the ‘inspiration’ for Santa Claus…) and will now pause d at 68% over the holiday season, before continuing to raise this percentage in early January. Happy K=500 day!”

The Cardano blockchain has entered a new era, epoch 234, which would enable Cardano’s community stake pools to be responsible for 64% of all block production. This upgrade would open up new opportunities for more stake pools on the Cardano blockchain. The k parameter would see a new modification in March 2021 and is expected to be raised to 1,000.