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Cardano Releases New Daedalus Wallet for the Shelley Testnet Ahead of Shelley Hard Fork

Input Output (IOHK), the blockchain engineering company behind Cardano has released the new Daedalus wallet for the Shelley testnet, less than a week after the Cardano Virtual Summit.

The new version 1.2.0-STN1, enables users to try out the new functions brought by the new Shelley update in a sandboxed environment using test-ADA. New features, including delegation, stake pools, and rewards distribution will also be available in the sandboxed environment to simplify the staking process.

IOHK announced in a tweet:

“The new Daedalus wallet (1.2.0-STN1) is now available from the Cardano testnets site; remember, for your own security, only download Daedalus from official IOHK or Cardano sites.”

With new delegation features added to the Daedalus test wallet, users on the Shelley testnet can create a Shelley wallet, and leverage testnet Faucet to delegate ADA from their wallet to a stake pool.

As for the weeks ahead, the new Daedalus testnet functionality will be added during the Shelley roll out, according to IOHK. These features include the expansion of stake pool functionality with the ability to display stake pool ranking based on the amount an ADA user plans to delegate.

The addition of support will also be made for the transfer of funds from the old generation—Byron wallets to the new Shelley generation wallets, as well as claiming incentivized testnet rewards.

Users will be able to earn testnet ADA with the new wallet, to see how the real rewards will work in the mainnet later this year.

The Shelley update and code was implemented to the Cardano mainnet just a week ago, 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.

IOHK mentioned that later this week, a full video would be available as an in-depth tutorial introducing the new features.

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

The Shelley hard fork marks the remaining step towards full decentralization on the Cardano blockchain. 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.

Charles Hoskinson: Elon Musk Could Have an Opinion on the Cardano Network with its Delegated Democracy Governance Model

Input Output (IOHK) CEO and founder of Cardano Charles Hoskinson recently discussed the future of governance on the Cardano network in his YouTube video. The problem with governance is when large actors are able to decide, they could transform a protocol into something that would preserve the monopolies they already have.

Regarding the issues of governance, as explained by Hoskinson, those who pitch in the most money would have the most influence and control over the network. To differentiate the Cardano network to other blockchain networks, Hoskinson said:

“Cardano isn’t just something like the Linux Kernel, not just a network protocol, not just a ledger protocol, not just a consensus protocol, Cardano is you. At the end of the day, it’s your privacy, it’s your money, it’s your voting, it’s your property. It’s been designed to facilitate all kinds of cool stuff in govtech, including normal industries including supply chain, medical records. We built it to be a general-purpose programmable ledger.”

The Voltaire era: Exploration experimentation

Hoskinson mentioned that there should be a good system that decides who pays, who gets to make decisions in a “fair” way. With Voltaire, Cardano’s exploration experimentation phase, it allows the network to explore utilities, concepts, and experiments that allow the network to decide how to decide and spend funds in a “fair” and productive way for Cardano’s cryptocurrency ADA holders.

According to the IOHK CEO, Cardano is aiming to add new concepts every 6-8 weeks. Hoskinson added that Cardano has partnered with Submittable, a company that allows people to submit ballots and proposals, which is used in Cardano’s submission phase, which he will elaborate more on at the end of July.

Cardano is also currently finalizing with another vendor, to process ballots that are to be “scrutinized” by the community and experts, and incentives will be given in return. This phase would be a “soft filter,” where the community and experts would not outright reject ballots but will attach metadata with thoughts. The submission phase would most likely to be ready in late July, early August, while voting and registration would be ready in August or September, according to the Cardano founder.

“This process would rank ballots and would be presented to the end-user in some form of a story. This would enable Cardano to develop an expert class, a community. This allows you to build a reputation, and social credit up with people within the community even if the user does not hold a lot of ADA.”

Elon Musk could have an opinion on the Cardano network

Bitcoin expert Andreas Antonopoulos, who wrote “Mastering Bitcoin,” does not actually hold a lot of BTC. However, he has an enormous amount of influence in the system as a whole and his opinions are well regarded, according to the IOHK CEO.

Hoskinson mentioned, “Similarly, we can build up an expert class within Cardano and use a lot of the delegated democracy systems that Cardano has, where ADA holders can delegate voice and power to various people. These people could include people outside of the ecosystem where the network could incentivize to give his or her opinion.

“For example, maybe we can convince Elon Musk to come in and have an opinion on something especially on the network side, or you know, pick your favorite person.”

After the soft filter, there is a two-stage voting round that Cardano is currently working on which will most probably be available next year. This two-stage process would require a preference vote, and the second, being the threshold vote as part of Cardano’s choice architecture. This would allow the separation of funding priorities and receiving funds.

The Cardano network and the Voltaire side chain

The Cardano network and Voltaire side chain are completely independent systems, Cardano’s data is injected into Voltaire. After the voting is complete on the Voltaire system, the data will be injected into Cardano. This process over time would become fully automated, and over time, will be regulated by a smart contract. The Voltaire side chain can be rapidly updated, including the addition of new capability and exotic voting systems.

Hoskinson argued that exchanges should be excluded as part of the voting system, as they do not own ADA, and they should not be able to just use the fact they have a lot of it to influence the democracy of the system. It’s not up to the exchanges to decide the future of Cardano, it’s the people who own ADA to decide that.

Registration to vote while excluding exchanges can be done through a token locking mechanism, as exchanges are on-demand accounts, which are not allowed to lock their tokens due to regulatory requirements.

Hoskinson said that it is still under consideration whether Voltaire will stay a side chain, off-chain, or Cardano will go through a hard fork where all the voting mechanics will go on-chain.

Beyond becoming the best smart contract platform, and the most decentralized cryptocurrency, Hoskinson added that this governance model could be a major contribution to cryptocurrencies.

“If we can do this, I think Cardano will replace Bitcoin in the long term. […] This is an evolution in a box, we can use this system to be around for 50 years, 100 years, 200 years. […] We don’t know what the world is going to look like in 2030; what matters to us as an ecosystem and as a protocol is we have certainty that whatever evolutionary machinery we have, the system’s going to be able to evolve to meet the needs and stay relevant in 2030.

Bitcoin and Ethereum do not have this property, and no other blockchain nor crypto has this, Hoskinson concluded that this is a “great differentiator.”

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 Charles Hoskinson: Accountability of Funding from Voltaire Does Not Need to be Centralized

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson recently explained in a video update regarding the accountability of the funding from Voltaire. Cardano’s Voltaire era would allow the network to become a fully self-sustaining system.

As part of this journey, Cardano has previously introduced a treasury system combining proposal and voting procedures—Project Catalyst. A treasury system would enable a continuous source of funding to develop the Cardano blockchain. Decentralized software updates would guarantee the process is decentralized and will have open participation for fair voting on system updates., where all transaction fees would be pooled to provide funds for future development activities after the voting process.

The voting system will allow the network to explore utilities, concepts, and experiments on how the network will agree on a “fair” and productive way for Cardano’s cryptocurrency ADA holders.

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

Voltaire is a side chain, which is currently independent of Cardano’s main chain. Currently, Cardano’s data is injected into Voltaire, and after the voting is complete on the Voltaire system, the data would be injected back into Cardano. This process over time would become fully automated, and over time, will be regulated by a smart contract. The Voltaire side chain can be rapidly updated, including the addition of new capability and exotic voting systems.

In August, the Voltaire team, responsible for the voting system, started its process of signing up voters and testing during the month.

Hoskinson said, “The whole point of Voltaire is to resolve the ‘who pays’ and ‘who decides’,” and currently, Cardano lacks agency. Charles Hoskinson explained that Cardano does not have the ability to judge the return on the intention for the grants that it gives out.

Cardano has broken the process down into a multi-stage process, which will then evolve into the final ballot, and voting. This then brings into the question of who is accountable for the final ballot. He added:

“The thing that people aren’t getting is that you actually do not need centralization for the ‘accountable’ step. What you can do is on a case-by-case basis, ballot-by-ballot, you can fund both entities at the same time.”

He explained that a third party could come in, for example, the Cardano Foundation, PwC, or a prominent member of the community or a large corporation, could act as an oversight, ensuring weekly or monthly reports to be produced. The third-party could also audit the code and verify claims being made are there.

For larger projects, Hoskinson believes that it is essential to have this mechanism, a counterparty who will hold the person receiving funding accountable. He added, “The good news is, this is a whole industry.”

Hoskinson also announced that Cardano is looking to hire a dedicated product manager to think about the business and social structures that are required for this. The Cardano founder also revealed that Input Output Global is also going to ask for a renewal of its contract.

Cardano Deploys Allegra Hard Fork Seamlessly Through HFC Technology, ADA Rallies 12%

Cardano has successfully reached epoch 236, and with this new epoch, the network has gone through a protocol update, which includes the Allegra hard fork. The Allegra hard fork, however, is unlike other hard forks on other blockchains, as Cardano’s transition has been enabled by the hard fork combinator (HFC) technology.

Allegra refers to the addition of the token locking feature for the Cardano protocol update that has been deployed on the mainnet. As part of on-chain voting on Cardano, tokens must be locked up before voting can happen, to avoid attacks.

HFC enables the blockchain network to be able to transition smoothly and deploy the hard fork ahead of time. The Allegra hard fork is part of the next transition for the Cardano blockchain from the Shelley era to the Goguen and Voltaire era.

Most blockchain hard forks are considered as a “traumatic event,” which could cause a short break in block production. However, Cardano handles hard forks automatically, without stopping block production. Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), the blockchain development company behind Cardano announced:

“The transition is all enabled by our unique hard fork combinator technology. Battle-proven (and yet unscarred) it is now being deployed for the third time. First, the #Byron reboot. Then #Shelley. Today, ‘Allegra’ brings token locking as part of the #Goguen roll out.”

Cardano uses the HFC to automatically preserve the history of previous blocks, which allows the protocol to be upgraded without “radical interference to the chain.” The previous state does not vanish, but is also extended to include new capabilities. The network combines the original blocks that comply with the current block production rules with the new blocks with the new block production rules.

One of the main features the Allegra hard fork has introduced to the Cardano blockchain is the token locking mechanism, which is part of Voltaire. The token locking mechanism is essential for Project Catalyst, the treasury system for Cardano. The treasury system would ensure that there would be a continuous source of funding to develop the Cardano blockchain.

Project Catalyst would ensure that the funds are used well and that they would enable innovation on the Cardano blockchain. Cardano’s native currency ADA holders would automatically have voting rights, also depending on how many ADA is held in their wallets.

To enable more accountability and visibility of the financial processes on the blockchain, Cardano aims also to add transaction metadata, to add additional information including sender and receiver details, conditions, and time of processing. The addition of metadata is also a significant upgrade for Goguen.

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.