Major Cardano News from Q1 and Q2, 2022

5 min readAug 4, 2022

“Making the world work better for all” are the first words you see when you head to the Cardano website. With a goal like that, the current chaos in the crypto markets is somewhat unimportant to the builders behind Cardano. For them, what’s important has always been building a blockchain that can help the world; one that is powerful and fast, but also scalable and safe. One that can help people access critical financial and identity tools, rather than endanger them with undertested and underdeveloped software.

While major protocols crumble and entire blockchains halt block production, Cardano has only continued to grow. With smart contracts finally live and June’s major upgrade soon to hit the chain, it’s becoming easier than ever to use Cardano dApps and even develop them yourself.

In this article, we’re going to explore some of the biggest Cardano news from the last few months, and how this news may affect you.

🚀Vasil Hard Fork

Named after the late mathematician and Cardano ambassador Vasil St. Dabov, Cardano’s Vasil Hard Fork, originally slated for the 29th of June but now delayed until sometime in August, introduces major improvements to Cardano’s custom smart contract language Plutus. These improvements include increasing block size to allow for each block to fit transactions and scripts and increases to Plutus’ CPU limits to allow for more memory to be dedicated to scripts so they can run more efficiently.

In other words, the blockchain can do more, and do it better.

Vasil Hard Fork also introduces more technical upgrades such as reference scripts and inline datums, which ultimately allow for the blockchain to operate more efficiently and cheaply while also becoming increasingly decentralized. Check out our chart below for a more detailed breakdown of how it achieves this.

If all goes well, Vasil’s mainnet launch will open the floodgates to a wave of new dApps, new users and ultimately increased TVL for the Cardano blockchain — a big win for everyone involved.

🚀New lightweight Cardano wallet

As opposed to the full-node Daedelus wallet — which is geared towards crypto veterans, fully synchronizing with the entire blockchain’s history — IOHK’s recently-released Lace wallet will be much more familiar to users of hot wallets like Metamask and Trust Wallet.

Lace provides unparalleled security and functionality in a familiar environment, allowing users to store funds, transact, make payments, hold and view NFTs, interact with dApps and even delegate stakes.

As we all know, accessibility will be what drives the next wave of crypto adoption, and Lace is a great stride in this direction, offering a newbie-friendly user experience without compromising on important features or security.

🚀New open-source toolkit for Cardano devs

Cardano recently released a freely accessible, decentralized applications tool stack otherwise known as a decentralized application backend (DAB) for developers looking to build on-chain.

Using this DAB, developers can easily connect their dApps and wallets to Cardano without requiring a full node and allow their dApps to read and write smart contracts. This will allow developers to begin building their visions without having to commit a lot of resources to do so. It will also allow Cardano’s global developer community to better collaborate on community-owned resources.

This open-source DAB was something sorely lacking in the Cardano ecosystem, but now that it’s here we can expect ecosystem growth to accelerate, new users to arrive on Cardano and developers from across the crypto-sphere to start building here.

🚀Cardano at Consensus 2022

As one of the biggest blockchain events in the world, Consensus2022 brought over 17,000 people from across the globe to Austin, Texas to celebrate blockchain and explore its future, with some of the biggest names in the industry in attendance.

Cardano had several stalls at the event and even hosted their own community event that brought in 1,200 attendees and ended with a lively party deejayed by none other than Frodo Baggins himself, Elijah Wood.

But for Cardano’s founder Charles Hoskinson, the only thing precious was time. Charles spoke on a number of panels and discussions, including the “Update on Cardano in Africa” event (which will be uploaded here). In it he spoke about Cardano’s place in Ethiopia’s schooling system, and how the blockchain plans to expand into Kenya, Zanzibar, Burundi and more. He even teased the potential of getting a Cardano-based “stablecoin in people’s hands” in Kenya.

“Every time you give someone a cryptocurrency wallet, you give someone a self-sovereign identity, you teach them the principles of this ecosystem. It’s like Plato leading somebody out of the cave. They no longer see shadows,” — Charles Hoskinson at Consensus 2022

🚀Firing on all blocks

While some of the biggest players in crypto once deemed ‘too big to fail’ do exactly that, the diverse, global network of Cardano contributors continues to stay focused on what matters: building a protocol that can’t fail. And although it’s taken time, the builders behind Cardano understand that when people’s livelihoods are at stake (literally), being rigorous and holding their ideas accountable to the scientific method before committing them to the chain is the very least they could do.

🚀Accelerate your startup with Adaverse

Adaverse is the Cardano accelerator and alchemist providing the necessary organic support for Web3 startups to grow in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. So far, we have concluded strategic investment in 13 promising startups across Africa, with access to connected mentors and tech support.

At Adaverse, we’re helping drive the future of Cardano by empowering amazing entrepreneurs with a network of industry veterans and the resources they need to start building on crypto’s most promising blockchain.

If you have a brilliant crypto idea — get in touch with us today.

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