Before the Shelly hard folk, centralized IOHK nodes had full control of the production of blocks during the Bryon era. The centralization has been decreasing with the continuous development and implementation of Shelly Mainnet. After Shelly Mainnet reached epoch3, the very first block was minted by a stake pool and the community is expected to mint the majority of all blocks from Friday, Nov 6.

Kelvin Hammond, IOHK’s technology manager stated that the end goal is to have all blocks produced by stake polls thereby making the network and governance completely decentralized.

“IOG will continue to run its own stake pools that will produce blocks in line with the stake they attract, just like any other pools. But these will no longer have any special role in maintaining the Cardano network. It will also, of course, delegate a substantial amount of its stake to community pools. Simultaneously, the voting mechanism will be enabled, and it will no longer be possible to increase d and ‘re-centralize’ Cardano.

Cardano has already reached 1,208 stake pools, even surprising it’s initial target of 1,000.

Cardano

Cardano is a cryptocurrency network and open source project that aims to run a public blockchain platform for Smart contracts. On their official website it reveals”Cardano is a blockchain platform for coin markers, innovators and visionaries “Cardano is a blockchain platform for changemakers, innovators, and visionaries, with the tools and technologies required to create possibility for the many, as well as the few, and bring about positive global change.

What are MetaData and Why is it important

Metadata is simply “data about data”. So it basically gives more information about a transaction like describing the context, content and structure of records. Cardano already stores information permanently on the blockchain but without specific details of the transaction. The addition of metadata would allow for more data/information to be given out regarding a particular transaction on the funds, time of deal, product manufacturer or the supply conditions if an online purchase was made. All of these records are important to maintain along with the transaction of wealth.

This feature is important because it helps in certification and validation, this simply means that it allows for information to be stored online and just not the wealth transfer. It will come handy with any other aspect of life that deals with supply chains such as factories, customers, suppliers and delivery services.

IOHK (Input Output Hong Kong), the parent company of Cardano plans on utilizing this feature on the Atala products which are :Atala prism, Atala trace, and Atala scan solutions. Owners of businesses interested in using this in their system can also reach out to Cardano through enterprise.solutions@iohk.com to find out how to incorporate metadata services in your processes.

“The use of a virtual unit of account allowed Sberbank to solve a number of technical problems and create a universal tokenization platform, in which the process of issuing tokens is just one of many possibilities. At the same time, the process of ‘conversion’ is rather technical in nature, can occur seamlessly and imperceptibly for the user.”

The tokenization protocol is built on the Hyperledger Fabric, an open source blockchain and related tools launched back in December 2015 by Linux Foundation and includes the likes of IBM, Intel and SAP among other contributors.

Other Projects on Hyperledger

Recently, Cardano (ADA) parent company IOHK joined forces with Hyperledger in order to contribute to it’s growing suits of blockchain projects. 

Last year, SK Telecom, South Korea’s major Telecom faint launched STONledger, an enterprise blockchain platform built on the Hyperledger Fabric. 

The IOTA team has announced integration of Tangle into the Hyperledger fabric blockchain network to help support permission-less features. 

The collaboration will leverage Emurgo tailored blockchain solutions suit and Blackbeard’s expensive Network to provide real world, blockchain solutions for large scale, multi-national organizations in the age of Industry 4.0, this  project is referred to as Brandmark.

BRANDMARK 

The newly set up Brandmark will include the Emurgo Traceability Solution and other enterprises that provide blockchain solutions especially those that deal with large scale clients and supply chains.

They are in agreement with Ahava, Angel Bakeries and HydroShop. Brandmark is also in cooperation with Israel’s Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Agriculture, and  CultivAid- an Isreali non-profit organization who are working with the government of Ethiopia.

“Brandmark is a holistic approach to providing value to many stakeholders – from the Cardano community to large organizations, from farmers to consumers, and others – by partnering with Blackbird Ventures which has a proven track record of success and network-building. This joint venture further strengthens EMURGO as a key solutions provider with a product-market fit,” said Ken Kodama, EMURGO CEO.

Badali offers next generation digital currency payment solutions and as such will allow ADA holders to purchase items from over 1,200 major retail brands. Some of these brands include Amazon, Nike, Starbucks, Airbnb, and many more via the Badali’s online Gift Card. 

ADA holders will be able to purchase name-based retail gift cards which can be used in their local region with their ADA at an equivalent fiat value, this is possible with the Badali’s Gift Card and partner ecosystems which includes different wallets and exchanges.

EMURGO is delighted to increase the real world utility of Cardano ADA and give ADA holders the option to purchase products from a wide spectrum of some of the world’s most well-known brands. We are happy to support Bidali and platforms adding to the Cardano ecosystem with our resources,” said EMURGO CEO Ken Kodama.

“Cardano is a very promising project. As we’ve seen blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies develop, Cardano is third generation technology that is now finally getting us closer to the performance, scalability, and cost effectiveness required to bring the benefits of cryptocurrency to the mainstream and begin to solve some very large global problems. We’re very excited to be applying this towards the gift card space where fraud and lack of traceability are huge problems,” said Bidali VP of Growth Erik Ashdown.

Cardano (ADA) Bullish?? 

Cardano (ADA) has gained different partnerships and exposure over the last few months and since the release of Shelly Mainnet. In a recent tweet by Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano it seems the ecosystem is yet to be done. The tweet states that they are stepping up marketing and are doing a lot of hiring plus many more things to come. This could in turn become bullish for ADA in terms of price. 

“The Skies are blue, the weather is good and we’re now counting down toward the launch” Charles said regarding indications of the launch.

He points out that the softwares has been tested and bugs found were fixed, he also thanks Cardano exchange partners, the Cradano community, The stakepool operators and every other believer for their support.

Cardano’s Goal since Inception

Charles points out that since inception of Cardano in 2015, the “dream” has always been about perfecting and delivering promises that Bitcoin had through evolving over time to meet the demands on mass adoption. Charles explained that this is already happening with Cardano and he said that Cardano is the best Cryptocurrency out there as at now.

ADA’s Price Responds To News

ADA’s price was reportedly 0.12223 at the moment Charles started streaming on YouTube. As at time of writing , ADA is priced at 0.1302 on Binance exchange and is ranked at No 7 with a market cap of $3.3M according to Coin Market Caps data.

See Full Video here

The IOHK  CEO noted that they are working on a simple Erc-20 converter, this will help migrate erc-20 tokens to a Cardano Testnet in a test run. An external company is taking charge of these developments, through this converter, moving of tokens from the Ethereum Network to the Cardano Network becomes possible and easy. 

Valuable DApps that would perform useful functions within the ecosystem would be launched by the Plutus Foundation and Guogen Developments team. 

Charles also said that by December, developers will be able to create, test and execute  Smart Contracts. 

Everyone or company that plans on building a DApp on Cardanos Blockchain is working with this acronym in mind ACID which stands for Adoption, Collaboration, Incentive and Deployment. In the video, Hoskinson explains these terms.

Charles plans to stay with the project until all that is needed is put in place, after which the Cardano project will operate in a decentralized manner.

You can see full video here 

In this article and video, I discuss the top 10 crypto altcoins in July 2020.

Bullish Altcoins List

Cardano (ADA) Shelley Mainnet Launch

The altcoin I’m most bullish on is Cardano due to their much anticipated mainnet finally launching. This hardfork will introduce staking and smart contracts to the project, among other features.

Cardano recently announced a partnership with Coinbase to allow users to stake ADA from cold storage with Coinbase custody. We should be seeing many other partnerships coming for staking also.

SparkPoint (SRK) New Roadmap and Staking

My second most bullish altcoin for July is SparkPoint SRK token. This project is only a little over a year old and is a micro cap altcoin with a market cap of only $1.8 million.

This project has developed 5 apps within their first year and just announced they are hiring 3 more developers to double their product production. They also are releasing a new long term roadmap on July 27th that will show the future plans for the project.

With SRK being only $1.8m market cap, to get a 100x return on investment would only require a market cap of $180 million. Many projects with less to show have a much higher market cap for this, so I believe there is huge potential for SRK.

Some other notable features of SparkPoint SRK:

• Monthly roadmaps and consistent growth
• Powerful Token Ecosystem
• LOW market cap
• Already generating revenue
• Creating popular products (Mobile games, Delivery app, Learning platform)
• Deflationary token supply

Altcoin Season Is Here

There is lots of bullish data showing that the next big altcoin season is here. We have already seen many projects do over 500% returns recently and Bitcoin dominance is also dropping.

I believe the cryptocurrency space has finally entered a bullish market and will be seeing the crypto global market cap pass $1 trillion for the first time by the end of 2021 or sooner.

“I love the idea of testing cross chain communication between Litecoin and Cardano. We got a lot of ideas and I’m sure you guys do too” – Charles stated in the tweet. 

Founders of two Great Projects 

Charlie Lee is the founder of Litecoin, a peer to peer digital asset that allows instant and near zero-cost transactions globally. It is currently the 8th coin out of the whole cryptocurrency market according to Coinmarketcap Ranking. They have a market capitalization of $2.83 billion. 

Charles Hoskinson is the founder of Cardano (ADA), a proof of stake blockchain platform that combines pioneering technologies to provide unparalleled security and sustainability to Decentralized Applications (Dapps), systems etc. It is currently ranked as the 7th most traded coin on coinmarketcap with a market cap of $3.25 billion. 

As at the time of writing, Charlie is yet to reply Charles, but we sure they work together to create something marvelous since both projects have been successful in their own ways. 

Emurgo is one of the founding entities of Cardano protocol among other projects. This partnership will allow ADA holders to easily book hotels and travel across the 90,000 world-wide locations. Users of Cardano (ADA) will get 10% cash back for all hotel bookings made with ADA until the end of the month of July.

Ken Kodama, CEO of Emurgo said :

“As global travel begins to gradually resume, EMURGO is excited to partner with Travala.com to bring functional utility to Cardano ADA users. Being able to book flights, hotels, and other travel accommodations with ADA at over 2 million properties in 90,000 international destinations demonstrates EMURGO’s focus to drive real-world Cardano adoption.”

Another step toward Mass Adoption

Cardano (ADA) has been gaining a lot of attention lately because of Shelly Mainnet launch and the recent partnership with Coinbase Custody.

We’re extremely excited to partner with an industry titan to boost ADA adoption. Travel is the ideal venue for mass adoption of cryptocurrencies and as we all start to travel again, Travala.com will continue to provide a frictionless travel booking experience to anyone, anywhere,” said Juan Otero, Travala.com CEO.

Travala.com reported 60% of bookings on their platform in April had been paid with cryptocurrencies.