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.

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 

The funds will be provided to new startup companies and projects building on Cardano’s ecosystem. Investments to be made on these start-ups would range from a total of $250,000 to $500,000.

Other developments

Cardano (ADA) launched it’s Shelly Mainnet on June 30th and since then Shelly has been live. It will be accessible for public use on the 7th of July, ADA holders can then move their funds to supported Mainnet wallets. 

IOHK also launched ATALA PRISM, a decentralized identity system which aims at delivering one of the most set out goals of blockchain : “banking the unbanked”. Anyone with the mobile app will have access to Decentralized Finance (DeFi) services and Flash loans. Those without access to bank accounts will own “self-sovereign identities”.

What to Expect 

The announcement presents a lot of benefits for ADA holders and investors through this partnership. 

“This custody agreement allows us to offer the same secure storage solutions that can be found in traditional finance to ADA holders, without sacrificing what makes Proof of Stake blockchains special – being able to participate in the network”-  stated the tweet. 

The Custody partnership also helps ADA to be able to store their coins on the Coinbase “Custodys institutional-grade, battle-tested cold storage” wallet while also maintaining control over the ability to delegate stakes. 

This means that ADA holders get to store their coins on the exchange and still stake with Coinbase Custody without having to worry about the security of the coin. 

Whether or not this could lead to a potential listing for the ADA, we will find out not too long anymore but it’s only fair to assume it would. 

Staking

This is simply the act of locking cryptocurrencies in order to receive rewards for helping secure the network and create blocks on the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. The larger the amount of coin or token locked, the larger the reward. 

Recently on Cardano 

Cardano is setting up for it’s Shelly Network upgrade and has also launched the Daedalus wallet for Shelly. The blockchain summit just concluded. 

The version 1.0.0 of the Daedalus wallet will offer basic functionalities and is designed only for the stake pool operator testing. This means that more updates will come with other versions which will allow ADA holders to store and hold their coins in the wallet, for now the wallet is only for stake pool operators.

These versions released will allow stake pool operators to create, delete and restore Shelly wallets and transactions on the mainnet. The wallet can be downloaded from Github and funded using the Shelly testnet faucet.

Feedback is highly anticipated and stake pool operators are encouraged to quickly download the Daedalus wallet and give it a try. Feedback gotten from the Pool operators will help them input more development. You can find a list of what they expect you to try out on their forum.

More updates should be expected as the Shelly Mainnet rolls out, new features will be added to the testnet which would allow stake pools to be viewed, stakes can be delegated and earnings can be checked. Support for Byron Legacy wallets will be added and also allow movements of funds from the Byron wallet to the new Shelly wallet