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 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.

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

THIS IS HUGE

Everything Cardano has been building for the past few years is finally coming to a reality and people will finally be able to stake their ADA for a nice passive income.

Lately, many projects have been seeing massive price gains leading up to their mainnet launch. Cardano having 2 months before the mainnet launch, we can likely see a massive price surge sometime in July. Although, if things are delayed and don’t go as the roadmap states, then it could do just the opposite.

Regardless, everyone is becoming aware of Cardano and there has been a huge incline in daily volume for ADA. If this volume incline continues, we could be close to the biggest gains ADA has had in years.

Coinbase Listing ADA

Not only does Cadano have their Mainnet launch, but also a Coinbase listing on the horizon. Over 2 years ago Coinbase announced their interest for listing ADA, but to this day, they still haven’t.

This leads me to believe that Coinbase is just waiting for the Shelley Mainnet to go live so they can have a better launch week and possibly offer their users staking of ADA within the platform.

A Coinbase listing for ADA might just be the cherry on top that blows the lid off this project.

Demand Sky Rocketing, ADA Supply Dwindling

With news of the Shelley Mainnet and staking on the horizon, many people are stocking up on ADA in anticipation of a huge price surge.

As more and more ADA is bought and taken out of circulation, the supply is constantly shrinking at the same time that demand continues to rise. This scenario makes for the perfect storm.

ADA Price Predictions

With everything finally coming together at the same time as offering staking and getting a Coinbase listing could set this project to new all time high prices. Anything is possible and we’re headed into new territory in the crypto space.

Watch the video below for further price discussion

This is not investment advice. Always do your own research and make your own financial decisions. This article and videos are for entertainment purposes only.