In terms of the ada FUD, there was a reddit thread about 7-8 months ago that I can't seem to locate. I do recall that it was related to the launch of NFT's on the platform and something people were dubbing the "concurrency issue". Based on your level of knowledge, I'm guessing this is something you're already familiar with...
Yes, that was a challenge Fall last year. Concurrency is basically being able to make multiple transactions at the same time. On Ethereum accounting model, you don't have to solve for this because the whole blockchain ledger is involved in every transaction though that also still means that during high activity some transactions happening at the exact same time will get booted off and have their transactions fail while still having to pay the transaction fee. Unfortunately, this FUD has stuck around much longer than it should have and many solutions have been released.
Cardano is also releasing pipelining in its Vasil hardfork and I believe that should solve (or greatly help) the consensus solution for all new projects that develop on it hereafter.
Input Output Global - Introducing pipelining: Cardano's consensus layer scaling solution
Pipelining is one of the key scaling improvements to be deployed in 2022. Here’s how it works and why it
"Currently, a block goes through six steps as it moves across the chain:"
Block header transmission
Block header validation
Block body request and transmission
Block body validation and local chain extension
Block header transmission to downstream nodes
Block body transmission to downstream nodes
"A block’s journey is a very serialized one. All steps happen in the same sequence every time, at every node. Considering the volume of nodes and the ever-growing number of blocks, block transmission takes a considerable amount of time."
"Diffusion pipelining overlays some of those steps on top of each other so they happen concurrently. This saves time and increases throughput."
Do you happen to remember the name of the project that was developing those complex NFTs in their Cardano games? I'd be interested in examining that further.
I don't know the name, I just happened to meet the guy briefly sorry about that one.
I also have another question for you... Do you think Cardano is a good chain for releasing stablecoins (in particular, a simple fiat pegged stable)? Does it have any particular advantages or drawbacks that you can think of, in that regard? I guess I'm wondering if there's any inherent advantages to ada defi stable pools over other defi protocols.
The main thing with stablecoins is the design. Many stablecoin designs as of late incorporate Ponzi scheme economics because they are designed to grow really fast by offering large rewards to holders. However, they depend on growing at the same break neck pace in order to still give out the same APY rewards to its holders. One day this doesn't work and everything falls apart. Build fast to launch and fix later doesn't work well when you're dealing with peoples money. Build slow and steady with a stablecoin designed to actually be stable imo is much better and can add value to the economy as it grows.
The biggest advantage I can think of is using Haskell functional programming which prevent many common bugs and hacks that happen in a Ethereum-like ecosystem (the Haskell code won't compile in many of these cases). In Haskell, the code can be mathematically proven to do the job it was intended to do and is much better for auditing and figuring out where bugs can take place.
Another advantage is the dApp certification Cardano will be having for all its dApps & DeFi on their new dApp store. While anyone can submit projects to Cardano, those that go through a more rigorous process of having their projects audited and certified get featured higher on the Cardano dApp store. Ethereum has nothing like this, they focus more on building and getting it released as fast as possible and safety comes second.
IOG’s new Lace light wallet will include a dApp store with dApp certification.
Right now, all DeFi is made up of overcollateralized loans and people are making money by either getting in early on a DeFi project and riding the wave up or gambling. Now by gambiling, I mean that they put collateral up for one kind of DeFi currency (say Ethereum, USDT, USDC, something less volatile) and they take out a DeFi loan for another type of currency (could be an established project like Chainlink for example, could be memecoins, etc) hoping the crypto they were loaned goes up relative to their collateral. This is not good, it doesn't expand economic output in the world and is essentially online gambling for the moment. With Decentralized IDs you can begin having a credit history and having your identity backed up on the blockchain but encrypted so only you have the keys to see it and you can share the keys with your choosing. With a credit history and other identifying information, you can start to have undercollateralized loans work on the blockchain. Smart contracts can be made in a way that when you give the keys that show your identifying information on the blockchain, that the smart contract doesn't send the information back to the lender which leaves no discrimination or collecting of information. You'll want to make sure it's done all the certification though.
An estimated 80% of people in Africa along with their assets are unbanked which means much of their assets and history is undocumented as well.
and there are many more similar third world countries in Asia and South America that are similar. When making a loan in an African country, the government is almost always the biggest entity to lend from. However, past politicians have loaned so much money from the IMF/World Bank and when they got out of office they pocketed the money and moved to another country like the US leaving the citizens of that country to pay off the loan. Because of this, in some African countries a regular citizen must put up 300% collateral just to get a loan. This prevents any kind of business from growing in Africa. With DIDs, you can have competitive loans from anywhere around the world that compete with the largest banks in the world in the richest countries like the USA. Banks require middlemen to run. Once the code is written, decentralized crypto does not require people for day to day operations (but will require voters to govern and make changes to the protocol). There is no CEO at the top that can pocket all the money, profits from fees and interest get shared proportionally to the amount you are invested in it. Banks can't compete with this, people will flock to crypto and banks will be scrambling to stay relevant like Blockbuster when Netflix brought online streaming.
A fourth advantage for DeFi on Cardano (at least as an investor) is that they are focusing on building RealFi applications in the real world that will help develop third world countries by their own citizens. Real Finance (RealFi) is the integration of traditional finance with decentralized finance. This has the potential to further develop third world nations economic input at a faster rate.
A lot of this still remains to be seen whether it can be done but if it works, you can expect to start seeing African nations and third world countries develop like China did starting in the 70s but at a much faster pace.
While Cardano is looking to bank the unbanked, World Mobile looking to connect the unconnected to the internet. World Mobile is heavily partnered with Cardano and will be using the Cardano blockchain.
Yes, that was a challenge Fall last year. Concurrency is basically being able to make multiple transactions at the same time. On Ethereum accounting model, you don't have to solve for this because the whole blockchain ledger is involved in every transaction though that also still means that during high activity some transactions happening at the exact same time will get booted off and have their transactions fail while still having to pay the transaction fee. Unfortunately, this FUD has stuck around much longer than it should have and many solutions have been released.
EXAMPLES OF CARDANO CONCURRENCY SOLUTIONS
Wingriders DEX - Concurrency
https://medium.com/@wingriderscom/concurrency-7b19e77783da
SundaeSwap Labs Presents: The Scooper Model
https://sundaeswap-finance.medium.com/sundaeswap-labs-presents-the-scooper-model-678d6054318d
Minswap - Introducing Laminar — An eUTxO scaling protocol for accounting-style smart contract
https://minswap-labs.medium.com/introducing-laminar-an-eutxo-scaling-protocol-for-accounting-style-smart-contract-d1ac8847dde8
Maladex solves concurrency scales beyond memory limits and designs the best possible Cardano DEX
https://blog.maladex.com/maladex-solves-concurrency-scales-beyond-memory-limits-and-designs-the-best-possible-cardano-dex-391d7e519e67
Cardax Cardano concurrency solution EXPLAINED! (Cardano DEX) | Hashoshi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91l6io0Q1fM
Cardano is also releasing pipelining in its Vasil hardfork and I believe that should solve (or greatly help) the consensus solution for all new projects that develop on it hereafter.
Input Output Global - Introducing pipelining: Cardano's consensus layer scaling solution Pipelining is one of the key scaling improvements to be deployed in 2022. Here’s how it works and why it
https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2022/02/01/introducing-pipelining-cardanos-consensus-layer-scaling-solution/
"Currently, a block goes through six steps as it moves across the chain:"
"A block’s journey is a very serialized one. All steps happen in the same sequence every time, at every node. Considering the volume of nodes and the ever-growing number of blocks, block transmission takes a considerable amount of time."
"Diffusion pipelining overlays some of those steps on top of each other so they happen concurrently. This saves time and increases throughput."
I don't know the name, I just happened to meet the guy briefly sorry about that one.
The main thing with stablecoins is the design. Many stablecoin designs as of late incorporate Ponzi scheme economics because they are designed to grow really fast by offering large rewards to holders. However, they depend on growing at the same break neck pace in order to still give out the same APY rewards to its holders. One day this doesn't work and everything falls apart. Build fast to launch and fix later doesn't work well when you're dealing with peoples money. Build slow and steady with a stablecoin designed to actually be stable imo is much better and can add value to the economy as it grows.
The biggest advantage I can think of is using Haskell functional programming which prevent many common bugs and hacks that happen in a Ethereum-like ecosystem (the Haskell code won't compile in many of these cases). In Haskell, the code can be mathematically proven to do the job it was intended to do and is much better for auditing and figuring out where bugs can take place.
Another advantage is the dApp certification Cardano will be having for all its dApps & DeFi on their new dApp store. While anyone can submit projects to Cardano, those that go through a more rigorous process of having their projects audited and certified get featured higher on the Cardano dApp store. Ethereum has nothing like this, they focus more on building and getting it released as fast as possible and safety comes second.
IOG’s new Lace light wallet will include a dApp store with dApp certification.
https://nitter.net/IOHK_Charles/status/1535851975031545856
A third advantage for DeFi is Cardano's development of Decentralized IDs (DID) like Atala PRISM.
https://atalaprism.io/
Right now, all DeFi is made up of overcollateralized loans and people are making money by either getting in early on a DeFi project and riding the wave up or gambling. Now by gambiling, I mean that they put collateral up for one kind of DeFi currency (say Ethereum, USDT, USDC, something less volatile) and they take out a DeFi loan for another type of currency (could be an established project like Chainlink for example, could be memecoins, etc) hoping the crypto they were loaned goes up relative to their collateral. This is not good, it doesn't expand economic output in the world and is essentially online gambling for the moment. With Decentralized IDs you can begin having a credit history and having your identity backed up on the blockchain but encrypted so only you have the keys to see it and you can share the keys with your choosing. With a credit history and other identifying information, you can start to have undercollateralized loans work on the blockchain. Smart contracts can be made in a way that when you give the keys that show your identifying information on the blockchain, that the smart contract doesn't send the information back to the lender which leaves no discrimination or collecting of information. You'll want to make sure it's done all the certification though.
An estimated 80% of people in Africa along with their assets are unbanked which means much of their assets and history is undocumented as well.
https://youtu.be/ATRb9rE1sXM
and there are many more similar third world countries in Asia and South America that are similar. When making a loan in an African country, the government is almost always the biggest entity to lend from. However, past politicians have loaned so much money from the IMF/World Bank and when they got out of office they pocketed the money and moved to another country like the US leaving the citizens of that country to pay off the loan. Because of this, in some African countries a regular citizen must put up 300% collateral just to get a loan. This prevents any kind of business from growing in Africa. With DIDs, you can have competitive loans from anywhere around the world that compete with the largest banks in the world in the richest countries like the USA. Banks require middlemen to run. Once the code is written, decentralized crypto does not require people for day to day operations (but will require voters to govern and make changes to the protocol). There is no CEO at the top that can pocket all the money, profits from fees and interest get shared proportionally to the amount you are invested in it. Banks can't compete with this, people will flock to crypto and banks will be scrambling to stay relevant like Blockbuster when Netflix brought online streaming.
A fourth advantage for DeFi on Cardano (at least as an investor) is that they are focusing on building RealFi applications in the real world that will help develop third world countries by their own citizens. Real Finance (RealFi) is the integration of traditional finance with decentralized finance. This has the potential to further develop third world nations economic input at a faster rate.
Welcome to the Age of RealFi
https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/11/25/welcome-to-the-age-of-realfi/
By integrating digital identity with Cardano, we can create real value and opportunity for people across the globe
There's a Cardano project developing in Africa called Waya Collective and I'd say they are a more RealFi kind of project.
Waya Collective, Cardano ISPO for Manufacturing in Africa | Learn Cardano Podcast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4V9VgF-MuU
RealFi on Cardano w/ Waya Collective | Empowa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5GJM6pow1Y
A lot of this still remains to be seen whether it can be done but if it works, you can expect to start seeing African nations and third world countries develop like China did starting in the 70s but at a much faster pace.
While Cardano is looking to bank the unbanked, World Mobile looking to connect the unconnected to the internet. World Mobile is heavily partnered with Cardano and will be using the Cardano blockchain.
World Mobile Whiteboard Explainer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUPNKSxOcKI
Lots of good info from World Mobile in this AMA including some discussion of the move into North America.
https://twitter.com/WorldMobileTeam/status/1539880960564633600
https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1LyxBoaleYYKN