Category: Cardano

Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson has announced the formation of an internal action force aimed at countering scammers. This comes as a report from fraud prevention firm Bolster showed cryptocurrency scams almost doubled in 2020.

“One of the things we’ve been thinking about is setting up some sort of dedicated body in the Cardano ecosystem that does nothing but builds tools to help people report scams and propagate the knowledge that a scam has occurred.”

The Cardano Anti-Scam Task Force Nabs First Case

Last month, a frustrated Hoskinson hosted a live stream in which he warned the Cardano community of giveaway scams. He reiterated the point, one made many times before, that he nor Cardano will ever giveaway ADA.

“If you fall for this, you will lose your ADA, these are criminals, these are scammers, these are people who are trying to steal from you. Use common f*cking sense. You don’t get something for free. You don’t get something for nothing.”

Cardano is now taking an active role in combating the fraudsters with the newly formed anti-scam task force. Not only is it tasked with reporting and spreading awareness of scams, but Hoskinson also spoke about an investigative element to their operations as well.

“… do some targetted investigations into ventures that have entered into the Cardano space, that we feel may be fraudulent.”

Without going into specifics, Hoskinson said, following complaints raised by community members, the task force has investigated a fund suspected of fraud. Initial results indicate the fund in question may be a scam. However, he did not disclose the name of the fund at this time.

“We started conducting an investigation and the preliminary results indicate that that fund may actually be a scam. So in two weeks time, we’re going to release our first output of this internal working group.”

Crypto Scams Predicted to Get Worse in 2021

Fraudsters are flocking to crypto as markets continue booming. Research conducted by Bolster confirms that cryptocurrency fraud is on the rise. The firm points out that this is one of the most significant barriers to mainstream success.

Co-Founder and CTO of Bolster Shashi Prakash said crypto scams are the fastest-growing category of scams. He warned that this is just the start of a “new wave of digital theft campaigns.”

We continue to see scammers being opportunistic and designing campaigns focused on real-time, surging trends when people are likely not to be on guard because it’s so new.”

By analyzing 300 million websites, Bolster found more than 400,000 related to crypto scams over the last year. The firm predicts this figure will go up by 75% for this year.

Other key findings note that fake prizes, giveaways, or sweepstakes were the most prolific type of scam, with Bitcoin, Chainlink, and Ethereum being the top three most targetted tokens.

The Cardano anti-scam task force is a step in the right direction. However, as Hoskinson mentioned, it’s no substitute for common sense.

Source: ADAUSD on TradingView.com

At yesterday’s Cardano 360 event, IOHK CEO Charles Hoskinson gave an update on the long-awaited Alonzo upgrade. Due to stress testing and exchange integration, Hoskinson expects a rollout in mid-August.

IOHK had previously penciled in a date of the end of March 2021 for this to happen. A five-month delay hasn’t gone down well with some sections of the community.

Cardano Smart Contracts Won’t Be Ready This Month

The Goguen phase is the great equalizer in terms of bringing smart contracts to Cardano. It was split into three development stages.

First was Allegra, which enabled token locking; this laid the foundation for smart contracts by bringing metadata functionality to record the specific purpose of tokens. Then there was Mary, which introduced the ability to create user-defined tokens. The final piece is Alonzo, which integrates the extended UTXO model with the Plutus smart contract language.

During Cardano 360, Hoskinson gave a timeline for Alonzo’s completion. He said this process requires integration into the ledger and node code, which is happening now through to April. At the same time, “alpha partners” will be running acceptance criteria and tests.

“What’s occurring right now, all throughout March and all throughout April is that integration into the node to get a CLI. As that integration is happening, partners are being brought in, and these are alpha partners, so they’re very close and deep in court of company.”

Once done, by the end of April or early May, IOHK will be ready to launch the Alonzo testnet. Hoskinson mentioned that large cohorts of programming professionals and Plutus pioneers are ready to stress test the network.

As Plutus was built by an independent team, in parallel with Shelley, Hoskinson warned there could be some “rough edges” in that integration. Hence QA and user acceptance testing are needed to circumvent any problems in that respect.

Expected August Rollout Leads to Backlash

All of the above is scheduled to finish by the end of June. At this point, the final stage involves bringing all of the stakeholders up to speed. Hoskinson gives this a four to six-week time frame, taking us into mid-August for the Alonzo hard fork.

“If that occurs, what we will do is wait four weeks minimum for our partners, the Coinbases, the Binances, Yoroi, all these other people, who have infrastructure that needs to upgrade that needs to upgrade, test, and modernize for Alonzo before we do the Alonzo hard fork.”

The feedback from the Cardano community has been mixed. On the one hand, some have expressed positivity over the thoroughness of work going into Alonzo. But others have slammed the delay.

On that, Hoskinson noted a surge in toxicity and trolling. But he puts this down to a realization that Cardano is on track.

I’ve noticed a massive surge in toxicity, FUD, trolling, and outright slander lately. It must mean Cardano is finally perceived as a threat to the status quo and we are on the right track. Stay focused everyone, the next six months are going to be a rough but rewarding ride

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) March 26, 2021

Despite the delay to Alonzo, the market did not react badly. Today, ADA is up 8% to $1.17.

Source: ADAUSD on TradingView.com

Replying to remarks over the lack of dapps running on Cardano, IOHK CEO Charles Hoskinson responded by saying demand is so high his firm cannot handle the applications flooding in. In many cases, as a strategy to cope with the demand, applications are being rejected.

Some Thoughts on DApps https://t.co/0rHRxdblPP

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) March 21, 2021

Goguen is Coming to Cardano Very Soon

Speaking on a live stream, Hoskinson said criticisms of Cardano having no dapps are entirely unreasonable. He drew attention to sneaker and cattle authentication apps already run on the chain using just metadata features.

Although full programmability at the base layer is missing at present, he likened the fault-finding to criticizing attendance at a nightclub that hasn’t yet opened.

“Yet they say, what are the dapps running on Cardano? That’s like saying you’re opening a nightclub, you haven’t opened it yet, and you say, ‘how come no-one’s in your nightclub?’ It’s like, we’re still building it.”

Hoskinson is more than confident that once Goguen is up and running, the ecosystem will fill out accordingly. However, right now, the firm cannot deal with the demand to build dapps on Cardano. He said the only thing to do under these circumstances is to turn down applications from developers.

“As if, smart contracts come and there’ll be no demand. We’re overwhelmingly subscribed. At the moment, our company has no more capacity to service deal flow that comes in for Cardano. People come to me, unless it’s a super high-value deal and some have jumped up the queue, we actually say no and turn them down…”

What’s in The Works?

The Goguen era is expected to launch at the end of March. So far, IOHK hasn’t confirmed or denied that they will meet this deadline. Nonetheless, expectations are riding high. Once smart contracts are up and running, Cardano will be on even ground with its biggest rival, Ethereum.

Playing into the expectations, Hoskinson tweeted that this month’s Cardano 360 will be one to watch. The monthly program is scheduled to show on March 25 at 17:30GMT.

Cardano Fans, you’re really going to want to tune in to March’s Cardano 360 Episode. It’s going to be action packed!

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) March 21, 2021

Although the “action” could refer to any number of things in the pipeline, a confirmed Goguen rollout date would be the best-case scenario for ADA holders.

With that, in the short term, what can the community expect with Goguen? Hoskinson referred to the projects making their way through the Catalyst program. He said a slew of NFT marketplaces, stablecoin offerings, oracles, and DEXes are on the way.

“If you look at Catalyst, there are six NFT marketplaces seeking funding, there are stablecoins seeking funding, some of which have already been deployed for example, on Emurgo. Oracles seeking funding, DEXes seeking funding….”

As such, accusations that Cardano is a ghost chain hold no merit. The only question remaining is, when will Goguen launch?

Source: ADAUSD on TradingView.com