(Written by @ElliotHill of the Cardano Foundation)

The Cardano blockchain is poised to enter a phase of significant change at the end of February. For the first time in our protocol’s history, users will be able to define their own custom tokens through the multi-asset ledger, adding a new layer of functionality and utility to the Cardano blockchain.

This will be made possible through the Mary hard fork 127, one of the most important events to occur on the Cardano blockchain since the rollout of Shelley in July 2020. As part of the wider rollout of Goguen, Mary represents a step-change for Cardano — delivering long-awaited Cardano components to our community.

Named after the mother of our native token’s namesake 41 (ada), Mary Lovelace, the Mary hard fork will be facilitated by IOHK’s hard fork Combinator 26. This will handle the seamless transition from Cardano’s current mainnet to Mary, and for the general ada holder, no user actions will be required.

We will be publishing a user-friendly FAQ about Mary closer to the time. But here, we’re going to discover some of the things that you will notice with the arrival of Mary on Cardano, and explore Mary’s potential impact on our ecosystem. Below, we’re going to look at what impact it will have on our ecosystem and community.

What impact will the Mary hard fork have on the Cardano ecosystem?

We know that native assets and tokens will soon arrive on Cardano, but what can they be used for? Like other blockchains, tokens will be a central and core part of many decentralized applications launching on Cardano. This is likely to take the form of utility tokens, governance tokens, and tokens representing real-world assets.

The important thing to remember is that while smart contracts are arriving shortly — and will form an important part of our ecosystem — they are not required to create a native token on Cardano. This means that as soon as the Mary hard fork is complete, you can create a user-defined native token on Cardano and begin using your newly created assets.

Native assets could be used to mint non-fungible tokens, or ‘NFTs’, which can be used to represent a huge range of unique real-world and digital assets. For example, an NFT could be minted which represents a fractional equity stake in a forestry biodiversity initiative. This could be traded on digital asset exchanges, and held by those looking to offset their carbon footprint via the Cardano blockchain.

Alternatively, a Cardano-based native NFT could be used for creating a unique work of digital art 71 stored on the blockchain forever. Such NFTs have seen growing popularity among blockchain enthusiasts 34, with utility in both online gaming and the world of collectibles.

We previously explored 103 what decentralized finance would look like on Cardano, and native tokens are also an important step on this journey. Native tokens representing stablecoins, wrapped assets, and lending protocol utility tokens will all be instrumental in bringing the world of DeFi to Cardano.

What impact could the Mary hard fork have on the wider world?

Blockchain adoption is accelerating, and that means many new users are entering our ecosystem. Recently, we have had many discussions about how we can bring users from emerging economies 76, especially those on the African continent, into the blockchain ecosystem.

Native tokens, available through the Mary hard fork, could be one of the first features on Cardano that can be tailored for financially underserved communities. Let’s imagine a token is created that represents a regional-level exchange of value for nations with highly inflationary national currencies. These tokens could be used to pay for local goods and services, without the need to use traditional limited bartering systems or trading in physical goods.

The impact and power of such a user-defined currency could be the difference between a subsistence farmer increasing their market access within the local area through easier access to liquid capital. Or, it could empower a young artist in a small village to successfully make a career out of their talents by selling their art to a global audience through digital tokens.

Native tokens could also make it easier for individuals in emerging economies to take payments for services from overseas. Native tokens pegged to fiat currencies as a stablecoin, such as Tether (USDT) 3, could facilitate the instant cross-jurisdiction settlement of assets. This would make it easier for a freelancer from Venezuela, for example, to accept a US dollar stablecoin without waiting for lengthy bank settlement times and also avoiding bolivar volatility.

By giving every user the ability to generate user-defined tokens on Cardano, Mary opens the door to a long list of new applications, limited only by the users’ imaginations. This holds the potential to empower those in emerging economies through the affordable and borderless nature of Cardano native tokens — while simultaneously alleviating the pain points associated with user-defined tokens on existing blockchain protocols.

What features will Mary deliver?

The most important part of the Mary hard fork will be the orderly transition of Cardano from a single asset ledger — supporting only ada — into a multi-asset ledger. This will introduce support for multiple diverse user-defined tokens on Cardano.

But what will this look like in practice? In short, it means that you will begin to notice new assets being exchanged on the Cardano blockchain. Like ERC-20 tokens that can be created and transacted on the Ethereum network, native tokens will open up similar functionality for Cardano — albeit with some fundamental differences and improvements.

Some of the components required to create native tokens on Cardano arrived in our earlier hard fork, Allegra 18. This included redeeming and burning tokens, sending tokens, writing monetary script, and minting new tokens.

Now, through Mary, this integration will be finalized and Cardano’s Rosetta API will be updated for multi-asset support. Our engineering partners, IOHK, recently published 127 an article that deep-dives into some of the technical aspects of Mary.

We are anticipating that the Mary hard fork will be a historic event for the Cardano blockchain. Now, all that’s left is you. Native tokens on Cardano are user-defined — this means that our community is free to unleash their creativity and entrepreneurship when deploying tokens.

So what will you build? Will you launch an NFT? Create a utility token for a unique DApp idea? Explore DeFi possibilities? Let us know in the comments below, and head over to our native assets devnet documentation 142, where you can explore what is required to launch a token on Cardano.

Read more about Goguen era components and future blockchain technology outlooks here:

• How Cardano could fast-track financial inclusion in emerging economies 76
• What will decentralized finance look like on Cardano? 103
• An introduction to decentralized governance on Cardano 17
• Native tokens to bring new utility to life on Cardano 127

The Mary hardfork — what will it mean for Cardano? was originally published in cardanorss on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

(Written by @ElliotHill of the Cardano Foundation)

Last week, our CEO Frederik Gregaard, shared his insights on how blockchain could bring trust back into capital markets, through an opinion editorial in City A.M, London-based financial newspaper.

Capital markets, those where debt and equity instruments are bought and sold, underpin our global financial ecosystem. But the technology underpinning the markets themselves is fraught with inefficiencies, eroding trust. Frederik discussed some important current themes around our capital market infrastructure, focusing on how central systems of record have typically led to trust issues for all market participants.

Recent events in our financial markets have proven that trust is more important than ever, and as power has been pushed to the edges, trust-gaps in our financial infrastructure have been exposed.

Here, we are going to explore what trust may look like on Cardano. We will also discover how we could deploy our existing and upcoming features to maximise trust and transparency in financial markets for all kinds of users.

Why is trust necessary?

In the Cardano ecosystem, we talk a lot about trust. On the surface, it is self evident that trust between transacting parties or actors within a system is a good thing. But in reality, achieving and maintaining trust is complex and difficult.

When finances, people’s livelihoods, and even individuals’ identities are involved, trust becomes a critical make-or-break success factor of services and companies.

Take for example a brand new app from a challenger bank. New on the scene, many would naturally wonder if a start-up could be trusted with their capital. While traditional means of proving trust such as regulatory approval can go a long way, it is still ultimately unknown how this new application will manage and protect your funds.

On the other hand, we have an ongoing erosion of trust in traditional and previously well regarded institutions by retail investors and everyday individuals. As Frederik touched upon in his recent article, the GameStop short squeeze coordinated by retail investors, and the ensuing market chaos, seriously damaged trust in our financial system. Moreover, it brought to light the lack of market integrity we currently have, with manipulation, pump and dumps, fake volumes, and front running become rife.

Lastly, we should also consider the impact on economies and geographies where trust in financial infrastructure has always been typically low — and for good reason. In emerging economies, where traditional financial infrastructure is scarce and communities are underserved, high incidences of fraud and corruption prevent trust from ever growing in the first place.

But many of these issues could be alleviated, or potentially made a thing of the past, through the adoption of blockchain technology and distributed ledgers of record. Let’s discover how this is possible.

Improving trust through blockchain

As we mentioned in last week’s blog, where we examined the potential of permissionless blockchains to power CBDCs, the transparency of an underlying blockchain ledger could be instrumental in facilitating user trust.

As Frederik noted in his City A.M. op-ed, a lack of trust is often driven through an incomplete view of what is occuring behind the scenes. In the events surrounding GameStop and Robinhood, liquidity issues with post-trade processing clearing houses forced the popular broker to adjust margin requirements. This led to a public relations backlash for the broker.

Instead, if the entirety of post-trade processing was carried out through a public ledger like Cardano, asset movements and bottlenecks would always be visible on-chain. This would allow any participant to use a chain explorer to discover where asset flows were halted, reducing public attention and increasing user’s trust.

For new financial start-ups, gaining customer trust could be enhanced through using blockchain infrastructure to move and track asset flows. This would also enable customers to view custody methods of their deposited currency or assets.

Similarly, for interest generating products such as savings accounts, customers could verify that the investments their banking provider is making with their savings are ethical, and in line with their principles. This is currently a huge issue of transparency and trust, with some banks investing in fossil fuels and arms companies unbeknownst to their customers.

So, blockchain’s trust-boosting capabilities aren’t just applicable to financial markets and publicly traded assets. They can also apply to pension funds, banking products, savings products, and more. In emerging economies, where these financial products are scarce, the trust issue begins with onboarding.

Residents of developing nations often find it difficult to prove their identity and economic history to banks and financial institutions, and therefore have limited access to these services. Through a unified blockchain identity solution, such as Atala PRISM on Cardano, individuals could be empowered to create their own identity and financial history on the blockchain.

While trust in financial infrastructure in developed economies is advantageous, in developing economies it could be life changing. Access to financial services without the fear of corruption or fraud could transform the financial situation of an underserved individual or entire family — lifting generations out of poverty.

A blockchain-based solution would both provide access to financial instruments to underserved communities, and also reduce fraud and corruption by providing an immutable paper trail of transactions on-chain. In this manner, blockchain could help fight some of the worst trust issues in emerging economies and bring them financially closer to developed countries, facilitating global trust and movement.

A farmer in Ethiopia, for instance, could use access to blockchain-based financial instruments to elevate their farming from subsistence to commercial levels, freeing capital to send their children to a sports academy abroad, or provide access to better education.

Building trust through Cardano

Do you have an idea for increasing trust through a permissionless blockchain like Cardano? We encourage you to formalize your idea through a proposal in Project Catalyst. There are funds available to build solutions on Cardano, and those which focus on financial inclusion are especially welcome.

You may also wish to explore our financial smart contract devnet environment, called the Marlowe Playground. Marlowe is a special-purpose language for financial contracts on Cardano, allowing contracts to be written in the language of finance, rather than using a general-purpose language on the blockchain.

Read more about what’s possible through blockchain here:

• What will decentralized finance look like on Cardano?
• How Cardano could fast-track financial inclusion in emerging economies
• Building the world’s new reserve currency — do CBDCs really require a permissioned blockchain?

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How can we bring trust back into financial markets with blockchain? was originally published in cardanorss on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

(Written by @ElliotHill of the Cardano Foundation)

The frothy nature of the financial markets throughout 2020 and early 2021 has put renewed focus on maintaining the safety of our financial landscape.

Dramatic stock market volatility, pandemic-related uncertainty, and a move away from physical cash have led many governments worldwide to explore alternatives to traditional reserve currencies.

Among the new mediums of exchange being explored, blockchain technology is consistently being considered, owing to its ability to launch digital currencies. But, as with any nascent technology, the path to fully digital currencies has yet to be clearly defined.

Instead of using pre-existing digital currencies, many banks are now looking to launch their own CBDCs. Here, we’re going to explore what CBDCs are and discover what they could mean for the blockchain landscape. We will also discuss why permissionless blockchains, like Cardano, could provide key benefits for CBDCs through decentralization.

What are CBDCs?

Central bank digital currencies, often abbreviated to CBDCs, are digital analogs of fiat currencies, such as the US dollar or Japanese yen, issued at a state level. CBDCs can either be issued by a central or national bank or alternatively by government agencies, and they are being explored for a number of use cases.

Digital forms of traditional fiat currencies could pave the way for instant and cheap cross-border payments without the need for payment processors, and also expedite the interbank securities settlement process. They could improve anti-money laundering and know-your-customer requirements compared to cash-based currency. For retail users, CBDCs could also reduce banking costs, and therefore potentially increase interest rates and banking benefits.

Multiple jurisdictions worldwide have publicly expressed their interest in launching a national CBDC. In October 2020, China finished its largest pilot project to date for its digital yuan, a project led by the People’s Bank of China. One of the worldwide leaders in the race for CBDCs, the People’s Bank of China rolled out their digital yuan to a focus group of 50,000 random participants.

The US Federal Reserve is also exploring the launch of a CBDC, assessing and analyzing the benefits of launching a digital US dollar. In Europe, the Bank of England, Sveriges Riksbank (Sweden), Swiss National Bank, and the European Central Bank are also working on CBDCs for their respective fiat currencies.

In association with banks from around the world, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), headquartered in Switzerland, laid out three key principles required from a CBDC:

• Coexistence with fiat and ‘other types of money’,
• Supportive of monetary and financial stability,
• Promoting innovation and efficiency.

The need for these features has typically led regulators and issuing banks to explore permissioned blockchains — generally seen to offer better controls over who can access data through controlled membership, while still promoting innovation.

In some cases, CBDCs have sought alternatives to blockchains completely. But with recent permissionless blockchain developments such as scaling, sidechains, and flexible token issuance, the tide could be turning for CBDCs and public blockchains.

But first, let’s discover the difference between permissioned and permissionless blockchains.

Permissioned vs. permissionless — what’s the difference?

We often describe Cardano as a ‘permissionless’ or ‘public’ blockchain. This means that anyone, regardless of their background, affiliation, or location, can explore on-chain information and view the history of the blockchain. Public blockchains have decentralized node operators, and usually, anyone with the technical expertise and necessary hardware can run a node. On Cardano, this role is filled by stake pool operators.

On the other hand, permissioned or private blockchains only grant access to a number of participants — usually enterprise and institutional users. Permissioned blockchains have typically been used by private companies who wish to build backend infrastructure on the blockchain, but do not require a public and visible ledger of transactions.

Instead of decentralized node operators, permissioned blockchains usually reach consensus through a group of federated nodes, who agree on a version of the blockchain’s history. These federated nodes are usually operated by commercial entities or enterprises that use the blockchain, hence the term ‘permissioned’. Permissioned blockchains can still make use of open-source code, which lets enterprises verify the security of the underlying blockchain.

Some commonly used permissioned blockchains include Hyperledger by the Linux Foundation and Corda by R3. In an enterprise setting, permissioned and permissionless blockchains have their individual merits and use cases, but to date, banks have typically focused on permissioned ledgers.

Could permissionless blockchains offer benefits for CBDCs?

Permissioned blockchains may be beneficial for controlling access to the blockchain, but they do introduce issues of security. Like all relatively-centralized systems of record, they are vulnerable to attack.

According to Washington-based public policy organization Brookings, a single bulk data breach of one permissioned node operator could potentially reveal the financial history and associated data of all on-chain participants.

In a discussion paper published by the Bank of England (BoE) in early 2020, BoE proposed that although a CBDC would need to remain permissioned to a certain extent by the bank, there could be benefits to pursuing greater decentralization.

The Bank of England describes the potential benefits of using a public decentralized ledger as:

• Resilience: High availability and assurance of digital currency built on a public ledger,
• Programmability: The use of smart contracts and tokens for enabling ‘programmable money’,
• Reach: Data sharing via blockchain to provide access to a greater number of individuals,
• Use of cryptography: Public-key cryptography could help verify that the party sending a transaction is authorized to do so.

To use a CBDC, retail users and other participants could transact with authorized payment interface providers, who would communicate via APIs to a core ledger permissioned by the issuing bank.

As interfacing with the underlying ledger would require intermediaries, privacy-preserving steps could be taken for each user through these providers, regardless of whether the underlying blockchain was permissioned or permissionless.

Public digital currencies for all

As public blockchains mature and release new privacy-preserving features, banks exploring a CBDC launch may choose to use a decentralized and semi-permissionless solution.

At the very least, CBDCs could stand to benefit from multiple elements of decentralized technology, such as resilience to data loss and the high-availability of assets through the maintenance of a decentralized network. Similarly, a public blockchain would instil greater transparency in our global financial systems, and therefore bolster the people’s trust in banking establishments.

In the future, we may see national-level digital currencies launched on public blockchains, with certain oversight by central banking authorities to ensure their safe usage.

What are your thoughts on CBDCs? Do you think that digital assets should replace fiat currency? Do you believe that CBDCs should be built on open and transparent ledgers?

Let us know in the comments below!

Read more about blockchain’s potential here:

• Censorship on social media: how blockchain could be the new norm for unfiltered communications,
• How Cardano could fast-track financial inclusion in emerging economies,
• Tokenization in the real world — three industries that can be transformed by blockchain.

Building the world’s new reserve currency — do CBDCs really require a permissioned blockchain? was originally published in cardanorss on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you’ve taken even a passing interest in the blockchain space during the past year, you’re bound to have come across the phenomena of decentralized finance — often referred to as ‘DeFi’.

DeFi can apply to almost any traditional or hybrid financial product offered on top of a blockchain protocol. This could include open lending protocols, a peer-to-peer loan platform, or even the provision of services typically associated with traditional financial providers.

But DeFi has had a baptism of fire. Spiralling fees, smart contract exploits, and tales of significant user losses have necessitated a focus on improved DeFi infrastructure and processes — ones based around transparency, true decentralization, and high assurance.

With a significant milestone just around the corner for Cardano through the Mary hardfork, it’s a good time to examine the features that could make Cardano a highly attractive blockchain for building DeFi applications. Here, we’re going to explore how Cardano could soon begin to have a profound impact on today’s DeFi landscape.

Cardano’s benefits for DeFi applications

Soon, through the Mary hardfork, smart contracts and a multi-asset ledger will be available on the Cardano blockchain. In turn, this will pave the way for decentralized applications (DApps), native tokens, and DeFi use cases.

But why might a DeFi project choose to run on Cardano, rather than one of our peer protocols? Let’s break it down to some simple areas where the Cardano blockchain could excel for DeFi projects.

1. Lower transaction fees

Although the complex topic of gas fees is outside the scope of this article, we can summarize that high gas fees have been, and continue to be, a huge issue and stumbling block for DeFi protocols. Gas fees on some protocols have become so high due to increased network demand, that users have reported paying exorbitant fees to process a single transaction.

Not only do rising gas fees cost the DeFi protocols themselves more when moving value and executing smart contract code, but they also present another barrier to entry for new users.

As we know, if we are to attract the biggest potential user group of decentralized finance products — those in emerging economies — we must ensure that we can keep costs low. Similar to paying high fees for banking services, many users who desperately need new financial infrastructure simply won’t explore DeFi solutions if the costs are too high.

On Cardano, transactions between native tokens and assets do not incur execution fees, owing to the way they are deployed on-chain. We will discuss this in more detail below, but the bottom line is that DeFi has the potential to be much more affordable through Cardano.

2. Token and smart contract security

Tokens are an essential part of most existing DeFi protocols, used for governance, utility, or yield distribution. On other chains, such as Ethereum, tokens require smart contracts to run, and often necessitate the deployment of complex purpose-written code in the token contract.

We could say that these tokens are ‘non-native’ — in other words, they are not supported on the underlying ledger). Tokens on Cardano, on the other hand, are ‘native’. This means that tokens representing assets on Cardano use token logic that runs directly on Cardano’s ledger, rather than using smart contracts. By removing the need for smart contracts to deploy tokens, Cardano removes the large burden of gas costs associated with interacting with a token smart contract.

Generating custom code for each token launched through a smart contract requires an extreme amount of confidence in that code. Human error is a real risk in smart contract-based tokens, despite many of these contracts being responsible for potentially billions of dollar’s worth of on-chain value. As a result, bugs in token smart contracts have already cost users millions of dollars in value over the years, with smart contract exploits happening somewhat regularly.

Instead, as Cardano supports user-defined native tokens), DeFi tokens could be forged without the need for custom code. The only required custom code is a minting policy, which is permanently hash-associated with its respective tokens, and there’s no way to change the policy.

Cardano does this while also supporting fungible and non-fungible tokens without the need for specialized contracts — paving the way to represent a whole host of real world assets on-chain securely and affordably.

If serious institutional entities are exploring launching DeFi products, then tokens which solve the inherent vulnerabilities and dangers of custom-coded smart contracts could prove very attractive.

3. Cardano community power — the ultimate DeFi Catalyst?

This section is about you.

Cardano’s community is immensely powerful. Together, we have achieved feats that other protocols have long aspired to — near full decentralization through community led stake pools, a thriving staking and delegation ecosystem, and bustling community channels.

More recently, the community helped Cardano achieve another major milestone through Project Catalyst, one that is of critical importance to attracting DeFi developer talent and funding new solutions on Cardano.

With over 3,000 people already signed-up to vote and US$500,000 in funding available through Fund3, Project Catalyst is one of the largest community-led funding initiatives on any blockchain to date.

By pushing power to the edges of the Cardano community, there has already been a successfully funded DeFi proposal, one of the first projects that will launch atop Cardano, and our community made it happen. Going forward, our community stands to be a driving force for development and adoption of the Cardano blockchain for all kinds of solutions.

With Mary on the horizon, we are now looking forward to seeing more ideas flourish through Catalyst, and we anticipate some of these will include more DeFi proposals.

Sign up to Project Catalyst here.

Tl;dr

Short on time or relatively non-technical? Here are the key takeaways:

• There are no execution fees payable when transferring native tokens on Cardano,
• There is minimal custom code required to launch a user-defined token on Cardano,
• There is no custom code available to exploit in the deployment of user-defined tokens on Cardano,
• DeFi will be more affordable, more secure, and easier to launch on Cardano.

Do you have an idea for a DeFi solution built on Cardano? Put a proposal into Project Catalyst via Ideascale and let the community vote! Or, visit our developer forums here to get involved with the conversation.

You can also explore the new and updated Plutus Playground for writing smart contracts here.

Read more about decentralized finance here:

• How Cardano could fast-track financial inclusion in emerging economies,
• An introduction to decentralized applications and smart contracts,
• Developing world to bring 100M users to DeFi in three years? | Interview with Charles Hoskinson.

What will decentralized finance look like on Cardano? was originally published in cardanorss on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

(Written by @ElliotHill of the Cardano Foundation)

On 18 January 2021, Jeremy Firster and Mel McCann from the Cardano Foundation’s integrations team delivered a workshop on transaction metadata. Together with Alan McSherry and Ben O’Hanlon from IOHK, Jeremy and Mel introduced transaction metadata and discussed its potential for building applications on Cardano.

Here, following on from the Metadata Workshop, we are going to take a closer look at what transaction metadata is on Cardano, explore how metadata can be added to a transaction and viewed, and discover some potential use cases for metadata.

At the end of this article, we will be sharing some resources, documentation, and links to video walkthroughs on how to get started with metadata.

We will also be challenging you, our developer community, to build solutions using metadata. As one of the first fully available features of Goguen, we think metadata has enormous potential.

More importantly, metadata could be the first significant stride towards making Cardano the financial and social operating system of the future, and you should think about how you can build using metadata as you read this article!

What is transaction metadata?

Transaction metadata allows data to be added and stored on the Cardano blockchain. The data that can be expressed through metadata are diverse, from numerical data to written details, and many other things in between. We can think of transaction metadata as ‘proof of utility’, ensuring that data can be validated and giving assurance to transactions.

In one of our testnet environments, members of our community have already immortalized the Cardano whitepaper through transaction metadata — publishing the entire document through a series of transactions that will live on the Cardano blockchain as long as it exists.

Transaction metadata can enable you to provide context about a specific transaction. This could include any comment or information on the transaction itself, such as sender and receiver identification, historical ownership of the asset, transfer information, and also certification and validation information — which we will discuss in more detail below.

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Examine the example transaction metadata above. Here, we created a simple message inviting people to join the Metadata Workshop on Monday 18 January 2021. As you can see, the cost to send this transaction was just ₳0.19, which is an incredibly small fee to send something that will essentially be stored forever on the blockchain.

In this example, we used some simple text attached to the transaction to send a message. But there are multiple other ways that you could use metadata to represent diverse data.

The great thing about metadata on Cardano is that it is all available through generic components, available to use right now on the Cardano mainnet. So, let’s discover the first steps required to add metadata to a transaction.

How do I add metadata to a transaction?

In the Metadata Workshop, Alan McSherry from IOHK ran through the process of creating a transaction with metadata on Cardano.

We recommend rewatching the Workshop here, and navigating to 11:20 where Alan’s walkthrough begins. You will need to access some of Cardano’s API infrastructure to attach metadata to a transaction. It is not currently possible through Daedalus wallet or other ada wallets.

To make it easier to navigate to the resources you will need to add metadata to a transaction, you may find the following links useful:

• Cardano Wallet Backend API Documentation,
• Cardano Wallet IOHK GitHub,
• PSG Cardano Wallet API.

The size limit for data added to transaction metadata is 16KB. This seems small, but in fact, it’s more than large enough to include descriptive data. For example, in the case of Scantrust and Baia’s Wines, an entire batch of wine could be certified using just 1KB of transaction metadata in just one transaction — rather than making a separate transaction for each bottle.

The fees associated with adding metadata to a transaction serve two functions. There is a constant fee, which is designed to prevent misuse of the feature by making large-scale attacks fairly costly to the bad actor. This is set at ₳0.155381. There is also a minimum fee associated with on-chain data storage costs. This is set at around 43 lovelace, or ₳0.000043946, to be precise.

From these fees, we can calculate the exact cost of attaching metadata to a transaction if we know the size of the metadata. We can use the formula A+(B×C)=X, where ‘A’ is the constant fee, ‘B’ is the fee associated with storing the transaction on the blockchain, ‘C’ is the size of the transaction, and ‘X’ is the transaction cost.

In any event, with a maximum metadata size of 16KB, the transaction costs are low.

Where can I view transaction metadata?

All metadata associated with a transaction can be viewed on-chain, using an explorer that enables the viewing of metadata, or using a CLI interface. Cardano is unique in allowing metadata to be easily viewed using a standard blockchain explorer, which makes it a much more useful and rich experience for developers and enterprises alike.

As you can see from our example above, we have used adastat.net, but there may be other chain explorers that you can use for this purpose — or you could create your own!

What are the potential use cases of metadata?

So, now you know that you can add data to a transaction. In isolation, this may seem like a relatively simple and small feature. But actually, the contrary is the case. Transaction metadata is a powerful and diverse feature that could form the basis for a multitude of solutions built atop Cardano.

As we move through Goguen, we have talked a lot about the infrastructure required to power decentralized applications and real, tangible use cases for Cardano — and transaction metadata is the first fully available of such features on Goguen.

We want to challenge the developer community, both inside and outside the Cardano ecosystem, to build using transaction metadata.

The Cardano Foundation’s work with supply chain tracking technology provider Scantrust, and Georgian winemakers Baia’s Wine, is one great example of how metadata can be leveraged for commercial use. We describe this use case in detail here.

Now, we are going to describe some of the other potential use cases we envisage metadata powering — in other words, solutions that you can begin building today. Just as the Cardano Foundation used metadata to power the first commercial application on Cardano, you could also design an application that makes use of metadata.

There are four major applications of metadata, these include:

• Validation and verification
  As the Cardano Foundation has shown with Scantrust and Baia’s Wine, metadata can be used to validate and verify external physical products and genuine articles. This requires pairing with a physical identifier, such as a QR-code, but it is particularly useful for supply chain tracking of fast-moving consumer goods, at low cost.
• Authentication and attribution
  When you receive credentials from an educational institution, membership organization, or similar, there are usually physical identifiers to prove their authenticity. For digital courses and accreditations, this is more difficult. A transaction with metadata attached could serve as an immutable and always-accessible proof of certification, for a low fee.
• Secure record of information
  Metadata attached to a transaction and confirmed on the Cardano blockchain is immutable. This means no one can change or tamper with it, and it lasts as long as the Cardano blockchain exists. This is a great way to store and back-up information that is important, or could even just be used to leave a fun message for the future.
• Timestamping
  Timestamping is useful for any transaction which requires payment details to be attached, or for the history of ownership of certain assets. Metadata can be used to create a timestamp within a transaction, allowing anyone to verify the time and date at which something was bought, sold, or transferred.

Essentially, metadata can be used to tell the story of a transaction. When paired with off-chain infrastructure, such as physical identifiers, metadata can serve as a confirmation or assurance of authenticity.

Importantly, metadata shouldn’t be abused to store any kind of data on the blockchain — only information that benefits from the applications described above. We hope the above examples can help those interested in metadata to come up with solutions and applications which leverage its many benefits.

Resources and next steps

We hope that this article has further armed you with the knowledge to use metadata for solving complex problems with Cardano. We now openly challenge our developer community to innovate and explore the opportunities that transaction metadata offers.

If you have a good idea for using metadata, we would love to see a proposal put forward for the next round of Catalyst funding. The Cardano Foundation believes that applications leveraging metadata will be the kickstart to Cardano’s DApp ecosystem.

As such, our integrations team and others at the Cardano Foundation will assist those looking to use metadata in applications in any way we can. If you have any other questions, why not start a discussion on the Developers section on the Cardano Forum? You can also make use of the following resources:

• Watch the metadata workshop,
• Check out Workshop Maybe’s mini-csk on transaction metadata,
• Review the workshop presentation.

We are already really pleased to see the response of our community to our Metadata Workshop. If you are short on time and want a succinct recap of what we learned, you can read this Twitter thread by Daniel Ribar, where he details the key features of transaction metadata on Cardano.

We look forward to seeing what you create with metadata on Cardano! Have fun and keep building.

Read more about building on Cardano here:

• Project Catalyst
• Cardano Forum Developer Channel
• Cardano Forum Projects Channel
• Cardano News

How to get started with metadata on Cardano was originally published in cardanorss on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As blockchain technology supporters, we often get excited about the potential for financial and social disruption through decentralization. From democratizing access to identity solutions, to providing access to capital through decentralized finance (DeFi), we regularly look for ways that blockchain can transform our daily lives.

But against the backdrop of a wider rapidly-moving technology industry, it can be difficult to see where the impact of decentralization will be felt most significantly. It’s crucial to identify who needs the benefits of decentralized infrastructure here and now — as these markets could come to define blockchain adoption in the 2020s.

Here, we are going to explore how blockchain and Cardano can fast-track financial inclusion in emerging economies. But first, let’s discover how blockchain has the potential to lay entirely new foundations for financial infrastructure, rather than simply disrupting the old.

Laying the foundations for inclusion before disruption

For those of us in countries with well-established economies, it’s easy to forget the importance of the traditional financial infrastructure we have. While we seek to disrupt existing solutions through blockchain, access to basic banking services is actually in high-demand and low-supply in other underserved areas of our global community.

In emerging economies, access to financial services — such as banking and finance — is scarce. For an estimated 1.7 billion people worldwide, banking infrastructure is non-existent. This makes it difficult for users to onboard and utilize financial products, ones that we may take for granted on a daily basis.

For example, in Sub-Saharan Africa, the World Bank found that just 5% of adults per year were able to access mortgages from a formal bank if they wanted to explore this method of financing a home. This may limit an individuals’ ability to purchase their own home if they choose to take the route of a traditional mortgage.

Likewise, it can also result in individuals exploring less-secure credit options, such as borrowing from informal lenders. Although many African’s have good access to alternatives that work in place of a traditional mortgage, it opens up new opportunities for individuals looking to move into highly sought-after areas where house prices or building costs may be higher than others.

Similarly, entrepreneurs and businesses in emerging economies, especially those based in industries such as agriculture or small-scale production, find it incredibly difficult to access business financing arrangements. This limits new enterprise, causes cash flow issues, and halts businesses’ ability to expand. These issues form part of the impetus behind the Cardano Foundation’s involvement in the South African National Blockchain Alliance (SANBA), and have also helped shape IOHK’s initiatives with coffee growers in Ethiopia.

But occasionally, radical and innovative technology emerges. Such technology allows those in emerging economies to rapidly move beyond existing legacy systems and incumbent financial providers. Referred to as ‘leapfrogging’, there are already numerous examples of technology helping to fast-track the development of social and financial infrastructure in the least served geographies.

Across Africa, for instance, the rapid rise of inexpensive mobile phone technology has provided ample opportunities for financial inclusion, despite limited access to traditional banking infrastructure.

The deployment of new technology doesn’t always have to disrupt existing infrastructure as it would in developed economies. Often, the infrastructure does not exist to be disrupted in the first place. Instead, new technology can serve as a foundational layer for a fundamentally different range of services — filling previously unserved market gaps.

Blockchain technology, and specifically a decentralized solution such as Cardano, could provide the next major leapfrog scenario for the world’s emerging economies. By providing tools for financial inclusion with low barriers to entry, blockchain could become a foundational technology for providing cost-effective financial infrastructure to emerging economies.

Let’s examine some of the most impactful short- to mid-term uses of blockchain in these areas.

Digital assets as a medium of exchange and store of wealth

In economies with poor infrastructure, instability, or highly inflationary fiat currencies, some participants have turned to blockchain-based digital assets as a medium of exchange or store of wealth.

Such is the demand for reliable mediums of exchange in emerging economies, that participants will often explore bleeding-edge technologies in order to gain access to greater financial independence.

This has been evidenced most reliably by M-Pesa, a mobile-based money transfer service that expanded exponentially across Africa and eventually into other underserved jurisdictions, such as in southern Asia and eastern Europe.

M-Pesa essentially allowed millions of unbanked individuals to access basic banking products on their phones, which in some cases included access to microfinance. Many of these individuals would likely have never used traditional banking services before or would have struggled to gain access to them.

Similarly, in Venezuela — where the bolivar has suffered inflation rates as high as 344,500% from 2018 onwards — many turned to Bitcoin as a daily means of exchange for basic goods and services. This is despite the volatile nature of Bitcoin itself, which is evidence that new disruptive financial technologies are in the highest demand in unserved areas.

Through the Byron value layer, Cardano could provide a reliable and low-cost means of exchange through ada (₳), one which is decoupled from the fiat currencies of emerging economies. With a highly scalable transactional capacity and inexpensive transaction fees, Cardano could hold the potential to serve as a financial operating stack for millions of unbanked individuals worldwide. But how do we ensure access for the unbanked?

Equitable access to financial infrastructure through blockchain

Not only do participants of emerging economies have limited access to physical banking locations and services, but they are also more likely to lack the crucial documents that allow people to prove their sovereign financial identity.

This is especially important for vulnerable individuals who are residents of countries at the center of conflict or refugees, where documents are easily lost or destroyed.

Through identity solutions such as Atala PRISM built on Cardano, blockchain-based digital identities could be linked to biometric data for these individuals. This would empower individuals to preserve their identity and financial sovereignty through the blockchain, irrespective of their location or current political status.

Also of great importance is equitable access to financial products. In most established economies, people are afforded access to financial resources based on their career or financial status. By contrast, in some emerging economies, you may be denied access to financial infrastructure simply because of your gender.

A report by the International Finance Corporation found that female micro-entrepreneurs’ access to finance in India was significantly limited due to higher perceived risks. This is despite findings that indicate that female entrepreneurs in India are 30% to 50% less likely to default on loans.

This has led to a finance gap for female entrepreneurs in India of US$116bn — with just 27% of the market demand currently served.

When blockchain-based identity solutions are paired with open, peer-to-peer lending protocols built on the blockchain, it could be possible to access finance while only revealing crucial aspects of your identity — leveling the playing field for all participants.

Similarly, the cross-border and decentralized nature of blockchain could allow female entrepreneurs or other underrepresented groups with limited access to finance to easily seek loans and investment overseas.

In this regard, blockchain can be seen as an equalizer for financial access, a powerful tool for financial inclusion that only requires a connection to the blockchain and a digital wallet.

Can Cardano fast-track financial inclusion?

When all the pieces begin to align, the vision for Cardano and the solutions it empowers in emerging economies becomes clear.

Through a combination of Cardano’s value layer, and the ability to store and process data on-chain through smart contracts, a whole host of interconnected social and financial services could be built on-chain.

This would empower participants in emerging economies and underserved communities to take ownership of their identity without reliance on paper-based services, and use these identities to gain access to financial services through decentralized finance.

By virtue of Cardano’s decentralized nature, participants in any corner of the world could access a global social and financial ecosystem powered by the latest decentralized applications and smart contracts.

If you could build financial tools to empower underserved communities, what would you build first? Let us know in the poll and comments below which issues matter most to you, and where you see the biggest potential for DApps on Cardano in the future.

In your opinion, what is the most important problem for emerging economies that blockchain could solve?

If you are interested in building tools for financial inclusion on Cardano, check out Marlowe Playground. Here, you can write complex financial smart contracts, ready to deploy on Cardano, using visual programming languages.

How Cardano could fast-track financial inclusion in emerging economies was originally published in cardanorss on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Written by @ElliotHill of the Cardano Foundation

Today, we want to thank Philippe Pierre-Antoine and Rick McCracken for their contribution to the Cardano ecosystem, through their long-standing commitment to The Cardano Effect (TCE) podcast.

The Cardano Effect podcast takes high-level developer and project information related to Cardano, and breaks it down into bite size pieces of consumable information for everyday users. It’s original vision was to deliver unbiased news and drive discussion around Cardano, which it has delivered through hours of original content over the last two years.

Philippe and Rick announced on 12 December that their year’s end recap, the 116th episode of TCE, would be their last. Here, we are going to take a brief look at the journey TCE took from it’s early days in 2018, to its finale at the end of 2020.

What did the Cardano blockchain look like when TCE began?

The Cardano Effect debuted on the 10th November 2018, around a year after the launch of the Cardano blockchain.

When Philippe and Rick started TCE podcast, Cardano was a fledgling protocol still in its infancy. Still operating on the Byron mainnet, Cardano was a simple value layer on which to transfer ₳ada between other participants.

The high-level visions for the Cardano, driven by those working in the Cardano ecosystem and the early adopter community alike, were at this time simply blueprints for the future.

Now, those blueprints have and continue to come to fruition, building solid foundations for a decentralized and innovative ecosystem.

At times, this has been a difficult journey. The TCE and its longstanding fans have had difficult conversations regarding many aspects of Cardano’s implementation and direction. But ultimately, these discussions were driven by a desire to make Cardano one of the most robust and decentralized blockchains’ and communities’ to date.

With 72 episodes sponsored by IOHK, and 44 episodes sponsored by the Cardano Foundation, TCE has been a quality and highly-researched podcast. Philippe and Rick, both of whom have an extensive tech-background, have kept viewers informed with engaging and informative discussions.

Over time, TCE grew to over 8,000 subscribers, becoming one of the most-watched sources of Cardano ecosystem news.

The Cardano Effect also regularly welcomed special guests to the show, including IOHK developer talent, key stakeholders from the Cardano Foundation, as well as blockchain experts from different and diverse fields.

The Cardano Foundation was pleased to see our new CEO, Frederik Gregaard, appear on TCE in November 2020. Just three episodes before TCE’s grand finale, Frederik discussed the future of Cardano, and a new era for the Foundation. If you haven’t seen this episode already, we recommend you watch it here:

Cardano Q&A with Frederik Gregaard, CEO of the Cardano Foundation | TCE 113

How has Cardano transformed since 2018?

Now two years after TCEs launch, Cardano has made significant strides towards a fully decentralized blockchain network. We have seen the launch of staking and delegation through Shelley, and in the coming months, we will welcome developers and enterprises through tokenization and smart contracts.

Many of these high-level visions for the Cardano blockchain have already been discussed in the hundreds of hours of content from The Cardano Effect. In fact, it may be fair to say that some of these discussions have likely helped shape the direction of the Cardano protocol itself.

Alongside IOHK, the Cardano Foundation has been proud to sponsor this invaluable community-led podcast, which has provided so many hours of value to our community.

We are now pleased to see many other ecosystem participants take inspiration from The Cardano Effect, and launch their own dedicated Cardano content channels to keep our community informed of the latest Cardano news.

Thank you, and keep building!

We want to thank both Philippe and Rick for the time and commitment they have put into building The Cardano Effect.

We recognize that behind each of the 116 episodes, there was a significant unseen investment in time and resources, and the long-lasting positive effects your podcast has had on the Cardano ecosystem has been instrumental to building our diverse community.

For those who want to listen to the complete podcast collection, you can find TCE episodes 1‒116 on their YouTube Channel, or on Libsyn.com, where they will be hosted indefinitely.

Why not also follow Philippe 1 and Rick 1 on Twitter, to keep up with their future projects? We are sure they will both continue to be active participants in the Cardano ecosystem.

We look forward to seeing new podcasts and Cardano-related shows grow alongside our ecosystem during 2021.

The Cardano Effect — Thank you Philippe and Rick for your contribution to Cardano was originally published in cardanorss on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Today, we are celebrating the life and contributions of Ada Lovelace, a British mathematician and early pioneer of computing born some 205 years ago to this day in London, England.

Also known by her hereditary title, the Countess of Lovelace, Ada was the daughter of another historical figure who features prominently in the Cardano ecosystem — the leading Romantic movement poet, Lord Byron.

Ada’s mother, Isabella Byron, was also a highly esteemed mathematician of her time. Nicknamed the ‘Princess of Parallelograms’ by her husband Lord Byron, it was Isabella who first imparted her love of mathematics to Ada.

Tragically, Ada’s life was cut short in her prime, at just 36 years old. But not before her contributions to mathematics and computing became so significant, that they would echo through the ages and help shape science and technology for centuries to come.

Here, we are going to explore what those contributions meant for the modern technology we rely on today and discover how Ada Lovelace inadvertently contributed to the Cardano blockchain.

A love affair with the Analytical Engine

As one of the first pioneers of computer technology, Ada’s computing hardware looked a little different from the devices we use today. The first of such machines, named the ‘Analytical Engine’, was designed by British mathematician Charles Babbage.

Babbage was an early pioneer of computing and cryptography, designing the first machines comparable to modern computers, with program memory, instruction-based operation, and a separate input/output system.

Meeting through a mutual friend when Ada was still in her teenage years, Ada was immediately fascinated by Babbage’s Analytical Engine and his other early computers. Babbage would come to refer to Ada as the ‘Enchantress of Numbers’, and shortly after their first meeting, Ada began to translate works from European scholars into English for republication.

The Analytical Engine used three different types of punch cards, representing arithmetical operations, a type for loading and storage of operations, and a type for numerical constants. These cards, though unknown to Babbage and Lovelace at the time, could be read both forwards and backwards, making the early punch card-based language Turing-complete.

In transcribing an Italian peer’s work on Babbage’s Analytical Engine in 1842, Ada added her own notes to the original works — notes that ended up being three times the length of the original paper.

Within these notes was a method for calculating a sequence of rational numbers, the Bernoulli numbers, using the Analytical Engine. This algorithm, barely changed, is still in use today for calculating this sequence.

Unfortunately, a fully working prototype of the Analytical Engine would never come to fruition in Babbage’s lifetime, and it would be more than a century after her death that Ada’s notes were recognized for what they were — the first true computer program to ever be formally described.

(Tinted photograph from a daguerreotype of Ada Lovelace, 1844.)

From calculation, to computation, to Cardano

It was Ada Lovelace who first recognized the applications of the Analytical Engine, and indeed all early mechanical computers, as having applications beyond pure calculus. However, at this point — due in part to the capacity of computers at the time — Ada hadn’t entertained the notion of artificial intelligence.

Instead, Ada hypothesized that computers could be programmed to solve complex problems if given the correct input, representing more than just quantities or numbers. Essentially, Ada’s notes were the first theoretical description of the leap from calculation to general-purpose computation.

British-American computer scientist, Stephen Wolfram, described Ada’s understanding of the potential of the Analytical Engine, remarking: “Ada seems to have understood, though, that the “science of operations” implemented by the engine would not only apply to traditional mathematical operations.”

As we have mentioned, the original punch card-based language used in the Analytical Engine was Turing-complete, and by extension so was Ada’s first computer program. However, some 120 years later, Turing challenged Ada’s thinking that artificial intelligence couldn’t originate anything — which he termed ‘Lady Lovelace’s Objection’.

Nevertheless, Ada’s work remained important in the development of computation theory, and Stephen Wolfram calls Ada a “fitting personality on the road to universal computation”. Universal computation, as we now know well, is the basis for modern computing and at the heart of a smart contract-based blockchain platform like Cardano.

As many of our community members will know, the name of Cardano’s native token, ada; and its smallest unit of division, the lovelace, is a namesake of Ada Lovelace, paying homage to Ada’s computational connection some 200 years ago.

Chronology, context, and Cardano

So, why is Ada Lovelace’s contribution to programming and mathematics so impactful?

Well, for context, we should look to the wider events that defined the 1840s — the decade in which Ada wrote her first algorithm. When viewed chronologically alongside other events of the time, Ada’s conceptualization of the first computer program becomes even more fascinating.

Just two years prior to Ada’s first program, the very first postage stamp — seldom used in the era of electronic communications — was created. The State of California, now famous for the tech behemoths of Silicon Valley, would not be founded for another eight years. Likewise, it would be another two years until Samuel Morse sent the first telegram. Most astonishing, however, is that it would be almost another 80 years before women were allowed to vote in Ada’s home country of England.

Despite all this, and unbeknownst to her, Ada had already taken the first steps to creating our modern tech industry, while simultaneously putting the wheels in motion to eventually make her contemporaries’ inventions — the telegram and the postal service — almost obsolete for communications. All of this, with little more than a pen, paper, and brainpower.

The achievements of Ada Lovelace, a giant in her field who lived such a tragically short life at a time when women in science had seldom little recognition, is nothing short of astounding.

The Cardano Foundation is proud to celebrate her life and accomplishments, and we are humbled that her mathematical brilliance laid the foundations for the creation of Cardano, and all computing infrastructure, some two centuries later.

As both the namesake of our blockchain’s native token and one of the founders of modern computing, we thank Ada Lovelace for her life’s work today.

Make sure you watch our CEO, Frederik Gregaard, sit down with IOHK’s CEO, Charles Hoskinson, to discuss the future of the Cardano protocol to mark Ada Lovelace’s birthday. You can watch the fireside chat here 2.

Read more about Ada Lovelace and Cardano’s Computation layer below:

• What is Ada?
• Why Cardano — Cardano Computation Layer
• Cardanians — The story of Ada Lovelace

The impact of Ada Lovelace on technology and Cardano was originally published in cardanorss on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In early 2020, the Cardano Foundation and its ecosystem partners embarked on an ambitious brand reappraisal exercise for the Cardano blockchain, enlisting the help of award-winning design and creative agency McCann Dublin as well as our valued community. This led to a unified and renewed visual identity for Cardano and the Cardano Foundation, which you can see in this video.

Our brand reappraisal is called ‘Project Renovare’, which means ‘renew’ in Latin. As part of the deliverables, the Cardano’s and the Cardano Foundation’s online presence underwent a significant corporate refresh, evolving the visual elements of our existing visual identity to reflect the new audiences and stakeholders we will soon be welcoming and working alongside.

We are now pleased to reveal the official Cardano brand animation video, which provides a comprehensive overview of our new visual identity and the inspiration behind it. In early December, we shared that our reappraisal exercise, inspired by both natural and manmade elements, was nominated for a prestigious ICAD Awards 2020 — a highly coveted design award in the Republic of Ireland.

Our Cardano Ambassadors and our valued community members contributed to Cardano’s visual identity refresh by providing feedback, taking part in surveys, filling out questionnaires, and giving us the much-needed inspiration.

In case you missed the brand story video, you can watch it here.

You can read more about Cardano’s brand reappraisal on the Cardano Forum here:

• Cardano brand reappraisal nominated for ICAD Awards 2020 — Creating change with Cardano
• New Cardano website is now live
• All about Cardano’s brand reappraisal — Project Renovare
• Cardano elevates its branding ahead of contract roll-out

Cardano’s Brand Animation Video was originally published in cardanorss on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Cardano’s brand reappraisal, completed in July 2020 as part of Project Renovare, has been nominated by Ireland’s Institute of Creative Advertising and Design (ICAD)* for the best rebranding scheme award. The Cardano Foundation is pleased to announce this recognition with our valued Cardano community, as this is a success for all of us.

The commendation comes to Project Renovare, our brand reappraisal exercise, through our friends at McCann Dublin — specialists in brand, design and digital content based in the heart of the Republic of Ireland’s capital near the Grand Canal Dock.

Project Renovare

Working in collaboration with McCann Dublin, our brand reappraisal sought to evolve and build on the existing Cardano brand. This is just the beginning as our brand will grow together with Cardano.

Instead of a complete redesign of Cardano’s visual media and a total rebrand, McCann Dublin worked closely with the Foundation to establish the most valued aspects of our pre-existing identity within the Cardano ecosystem. From here, McCann Dublin worked with our dedicated ambassadors and our valued community to leverage the Cardano community’s passion and evolve Cardano’s brand organically.

The Foundation and McCann Dublin also needed to ensure that our visual identity was ready for the acceleration towards new audiences joining the Cardano ecosystem, with the arrival of smart contracts and decentralized applications.

The Cardano Foundation is delighted that Project Renovare — entitled ‘Creating change with Cardano’ for the ICAD nominations — has been recognized through this commendation.

Earlier in 2020, Project Renovare, and the ecosystem-wide brand refresh of Cardano, was also recognized as one of the top rebranding projects in the distributed ledger technology space by Bitrates, the blockchain news site.

Now, our commendation through ICAD Awards is further testament to the hard work and creative thought process by both McCann Dublin, the Cardano Foundation and our ecosystem partners, which went into creating a refreshed look for Cardano’s visual identity.

Exploring Project Renovare’s commendation

The ICAD Awards Exhibition, entitled ‘The Best of Us’, ran during 3–5 December 2020, nominating creative projects from diverse industries, including Cardano.

Staged in association with the Dublin City Council, Creative Ireland, JCDecaux, The Business Post and RTÉ, the city-wide exhibition featured works from more than 600 designers and creative agencies, assessed and commended by an international panel of expert judges.

Our community members who were in the vicinity of the Irish capital had the opportunity to explore Cardano’s brand reappraisal exercise at the locations listed in ICAD’s Exhibition Guide.

Digital city-wide displays showcased our brand reappraisal to thousands of passers-by over a two-day period, letting our Dublin-based community discover Project Renovare’s transformation of Cardano for themselves.

We look forward to seeing our brand and ecosystem transform in the coming months, with the arrival of new components and participants.

Last, but not least, we thank everyone involved — Cardano Ambassadors and our community, the Cardano Foundation, the IOHK marketing team and McCann Dublin — for their hard work and enthusiasm to bring the brand reappraisal to life.

Read more about Project Renovare below:

• All about Cardano’s brand reappraisal — Project Renovare
• McCann Dublin — Project Renovare
• Complex systems, simple solutions
• Project Renovare concludes with website refresh for CF
• New Cardano website is now live
• Cardano elevates its branding ahead of smart contract roll-out

*ICAD is a non-profit, membership led body made up of creatives and designers across Europe. Its primary aim is to foster, promote, and reward creative excellence in advertising and design, running annual awards, exhibitions, events, talks, and provide learning opportunities for Irish creatives.

Project Renovare brand reappraisal nomination — Creating change with Cardano was originally published in cardanorss on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.