The First Trustless Newsletter
A turbulent month for Crypto, but a march of progress for Cardano
Dear Trustless Community,
It’s been one hell of a month so far.
Since you’ve spent the past week overwhelmed with negative news about the crypto markets, we will not cover that here.
Instead, we’d like to introduce ourselves.
In short: Trustless is a Web3 newsletter focusing on the Cardano ecosystem. We intend to expand to all blockchains that prioritize decentralization soon.
Goals: Build a newsletter that attracts the broader web3 market to whom we can tell the truth about Cardano.
Why are we doing this? Large communities of investors have formed around first to market coins like $ETH and $BTC. Meanwhile, tens of billions of VC dollars have been invested into ponzinomic coins like $LUNA. This has led to a coordinated effort to spread misinformation about Cardano/$ADA to suppress its threat to these first movers or VC-controlled chains.
Since the first-movers have communities like Bankless and the VCs have PR outlets like Cointelegraph, we need to counter this echo chamber with information that focuses on the benefits of Cardano, decentralization, formal methods, slow/steady/calculated growth.
For example, the Bankless community has over 100k email subscribers and reaches millions on Twitter/YouTube.
We’re going to need your help spreading the word.
Strategy:
Post weekly Cardano roundups every Wednesday
Ask for your help spreading the word
Reach at least 25% of the entire Cardano community by January 2023
Use that audience to build the foundation for expanding into other communities
Tell that audience the truth about Cardano and other decentralized first-principal projects.
What does Trustless mean? A trustless system means that the participants involved do not need to know or trust each other or a third party for the system to function.
Welcome to Trustless.
The Top 7: Get Caught Up
1. Circle partners w/ Milkomeda to bring USDC to Cardano L2
What happened? Circle, the creators of collateralized stable coin USDC, is now an investor in Milkomeda and plans to bring the native coin to Cardano’s first L2. Read the announcement
Why does it matter? Even though USDC is centralized, it can help bring more users into the Cardano ecosystem. USDC is the #4 largest cryptocurrency globally and frequently does over $5B in daily volume. Without mainstream stable coins like USDC, it will be harder for Cardano to bootstrap TVL liquidity.
2. Cardano wallet Eternl announced the first Cardano dapp browser
What happened? Eternl, one of the leading light wallets for Cardano, released the ecosystem’s first dapp browser beta. Read the announcement
Why does it matter? You can browse dapps (currently six) directly within your Eternl wallet for the first time. This makes the experience more like the IOS or Android experience with the power of web3 on Cardano. As more wallets transform into dapp browsers, the user experience will improve substantially, more users will use dapps, and web3 will compete more aggressively with web2.
3. The Cardano Foundation announced the Essential Cardano website
What happened? Cardano engineering firm IOG released a new website called http://essentialcardano.io. It is a community-driven directory of everything happening in the Cardano ecosystem. Read the announcement.
Why does it matter? It can be hard to keep up with so much going on across an ecosystem of nearly 1,000 projects. This new community resource can help unify this information for developers, investors, users, and journalists.
4. Aada Finance goes live on Testnet
What happened? Defi lending dapp Aada announced that their testnet is ready for anyone to try. Read the announcement or see dapp screenshots here
Why does it matter? This brings Aada closer to being the first defi borrowing and lending protocol to the Cardano ecosystem. Ethereum’s similar dapp Aave currently has over $15 billion in locked liquidity (even after the crash). Lending on Cardano will help increase TVL and provide capital to build/invest in further ecosystem growth.
5. Catalyst announces proposal winners of the $16,000,000 Fund8
What happened? Cardano’s governance project catalyst announced the proposal winners of the most significant fund release in the history of the ecosystem. See the voting results
Why does it matter? $16 Million invested across 367 proposals will do wonders to grow and make the ecosystem better. The better it gets, the more people come to Cardano, and the decentralized treasury grows. As the treasury grows, more projects can be funded. It’s a positive re-enforcement cycle.
6. Indigo Protocol also announces their Testnet
What happened? Pre-selected users will complete a series of functionality tests on the Indigo testnet & share their insight on UI/UX usability over 14 days! Read the announcement or see dapp screenshots here
Why does it matter? After a year of hard work, synthetic assets are coming soon to Cardano. Synthetic assets allow users to gain exposure to a variety of assets without the need to actually own the underlying asset — essentially to invest without ownership. The underlying assets can be anything that has value in the real world and a reliable and verifiable price feed.
7. IOG opens up applications for the Marlowe Pioneers program
What happened? IOG opens up applications for the long-awaited Marlowe Pioneers training program kicking off on May 19th. Read the announcement
Why does it matter? Marlowe is a web-based platform where you can visually build, simulate, analyze, and run smart financial contracts without needing deep programming knowledge. This can help rapidly scale up the Cardano defi ecosystem.
10 more things you probably missed
Ardana gives us a sneak peek of their dapp Read
DripDropz announces the first native asset voting on Cardano Read
Ledger’s native wallet “Live” finally integrates with Cardano Read
Djed public testnet is live Read
Mobile trading is available on jpg.store Read
Jpg.store open sources their code Read
Muesliswap released partial order matching Read
Minswap added Limit orders Read
Hydra deployed 0.5.0 release Read
Daedalus 4.10.0 is out Read
Tweet of the week
