Alonzo Upgrade Opens the Door for Cardano DApps

SundaeSwap is a decentralized exchange protocol for the Cardano Network, enabling native token and ADA exchanges for anyone. With its protocol, you will be able to swap, stake, lend, borrow, and more in a truly decentralized way!

SundaeSwap

Daedalus

Lace

Cardano

Snek

IAGON

Minswap

Indigo Protocol

Hosky Token

KubeCoin

AdaSwap

Moonbeam is an Ethereum-compatible smart contract parachain on Polkadot. Moonbeam makes it easy to use popular Ethereum developer tools to build or redeploy Solidity projects in a Substrate-based environment.

Moonbeam is much more than just an EVM implementation: it’s a highly specialized parachain that mirrors Ethereum’s Web3 RPC, accounts, keys, subscriptions, logs, and more. The Moonbeam platform extends the base Ethereum feature set with additional features such as on-chain governance, staking, and cross-chain integrations.

Moonbeam’s Ethereum compatibility is unmatched:

Minimal Changes: developers can use existing Solidity smart contracts right away, with no need to rewrite or reconfigure

Use Existing Developer Tools: connect popular tools like MetaMask, Hardhat, Waffle, Remix, and Truffle via a complete set of Web3 RPC endpoints. Use well-known Javascript libraries such as Web3.Js or Ethers.Js.

Unified Accounts, Addresses, and Signatures: use your existing Ethereum H160 accounts & ECDSA signatures to interact with Moonbeam

Tap into the Most Integrations on Polkadot: use existing oracles, bridges, wallets, and other tools that are already building on Moonbeam

Moonbeam provides integration and connectivity between Polkadot Parachains as well as with other chains such as Ethereum and Bitcoin via bridges. Moonbeam was started in 2019 by Derek Yoo of Pure Stake.

Moonbeam

COTI markets itself as the first enterprise-grade fintech platform that empowers organizations to build their own payment solutions as well as digitize any currency to save time as well as money.

COTI is one of the world’s first blockchain protocols that is optimized for decentralized payments and designed for use by merchants, governments, payment DApps and stablecoin issuers.

COTI Pay is the first application. It describes itself as a fully encompassing finance on the blockchain. The COTI Group launched in March of 2017, while the Staking Platform Launched on Jan. 1, 2020.

It is an ecosystem that is designed specifically to meet all of the challenges associated with traditional finance, including latency, fees, global inclusion and risks. This is done through the introduction of the DAG-based protocol as well as infrastructure that is completely scalable, private, inclusive and fast.

The ecosystem has DAG-based blockchain, proof-of-trust consensus algorithm, multiDAG, GTS (Global Trust System), a universal payment solution and a payment gateway.

COTI

What Is Velas (VLX)?
Velas is a pioneering solana L1 Fork with Full EVM blockchain bridging the gap between EVM familiarity and unparalleled performance.

Velas is an highly unique dual-chain architecture, seamlessly merging the best of both worlds: the robust security and established developer ecosystem of the EVM with the lightning-fast transaction processing capabilities of Solana. This hybrid approach unlocks a treasure trove of possibilities for Ethereum projects seeking to escape congestion and scale to new heights.

The defining feature of Velas lies in its full EVM compatibility. Existing Ethereum smart contracts can be migrated seamlessly with a single click, eliminating the need for costly code rewrites and preserving the valuable expertise invested in the EVM ecosystem. This one-click migration paves the way for a smooth transition, allowing developers to leverage their existing skills and tools on a platform built for speed and scalability.

It leverages the power of Solana’s parallel transaction processing to deliver lightning-fast speeds exceeding 75,000 TPS. This translates to near-instantaneous transaction finality and minimal fees, a stark contrast to the congested and expensive environment of Ethereum. For dApps and users, this translates to a smoother, more efficient experience.

But speed is just the beginning. Velas is also:

Decentralized: No central authority controls the network. Power is in the hands of the community through a secure Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism.

Carbon-neutral: Velas is committed to sustainability, utilizing a green PoS mechanism that minimizes energy consumption.

Accessible: Building on Velas is a breeze with its extensive developer tools and EVM/Solidity support.

Velas

Acala Token

Moonriver is an Ethereum-compatible, smart-contract parachain on Kusama. It is intended to be a companion network to Moonbeam, where it will provide a permanently incentivized canary network. New code will ship to Moonriver first, where it can be tested and verified under real economic conditions. Once proven, the same code will ship to Moonbeam on Polkadot.

It does this by providing a full EVM implementation, a Web3-compatible API, and bridges that connect Moonriver to existing Ethereum networks.

This allows developers to deploy existing Solidity smart contracts and DApp frontends to Moonriver with minimal changes.

Moonriver

Wilder World

Kadena is a proof-of-work blockchain that combines the PoW consensus mechanism from Bitcoin with directed acyclic graph (DAG) principles to offer a scalable version of Bitcoin. Kadena claims it can provide the security of Bitcoin while being able to offer unparalleled throughput that makes the blockchain usable to enterprises and entrepreneurs alike. Kadena's unique infrastructure is decentralized and built for mass adoption because of its multi-chain approach.

Kadena promises industrial scalability that can support global financial systems and can be scaled as necessary. It also vows to remain energy-efficient at scale and deliver more transactions with the same energy input, another difference to Bitcoin. Moreover, Kadena offers crypto gas stations, which allow businesses to pay for their customers' gas fees and remove a massive pain point in adopting blockchains for business.

Kadena has already scaled its network from 10 to 20 blockchains and can do so again in the future, if necessary. This final addition to Kadena was its private Kuro layer-two blockchain, which supports up to 8,000 transactions per second across 500 nodes.

Kadena

Verasity is an open-ledger ecosystem designed to fight advertising fraud, provide open access to infrastructure for publishers and advertisers, and reward users for watching video content. Verasity also provides payment solutions and a rewarding staking ecosystem with 15% yields guaranteed through to April 2024.

Powered by a mix of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and cutting-edge blockchain technologies, Verasity is building the most powerful advertising ecosystem in the world through VeraViews; developing an open-access payments platform through VeraWallet, the VeraCard, and VeraPay; and enhancing the attention economy through its patented Rewarded Video module.

Verasity

Efinity is a cross-chain NFT platform developed by Enjin and built on Polkadot. Efinity was created as the next generation blockchain for digital assets with the aim of adapting to the challenges of the world of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), according to the project.

The main specialization of the Efinity project is the NFT space. With the protocol, traders and gamers can create, distribute, transfer, sell and buy NFTs. Efinity aims to remove barriers to entry into the NFT space/decentralized gaming, and to simplify user experience and digital asset governance.

Efinity Token powers the entire Efinity ecosystem, EFI aims to prioritize the generation, transfer and purchase of tokens using an inter-chain infrastructure of protocols resulting in lower transaction fees. As for incentives, rewards on PoW blockchains with NFT functionality go to miners who create/trade tokens, thereby forming a community.

One of the long-term goals of Efinity is to become a hub for both fungible and non-fungible tokens, accepting tokens from any other chain, facilitating the pricing and exchange of NFTs, increasing transaction volume, and creating network effects.

In December 2021, the project won the Polkadot parachain auction, and in March 2022, Enjin launched their flagship parachain Efinity on the Polkadot Relay Chain — a blockchain platform that provides a decentralized parachain network where people havecontrol over their data and identity.

Efinity Token

Bloktopia is a decentralized metaverse backed by and built on Polygon. In Bloktopia, a decentralized virtual reality skyscraper made up of 21 levels (as recognition to 21 million Bitcoin) acts as a central hub for users to have access to crypto information and immersive content in one place. The so-called Bloktopias can educate themselves in the basics or more advanced crypto learnings, earn revenue by owning virtual real estate, play games, build networks and more. Moreover, advertisers and sponsors can monetize the platform’s userbase through a dedicated NFT mechanism. By providing a VR experience for the crypto community, users can engage in an immersive environment according to Bloktopia’s four core pillars: learn, earn, play and create.

Bloktopia

Illuvium is an open-world fantasy battle game built on the Ethereum blockchain. Often touted as the first AAA game on Ethereum, Illuvium looks to provide a source of entertainment to both casual gamers and hardcore DeFi fans through a range of collecting and trading features.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Illuvium.

The world of Illuvium is inhabited by creatures known as Illuvials, who can be captured by players that best them in battle and nurse them back to health. From then on, they become a loyal part of the player’s collection and can be used when battling other adventurers as part of Illuvium’s auto battler gameplay.

The game is a fusion between an open-world exploration game and a PVP battle game. Players can spend their time exploring the expanses of the game world or building up their team of powerful beasts.

Illuvium has been in development since 2020, and is being built by a worldwide team of more than 40 individuals, including the co-founders; serial entrepreneur and early cryptocurrency adopter Kieran Warwick, and experienced game designer Aaron Warwick, who are brothers. (And who are coincidentally also the brothers of Kain Warwick, the co-founder of DeFi platform Synthetix).

The ILV token has a number of uses within the Illuvium ecosystem. It’s the main token used to reward players for their in-game achievements, entitles players to their share of the Illuvium Vault and is used for participating in the governance of the game via the Illuvium decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).

Illuvium

Ultra is a publishing platform and ecosystem for video games and video game content. Ultra’s mission is to do away with the current monopoly held by publishing platforms like Steam and provide new opportunities to game developers, players, and influencers. Ultra promises a solution that is more equitable to players and developers alike. Players can benefit from immediately playable games, earn UOS by using the platform, and access platform-exclusive games. At the same time, developers benefit from access to more effective marketing tools and the potential for 20% higher sales revenue.

Besides content and game publishing, Ultra offers a demand-side and service-side platform for advertisers, the opportunity for players to resell their used games, and a platform-exclusive app.

Ultra

Harmony is a blockchain platform designed to facilitate the creation and use of decentralized applications (DApps). The network aims to innovate the way decentralized applications work by focusing on random state sharding, which allows creating blocks in seconds.

According to the project’s website, Harmony is expected to introduce cross-shard contracts and a cross-chain infrastructure by the end of 2021.

Harmony

HELLO Labs

Audius is a decentralized music streaming protocol initially built on POA network, but now living on Solana. Audius was launched to remedy the inefficiencies of the music industry, which is plagued by intransparent music rights ownership and intermediaries standing between artists and their audience.

Audius aims to align the interests of artists, fans, and node operators through its platform powered by its native AUDIO token. Artists can upload music, stored and distributed by content and discovery nodes, that fans can listen to for free. Currently, Audius rewards content creators through rewards like featuring in the weekly trending lists. In the future, it plans to integrate stablecoins for artists to offer paid content, as well as artist tokens that give fans the ability to access exclusive content, potentially cooperating with platforms like Rally.

Audius

Polkastarter is a decentralized fundraising platform empowering Web3 projects to launch and raise funds through multi-chain token pools whilst significantly growing their communities.

The platform supports initial dex offerings (IDOs) across major blockchains, including Ethereum, BNB Chain, Solana, Polkadot, Polygon, Avalanche and Celo.

The platform enables investors to secure early access to IDOs, NFTs and Gaming Web3 innovation. It is most commonly used by early-stage blockchain projects that want to raise capital and easily distribute their tokens at the same time.

Through Polkastarter, blockchain projects can easily create their own fixed-chain swap pools, which allow them to securely raise funds, while users can invest without risks, since swaps are automatically executed by smart contracts.

POLS is the native utility token of the Polkastarter platform. Its main utility is gaining access to pools and giving projects the option to give priority access to POLS holders. Users are incentivised to stake POLS, rewarding the most loyal members.

In Q4 2022, Polkastarter will release new community utility features, such as governance and POLS Power Boosters (increasing your allowlisting success). The platform first went live in December 2020, and has quickly grown to become one of the most commonly used platforms for initial DEX offerings (IDOs) operating on the Ethereum blockchain.

Polkastarter

Gala is a web3 ecosystem powered by a layer-1 blockchain (GalaChain) built to power the Gala entertainment ecosystem that originally included Gala Games, Gala Music and Gala Film. More recently however, GalaChain has opened its doors to external developers and projects from any applicable industry, providing open source developer resources to simplify the process.

On a mission to empower users and creators across multiple industries throughout the world, Gala’s goal is to become the first billion user blockchain in the world. Innovators can extend the benefits of web3 to their users and communities more easily than ever before by leveraging open source tools like the GalaChain SDK and Creator Portal.

By elevating their ideas to web3 through GalaChain, developers can create custom tokens, smart contracts, reward opportunities and node networks for their communities and projects. Assets built on GalaChain can also be bridged to other blockchains, such as Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain and more. Developers who wish to learn more about getting involved with GalaChain are welcome to reach out via GalaChain.com.

The core of GalaChain is powered by its DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network) of Founder’s Nodes, whose operators earn daily $GALA rewards for actively providing resources to the ecosystem and enjoy governance voting rights on certain core Gala decisions. In addition to the Founder’s Node network’s foundational workload, individual projects can also create Node networks on GalaChain with more specific workloads.

Gala.com
News.Gala.com
Games.Gala.com
Music.Gala.com
Film.Gala.com

Gala

Arweave is a decentralized storage network that seeks to offer a platform for the indefinite storage of data. Describing itself as "a collectively owned hard drive that never forgets," the network primarily hosts "the permaweb" — a permanent, decentralized web with a number of community-driven applications and platforms.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Arweave.

The Arweave network uses a native cryptocurrency, AR, to pay "miners" to indefinitely store the network's information.

The project was first announced as Archain in August 2017, later rebranding to Arweave in February 2018 and officially launching in June 2018.

Arweave

Cardano is a proof-of-stake blockchain platform that says its goal is to allow “changemakers, innovators and visionaries” to bring about positive global change.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Cardano.

The open-source project also aims to “redistribute power from unaccountable structures to the margins to individuals” — helping to create a society that is more secure, transparent and fair.

Cardano was founded back in 2017, and named after the 16th century Italian polymath Gerolamo Cardano. The native ADA token takes its name from the 19th century mathematician Ada Lovelace, widely regarded as the world’s first computer programmer. The ADA token is designed to ensure that owners can participate in the operation of the network. Because of this, those who hold the cryptocurrency have the right to vote on any proposed changes to the software.

The team behind the layered blockchain say that there have already been some compelling use cases for its technology, which aims to allow decentralized apps and smart contracts to be developed with modularity.

In August 2021, Charles Hoskinson announced the launch of the Alonzo hard fork, causing Cardano price to surge, gaining 116% in the following month. On Sept. 12, 2021, the Cardano ‘Alonzo’ hard fork officially launched, bringing smart contract functionality to the blockchain. Over 100 smart contracts were deployed in the following 24 hours after the launch.

Cardano is used by agricultural companies to track fresh produce from field to fork, while other products built on the platform allow educational credentials to be stored in a tamper-proof way, and retailers to clamp down on counterfeit goods.

Fantom is a directed acyclic graph (DAG) smart contract platform providing decentralized finance (DeFi) services to developers using its own bespoke consensus algorithm.

Together with its in-house token FTM, Fantom aims to solve problems associated with smart-contract platforms, specifically transaction speed, which developers say they have reduced to under two seconds.

The Fantom Foundation, which oversees the Fantom product offering, was originally created in 2018, with the launch of OPERA, Fantom’s mainnet, coming in December 2019.

Fantom is an open-source decentralized smart contract platform for DApps and digital assets that was created as an alternative to Ethereum. Fantom has the goal of overcoming the limitations of previous generation blockchains and balancing three components: scalability, security and decentralization. The project offers a set of tools to simplify the process of integrating existing DApps, as well as a detailed staking reward system and built-in DeFi instruments.

Fantom is a Layer-1 blockchain that uses a scratch-built consensus mechanism and independent consensus layer, Lachesis, to facilitate DeFi and related services on the basis of smart contracts. Lachesis provides security for other layers as well, including Opera, Fantom's EVM-compatible smart contract chain. The long-playing mission of the project is to “grant compatibility between all transaction bodies around the world.”

One of Fantom's key strengths is its performance and efficient transaction processing, namely thousands of transactions per second, where transactions are settled in 1-2 seconds, and the cost is fractions of a cent per transaction. As a result, Fantom provides higher scalability but at a lower cost.

The ecosystem is based on two main technologies: Lachesis protocol and Opera.

The Lachesis protocol is the core consensus layer that secures the Fantom network by providing both transaction speed and security.

Lachesis is an aBFT consensus engine that uses a directed acyclic graph (DAG) algorithm. How it works: network data can be processed at different times, and the network filters the participants, allowing only one third, which are allocated due to erroneous or malicious behavior, without compromising network processes.

Fantom's Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerant (aBFT) Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism maintains the efficiency of the entire network, its design provides security at maximum speed. Fantom developers emphasize that the PoS mechanism is a leaderless phenomenon — there are no leaders of blocks and participants, and anyone can join (or leave) the network of nodes at a convenient moment.

The key qualities of Lachesis are: asynchronous, leaderless, Byzantine fault-tolerant, and near-instant finality.

As for Opera, it's an application development layer or Fantom's mainnet deployment platform, permissionless and open-source hosting DApps. Thanks to EVM integration and support for the Solidity programming language, Fantom has a full set of smart contract capabilities, which allows users to seamlessly interact with Ethereum platforms while maintaining the advantage of Fantom's transaction efficiency.

The Fantom Foundation concluded that removing block leaders improves network security, so Opera uses a PoS model and leaderless validators (validators do not determine which blocks are valid).

In addition to being a fast, secure and cheap payment platform that enables to make fast and secure payments at minimal cost, Fantom also features on-chain governance where users vote with FTM tokens (one token equals one vote). Of the features: users have the right to express the degree of agreement / disagreement on a scale from 0 to 4.

FTM is the native utility in-house PoS token of Fantom that powers the ecosystem and is applied for payments, network fees, staking, and governance. FTM forms the backbone of transactions, and allows fee collection and staking activities, along with the user rewards the latter represents.