2023 is coming to an end and there is much to expect from the Cardano ecosystem in 2024. Since its inception in 2015 and formal launch in 2017, Cardano has grown exponentially in both technical development and user adoption with now a growing ecosystem of users, dApps, wallets, developers, accelerators, local communities, and more.
This year has seen Cardano embrace and lay the foundation for sustainable community governance through CIP-1694 and the launch of Cardano’s member-based organization Intersect in addition to many other technical upgrades and implementations from both within Cardano and from developers building projects on Cardano.
In this blog, let’s go over some of the biggest things to look forward to in 2024 for the Cardano ecosystem.
*Listed dates are subject to change.
Cardano’s first major technical milestone, the Chang hard fork, is scheduled for 2024. This network event will mark the first step towards a minimum-viable community-run government. It will be instituted with the consent of the Cardano community via the consensus mechanism introduced with this hard fork. This will start the bootstrapping period of the Cardano governance model.
Cardano Constitution Workshops
The Cardano Constitution is one of the most important points in establishing a framework for the community governance of Cardano as it is a document that outlines rules and regulations to abide by. In 2024, there is a plan for a series of global Cardano Constitution workshops organized by the Cardano Civics Committee within Intersect to raise awareness and receive feedback from local communities around the world.
Here, the community will have time to discuss and debate the items in the Cardano Constitution to gather feedback and start collecting the information needed to draft a version of the Constitution. The workshops will also select a representative to go to the future Cardano Constitutional Convention.
Intersect
Launched in 2023, Intersect is the off-chain governance component of Cardano, working in tandem with the technical features laid out in CIP-1694 which focuses on on-chain governance. As a member-based organization, Intersect is made up of committees and layers to form groups that will lead and support the community-driven governance of Cardano through different initiatives.
Intersect has quickly expanded its organization to include more than 850 members to date and is open to anyone willing to join and participate in helping to steward Cardano’s sustainability.
In 2024, Intersect will continue to accelerate its activities, sign up more members, and start developing its committees and layers to form a solid foundation for Cardano’s off-chain community governance.
Read more: How to get started with Intersect
Bootstrapping Phase
As mentioned before, the Chang hard fork will kick start the minimum-viable government. An important part of it is the participation of Delegate Representatives (DReps). For Cardano governance, there are several main community governing bodies, one of which is the DReps who will act as selected voting representatives on behalf of the Cardano community for different proposals concerning the Cardano network.
At the start of Q2 2024, it’s projected that DReps will be able to register as such on the network, start campaigning for delegation, and begin building up their profile.
This is crucial, as the DReps are one of the three governance bodies along the SPOs, and the Constitutional Committee. So, from Q2 to Q3 2024, people can register as DReps to represent the Cardano community.
Read more: What are Cardano DReps?
Cardano Constitutional Convention
Next, a Constitutional Convention is scheduled to be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Scheduled to be held at the start of Q4 2024, the convention will gather all the governance representatives selected from the different workshops organized all over the world.
Each representative will be part of drafting the first version of the Cardano Constitution. The biggest milestone of the Voltaire era and a chance for the community to give input in the foundational document of Cardano that will stand as the ultimate governing document for the Cardano network.
Cardano Constitution Vote
At the end of 2024, the first version of the Cardano Constitution will be presented to the entire community. All Cardano members will have the time to review it and reflect on the meaning of the provision stipulated in the document.
Afterward, the entire Cardano Community will vote on ratifying this first version of the Constitution. The vote will mark a turning point for Cardano, as after this milestone, the network will begin to be governed in a decentralized manner where all of the community can choose the future of the Cardano blockchain.
The Cardano blockchain is a fast-developing ecosystem of decentralized applications for DeFi, NFTs, and more, that utilize tokens to exchange value for services.
Cardano is a unique decentralized blockchain in that smart contracts are not necessarily required to issue tokens.
This plays a significant role in making things simpler for brands and creators to enter Web3, using Cardano’s technology as a stepping stone into this space. Tokenization of real-world assets is considered to be one of the next big areas for the advancement of blockchain as it enables businesses and creators to more efficiently monetize their property and create new streams of business. Virtually anything can be tokenized and transacted digitally with a global base of users that is expanding year over year.
Platforms such as NMKR, an NFT platform on Cardano, enable anyone or any organization to start issuing NFTs of their assets. Earlier this year, NMKR unveiled the first-ever use case on Cardano for the tokenization of diamonds with Tiamonds.
Cardano also has a rich metadata capability that allows more transactional data to be input into each transaction.
Watch: EMURGO announces partnership with NMKR to accelerate real-world tokenization
More than 150 projects have launched on Cardano and more than 1,300 are currently in development. There are multiple programming languages for smart contract development on Cardano such as Plutus, Marlowe, and now Aiken, with also several open-source tools available for developers.
Cardano’s foundation as a network is built on the Haskell language but for projects building on Cardano, there are several programming languages available. Most recently, Aiken has been one of the most popular languages making it easy for developers to start building smart contracts for their projects on Cardano immediately.
Other infrastructure tools and platforms such as Maestro offer a complete Web3 tech stack for projects, including APIs, wallets, cross-chain integration, data feeds, and more, so they can launch their products faster on Cardano.
Cardano also has a sidechain toolkit that is open for developers to start building sidechain solutions and connect them to the Cardano ecosystem.
Other CIP proposals and open-source tools on GitHub are in production to make Cardano a much more interoperable ecosystem, primarily with EVM-based products & services.
Partnerships with Wanchain and Maestro have made Cardano more interoperable which will serve to better connect Cardano and grow TVL for Cardano DeFi applications.
Builders such as Paima Studios are building solutions to make gaming more interoperable and diversify Cardano’s ecosystem by supporting the migration of games on other blockchain platforms to Cardano without having to move over assets.
As noted in the 2023 EMURGO highlights recap, Cardano Spot, a social media platform for the Cardano community, and NODO, a news & discovery platform for Africa’s Web3 scene, have grown immensely upon their launch earlier this year. Both platforms were developed by EMURGO Media and EMURGO Africa, respectively.
Cardano Spot has grown to over 26,000 members with mobile app versions launched this year and EMURGO Africa has produced the first comprehensive report on Africa’s Web3 in collaboration with PwC.
In 2024, the foundation has been built for both platforms to expand a lot and bring useful information to Cardano community members worldwide. Other Cardano content platforms have also been developing, helping to bridge and connect the global community of Cardano users.
Read more: Download EMURGO Africa’s State of Web 3.0 in Africa report
Yoroi Wallet has gone through many new product updates this year including proof-of-onboarding, fiat onramping, native asset swaps, and integration with 38 different projects to provide more services for its more than 2 million users.
In 2024, Yoroi, the first light wallet for the Cardano ecosystem, will continue to integrate more services and unveil more updates for its mobile and desktop users.
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