2023 has been another year full of EMURGO achievements and highlights to drive Cardano adoption.
As a global blockchain company focused on facilitating the commercial adoption of Cardano, EMURGO and its business units across the globe have worked hard to forge partnerships with partners, invest in projects, host events, build Web3 products & services, and engage with the Cardano community to communicate and raise awareness.
Let’s go over some of the biggest highlights from the year below.
EMURGO struck several strategic partnerships this year to drive broader awareness of Cardano and bring more users and tools to the Cardano ecosystem.
In 2023 alone, EMURGO made more than 105 partnerships and investments across its various business units to drive commercial adoption of Cardano.
Here are some of the notable partnerships below.
NMKR
Announced at Cardano Summit 2023 by EMURGO COO Nikhil Joshi, the partnership with NMKR, one of Cardano’s largest NFT and tokenization platforms, aims to foster greater awareness of NMKR for brands and other creators to leverage its create-and-sell NFT functions. EMURGO will expand real-world asset tokenization on Cardano using NMKR by expanding awareness of NMKR’s products & services in the APAC region and other joint marketing and collaborative activities.
Watch the NMKR partnership announcement
Cactus Custody
Also announced at Cardano Summit 2023, EMURGO signed a strategic partnership agreement with Matrixport’s qualified institutional custodian Cactus Custody™. The partnership with Cactus Custody™ will provide regulated, institutional-grade custody solutions for Cardano native assets, and serve an expanding Cardano community of Web3 developers, decentralized application (dApp) users, and enterprises interested in leveraging Cardano for tokenization and stable tokens, among others.
Read the official announcement here
Bitkub
In March 2023, EMURGO announced a partnership with Bitkub, Thailand’s number one crypto exchange, Bitkub Exchange, and top digital asset education hub, Bitkub Academy. Through the partnership, EMURGO, Bitkub Exchange, and Bitkub Academy agreed to closely collaborate to foster broader awareness of Cardano in Thailand through community-building and educational initiatives; co-host Web3 business competitions for talented Thai youth and university students; and provide career opportunities for budding Web3 entrepreneurs.
To fund and support Cardano builders, EMURGO and EMURGO Ventures in collaboration with DoraHacks, hosted the largest-ever Cardano blockchain hackathon, Cardano EMURGO BUILD 2023, with up to $2 million in available funding and grants for the winners.
EMURGO received over 100 build dApp submissions across three developer categories: derivatives, aggregators, and zero-knowledge proofs.
With three winners announced in each track, a total of 9 different Cardano dApp projects demonstrated their build submissions to a panel of judges from EMURGO, IOG, Cardano Foundation, Republic Crypto, Wave Financial, and more.
A major focus of EMURGO is to identify, invest in, and accelerate Web3 builders who want to develop products & services leveraging the Cardano blockchain. Through its investment units EMURGO Ventures and EMURGO Middle East & Africa (also known as EMURGO Africa), EMURGO Group has made nearly 70 investments in 2023 in blockchain projects building on demonstrating interoperable synergy with Cardano in sectors such as DeFi, gaming, and infrastructure.
Reach out for funding opportunities and other support to ventures@emurgo.io
In October 2023, EMURGO was given a special opportunity to present EMURGO’s deep insights into the usage of blockchain technology towards Wyoming’s proposed stable token project and the value EMURGO could help deliver for its stable token in Asia.
As part of the Wyoming Stable Token Act, the Wyoming Stable Token Commission is a group that is tasked with issuing a U.S. dollar-backed virtual currency.
An open-source light wallet for the Cardano ecosystem, Yoroi Wallet is a self-custodial crypto wallet for ADA and Cardano native asset holders to send, receive, store, stake, and swap Cardano native assets including NFTs.
With over 2 million downloads to date, Yoroi offers simple Cardano staking for users and has a built-in dApp connector to connect with the Cardano ecosystem. In 2023, nearly 200,000 new users have been onboarded into Yoroi.
This year, Yoroi also unveiled new features such as Yoroi Swap to enable Yoroi mobile users to easily swap Cardano native assets directly. Before native swapping in Yoroi, users had to navigate multiple platforms and go through a multi-step process outside of Yoroi. Now Yoroi has simplified asset swaps by allowing users to perform swaps directly from the Yoroi Wallet interface.
Among the 38 integrations with projects such as MuesliSwap, TapTools, and Genius Yield, Yoroi Wallet also announced a partnership integration with Banxa to enable a fiat onramp for Yoroi users to buy Cardano ADA through Yoroi Wallet.
Read more on how to swap Cardano native assets on Yoroi Wallet mobile
Launched a year ago in December 2022 as the first product from EMURGO Media, Cardano Spot is a social network and information platform for the Cardano community. Through Cardano Spot, community members can consume Cardano-focused content including ecosystem news and projects. Cardano Spot tackles the issue of fragmented content in the Cardano ecosystem by curating and aggregating reliable content sources.
This year, Cardano Spot has quickly expanded its community base on its platform and X with over 26,000 new users and live-reported from Cardano Summit 2023 with exclusive interviews with a diverse group of Cardano dApp projects.
It also launched its first mobile app on both Android and iOS to enable simple mobile viewing and engagement and has more than 10,000 downloads to date.
DeFi adoption on the Cardano blockchain has been surging this year with TVL in terms of ADA and USD at ATHs. While DeFi or decentralized finance is still in a relatively early adoption phase, it has been growing exponentially across the blockchain ecosystem. Leveraging decentralized blockchains such as Cardano, DeFi products & services provides open access to basic financial services such as lending and borrowing, and more using crypto assets as collateral, without a centralized third party authorizing access to such services.
In response to the rising demand for DeFi on Cardano and an overall increase in awareness about the potential for DeFi to compete with centralized finance in the future, EMURGO Academy launched the first-ever Cardano DeFi Masterclass in collaboration with Cardano DeFi Alliance.
Led by the best and brightest minds from the Cardano ecosystem, the Cardano DeFi Masterclass is a uniquely authentic Cardano blockchain-centric course providing a comprehensive overview of DeFi in Cardano, developed by and taught by leaders in the Cardano ecosystem for Cardano learners.
In 2023, Cardano as a technological blockchain network focused on its transition into the Voltaire era, the last phase of the initial Cardano roadmap focused on delivering community governance.
To usher in Voltaire, the Cardano ecosystem came together to discuss and debate CIP-1694, a Cardano Improvement Proposal that outlines the technological and conceptual framework for structuring the on-chain governance of Cardano. Upon ratification of CIP-1694 and integration of community governance functions, Cardano will become the first distributed and decentralized blockchain run by its community.
As an off-chain complement to CIP-1694, Intersect was also launched as a member-based organization to serve as a steward for Cardano’s continual development and support of its decentralized governance.
To drive awareness of the Voltaire era, CIP-1694, and Intersect, EMURGO hosted a CIP-1694 workshop in Tokyo for the APAC Cardano community as well as supported more than 25 virtual workshops organized by local community members around the world. In addition to the Tokyo workshop, EMURGO also participated in global CIP-1694 workshops in the US, Switzerland, and Scotland to provide feedback and listen to the community’s wishes.
This year alone, EMURGO has participated in and engaged with the Cardano and Web3 communities at over 50 global events.
Read more: Key highlights from the Scotland CIP-1694 workshop
EMURGO Middle East & Africa (MEA) is a regional entity of EMURGO focused on developing a vibrant Web3 ecosystem and community in Africa, with particular attention to supporting builders building on Cardano.
At Cardano Summit 2023, EMURGO MEA Co-CEO Yosuke Yoshida gave a keynote address on the current state of Web3 in Africa, highlighting insights such as:
- Africa’s 1.4 billion population and a youthful median age of around 20
- 18x growth in Africa’s VC sector over the past 6 years
- 11x growth in VC funding for Web3
- Stablecoins have emerged as a real use case
- Blockchain is revolutionizing the interbank settlement system in Africa
- In Africa, people see crypto as a practical solution to real-world financial problems
- EMURGO MEA has actively invested in over 40 companies across Africa, many of which are eager to build on Cardano
Throughout the year, EMURGO MEA has also been a driving force behind the launch of NODO, a Web3 news & discovery platform focused on Africa’s rising Web3 scene, releasing the first comprehensive report with PwC on Africa’s Web3 industry, and supporting local builders through its joint venture Cardano accelerator Adaverse.
Download the State of Web 3.0 in Africa report by EMURGO Africa and PwC
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You should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing contained herein shall constitute a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by EMURGO to invest.
