Cardano Spotlight: Livestreams, EDI and LenFI v2

Hi,

What's Spotlight? Every week, we highlight the most interesting events happening around Cardano. We want to help you cut the noise and find the signal.

Let’s get into it then:

Livestream Week!

We aim to provide content that helps you learn more about the Cardano ecosystem. In the coming week, we will be hosting livestreams with various teams.

1. Coinecta: Staking launch: upcoming features & IDO process on 4th March
   
   Coinecta has had an explosive start in the Cardano ecosystem. In this livestream, we discuss Coinecta's future roadmap.

2. Omura: Revolutionizing NFT trading on Cardano on 5th March
   
   Omura converts NFTs to tokens and vice versa. This changes the NFT trading experience! We plan to discuss the implications, various features, and how you can join the community.

3. Mynth: The era of Cardano Stable Coin is NOW! on 7th March
   
   Mynth has built a scalable and fully redeemable stablecoin on Cardano. We plan to discuss how stables on Cardano can help bring in more users and liquidity.

Set a reminder for our live streams and ask your questions to these incredible teams!

Edinburgh Decentralization Index

The University of Edinburgh has released the first iteration of its Decentralization Index. This framework is developed based on research to determine the decentralization level of public blockchain projects.

First, let’s talk about the history. IOHK invested $4.5M in the University of Edinburgh in 2022 for research and R&D. The two have been working to produce an index that could be used as an industry standard to quantify decentralization across chains.

Their results show how Cardano's consensus Ouroboros has allowed block production decentralization. In Bitcoin/Ethereum, the top pools and operators have a high concentration, making it easy to censor or extract MEV.

On the other hand, Cardano limits pool size and introduces native delegation. This has allowed the creation of a competitive market of stake pool operators. We can quantify this through the Nakamoto coefficient, representing the minimum number of entities to reach >50% stake/hash rate. 

Note: The number shown here - 58 isn't in line with the community consensus of ~30. This could be due to a limited level of grouping of entities. It also considers all staking or mining entities as one if they are affiliated with one pool.

The numbers will be fine-tuned in future reports to give us a more accurate number. However, it does show us a trend that Cardano has been successful at creating a robust decentralized validator set!

You can look at more charts here.

LenFi V2

LenFi has launched its V2 platform, offering isolated pooled lending. V2 has already amassed nearly 15M Ada in TVL, with approximately 45% utilization across Ada pools. V2 aims to simplify the User Experience, enabling growth to a larger user base.

Previously, with V1, users had to configure bond parameters such as terms, collateral, debt, and interest, which proved cumbersome and capital-inefficient. In contrast, V2 allows users to borrow simply by providing collateral or supplying assets to a pool of that asset pair. For instance:

V1: Users had to set up a request, such as providing 1000 A as collateral for borrowing 500 A worth of Snek at 15% APY.

V2: Users can now provide collateral and borrow up to certain limits.

Moreover, users can establish their pools with pairs of their choice and become pool managers. As pool managers, they can select the oracle and staking pool for the locked Ada. The pool manager NFT can also be traded, facilitating the transition for new managers to take over the pools.

Implementing isolated pools mitigates the risk of bad debt, as any oracle or liquidation issue remains confined to the specific pool. This ensures users' assets are highly secure and grants the protocol flexibility to incorporate a wide range of tokens.

The V2 launch demonstrates that LenFi is determined to regain its market share. It would be interesting to see the updated dynamics of various lending protocols in the coming weeks.

Best content of the week

Watch: Cardano Marketing Guide.

Read: All you need to know about Mithril

Meme of the week

Built Different.

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