Cardano Spotlight: Optim Accounts and Catalyst Fund 11

Author

Utsav Sheth
December 01, 2023

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.

Cardano is finally coming along as its ecosystem using its unique advantages. We have projects like Optim, which are trying to create unique solutions tailored to leverage the strengths of Cardano and counter its weaknesses. We will also look into some of the interesting Catalyst proposals!

Optim Accounts

Cardano uses the eUTXO model, which requires determinism; you know beforehand the inputs and outputs of your transaction. Determinism provides you with a higher level of security, unlike the accounting model, where the state can be muted arbitrarily.

However, DeFi applications require composability and users accessing the global state in the same block. This centralizes several design aspects of the Cardano application layer, like Batchers. Optim Accounts offer an alternative to using an account-like model on top of Cardano.

Users can deposit Ada into Optim Accounts, and the user only needs to mention his intent -> what he has (input) and what he wants (output) ->. The rest of the steps are done by ‘solvers,’ and the sequencer verifies this.’

The solvers do the hard task of doing the actual transactions and giving you the desired output in the most optimal way, while the sequencer is a group of individuals who keep a check on the transactions being processed.

This massively simplifies the user experience and allows you to automate things like yield farming. You can find the best yield for your assets without going across various protocols and doing calculations! This opens a whole new paradigm for Cardano DeFi!

Read More: Optim Accounts

Fund 11

Catalyst is back! Fund 11 has received 1000+ proposals for the 50M Ada round. It is currently in the proposal edit stage for one week and post, during which the community can discuss and vote for their preferred proposals.

It's still early, but let's discuss some of the high-impact proposals:

  1. Maya Protocol <> Cardano

Maya Protocol is a friendly fork of the popular cross-chain DEX Thorchain. It allows swapping tokens natively from different ecosystems. Cardano is relatively isolated from the rest of the crypto ecosystem, and it could be beneficial to integrate with other ecosystems to enhance interoperability.

  1. Real World Asset Tokenization - Nmkr, IAMX & Fluid

    Real-world assets are the rage in crypto; the key is bringing exogenous capital into the crypto ecosystem. This is attractive to crypto folks and people who want to use these assets with the benefit of blockchain technology. They are working to build a launchpad that can help tokenize assets with NFTs, which can be fractionalized through Fluid. At the same time, IAMX identity solutions can create the necessary onboarding flow.

  2. Rust Full Node

    Cardano is inching towards complete decentralization with Voltaire. Decentralization requires no single dependency on any shape or form. This is where the concept of different full nodes becomes essential. He has put forward a proposal with an ask of just 15K Ada. It's a small step towards having other teams involved in forming different clients on Cardano. Another exciting proposal is 'Dolos,' where they are building towards an alternate node for Cardano.

The proposals will still be edited and currently have many details missing. But Catalyst genuinely has some excellent proposals, which is something to be excited about!

Read more: Proposals

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