The past week has seen tangible success for Cardano and its ecosystem. No, it is not about the native token, ADA, which is still trading at two-year lows, but about life within the ecosystem itself.

This week, pleasure to the Cardano community was brought by the weekly development report, according to which the ecosystem has not only improved in all key indicators, but some major milestones have also been achieved.

Every Friday, we publish our weekly #Cardano development update. So for the lowdown on what IOG’s dev team has been working on last week, head on over and take a lookhttps://t.co/udW6gkdFhp

— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) December 9, 2022

In the past working week, Cardano has added two new projects that have not yet launched but are already being built. The total number of projects has reached 1,151 so far, with 108 already up and running. The number of native tokens on the Cardano network has increased by 90,000 to 7.2 million. The number of transactions on the network has increased by 500,000 in the seven days since Dec. 2 to 56.3 million.

The most eye-catching was the milestone of 4,000 smart contracts created on Cardano’s Plutus platform. The jump in this number was impressive, at 10.2%. In total, there are now 4,347 smart contracts on Plutus, of which 400 were created on the upgraded platform.

Lace’s desktop version in works

According to the report, the Cardano development team is actively working on the Lace wallet and is now busy integrating decentralized applications into its desktop version. As U.Today previously reported, Cardano developer activity recently topped all other projects for important contributions on GitHub.

On Thursday (December 25), EMURGO, which is the commercial arm of Cardano, reviewed this year’s “achievements and highlights”.

EMURGO, which was founded in 2017, is “a global blockchain technology company providing solutions for developers, startups, enterprises, and governments”; and it “develops enterprise-grade applications, builds developer tools, invests in startups, and provides blockchain education.” The company has “offices and manages projects in Singapore, Japan, the USA, India, and Indonesia.”

Yoroi Wallet’s dApp Connector

On July 29, EMURGO announced that Yoroi Wallet would soon “unveil a platform for interacting with dApps – Yoroi Wallet’s dApp Connector”, which would “play a key role by allowing the community to operate with all these decentralized services through their trusted Yoroi Wallet.”

Yoroi, which was developed by EMURGO, is “a light wallet for CARDANO ADA and ERGO’s ERG which allows users to easily and securely store, send, and receive these cryptocurrencies through mobile app and browser extensions.” It also “enables users to stake their ADA for rewards, and vote for Project Catalyst, with new features on the way such as the dApp Connector mentioned above.”

Establishment of a $100 Million Cardano Blockchain Investment Vehicle

In a press release issued on September 27, EMURGO, announced the launch of a $100 million fund that will “invest into early startup and growth stage companies focused on building socially impactful solutions powered by Cardano.” It went on to add that this new Cardano investment vehicle will be “composed of two separate entities, EMURGO Africa, and EMURGO Ventures, each with a distinct investment thesis.”

EMURGO Africa had already announced “two major partnerships to rapidly expand the Cardano ecosystem in Africa and utilize the large business networks of its partners.”

As for EMURGO Ventures, it announced “its first seed investment into Milkomeda – a dcSpark sidechain project bridging Cardano and other Layer 1 blockchain protocols that will utilize wrapped ADA (wADA) as an asset.”

EMURGO CEO Ken Kodama had this to say:

“We are more focused than ever on accelerating the development of Cardano’s ecosystem with a rich mix of decentralized services catering to a global community that is increasing in overall blockchain awareness. EMURGO is dedicated to meeting this demand by providing the capital and strategic resources necessary for our portfolio companies to scale rapidly and bring new solutions to Cardano.“

And Charles Hoskinson, Co-Founder and CEO of IOHK, said:

“EMURGO’s investments will help to shape the future of the Cardano ecosystem, a maturing network with a creative and diverse community, growing smart contract capabilities and partnerships across the globe that provide social and financial services utilizing Cardano’s provably-secure technology.“

Launch of Two Cardano Education Programs

EMURGO said in its blog post that its education unit EMURGO India (EMURGO Academy) launched “a couple of Cardano education courses this year aimed at two different groups – aspiring Cardano blockchain developers with a technical background and those interested in blockchain with a non-technical background.”

EMURGO Academy has “taught more than 7,500 course sessions through 1,150 hours of tailored online content, and successfully educated 2,500 certified graduates from 25 countries.”

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.