According to blockchain analytics firm Santiment, Cardano ranks as the “strongest” blockchain in terms of developer activity.

Top 2022 #blockchain protocols by development activity:

1) #Cardano $ADA
2) #Polkadot $DOT
3) #Cosmos $ATOM
4) #Ethereum $ETH
5) #InternetComputer $ICP
6) #Elrond $EGLD
7) #Flow $FLOW
8) #Optimism $OP
9) #Aptos $APT
10) #Polygon $MATIC

Read our take: https://t.co/fYiOz86GWK

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) December 29, 2022

The year 2022 has been a difficult one for cryptocurrencies in general. Macroeconomic challenges, market factors and scandals have all impacted the industry. The downdraft that began in late 2021 blossomed into a crypto winter. Then, in May, the Terra ecosystem collapsed. The crypto market bottomed out in June. And there were the bankruptcies. Then came the most disastrous thing of all — the November collapse of the FTX crypto exchange.

Per Santiment’s “dev activity” indicator, Cardano ranked first, followed by Polkadot (DOT) and Cosmos (ATOM). The three were followed by Ethereum, ICP and EGLD in fourth through sixth places, respectively. FLOW, OP, APT and MATIC also made the list of the top 10 blockchains.

In its report, Santiment notes that Aptos had been working super hard before its mainnet launch and slowed down after. Solana could have made the list as well, but there has been a steady decline in “dev activity” over the year.

In the past year, Cardano clinched the title of the most developed asset, ranking top in aggregated development activity.  Cardano also clinched the top spot in the number of active Github contributors for the year.

While development activity has a minimal impact on near-term market prices, it may be a healthy signal of a project’s long-term prospects.

It demonstrates the team’s monthly dedication to creating a viable asset, improving and upgrading its features, and sticking to the long-term roadmap.

In other news, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has polled as the most influential person in crypto in 2022, alongside Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao.

Cardano is currently in the top three actively developed projects for the week, with 490 Github contributions. Although development activity has little to no effect on short-term market prices, it could be a positive sign of the project’s long-term development. According to a prior report by U.Today, Cardano was the most developed asset in 2021.

The Vasil hard fork, Cardano’s major update, is anticipated to launch this month. Vasil Dabov, a late Bulgarian mathematician and well-known figure in the Cardano community, is honored by having the upgrade bear his name. Following successful completion and extensive testing, Vasil’s mainnet launch date has been set for Sept. 22 by Cardano’s developer, Input Output.

You got to love how extreme the criticism gets. Better buy some good mouthwash https://t.co/XGwajnQABE

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) September 2, 2022

Charles Hoskinson, the creator of Cardano, also announced the date, which led to excitement in the community. As usual, skeptics were quick to point out that Vasil might experience another delay, which the Cardano creator strongly rebuffed. During a livestream early last month, Hoskinson mentioned he was not anticipating any further delays to the mainnet hard fork launch.

According to the readiness metrics being monitored by IOG, the Vasil node 1.35.3 has produced 87% of the mainnet blocks. While Binance was significantly closer to completing its integration, MEXC and Bitrue exchanges had indicated Vasil’s readiness.

AscendEX, NDAX and Dex-Trade exchanges are also ready for Vasil, as a number of other exchanges are in the process of updating their nodes. Additionally, 70% of dApps reported positive results from preproduction testing.

Cardano’s IOG expounds on partnership with Stanford University

We’ve partnered with the prestigious @Stanford University to create the ‘Blockchain Research Hub’.

Here’s a thread on what you need to know.

1/n

— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) September 2, 2022

According to U.Today, Input Output announced its collaboration in the field of blockchain research by funding a new $4.5 million “Blockchain Research Hub” at Stanford University, one of the top centers for research and higher learning in the world.

This “Blockchain Research Hub” will adopt a multidisciplinary approach and give researchers the chance to work with the blockchain industry, expanding the body of knowledge and perspectives on blockchain technology, as stated in a blog post.

Cardano has shown the highest development activity in the industry, leaving behind such projects as Kusama and Polkadot, with over 350 commits made in the last month. Other notable projects at the top are Ethereum and Solana, with more than 270 commits.

Cardano is getting bigger every day

The network has always been one of the most actively developed projects in the whole industry, especially after dropping the smart contract update. Since the beginning of 2022, Cardano is rolling out a great amount of new projects, updates and solutions.

One of the most recent updates was the upgrade of stake pool operators on Cardano node 1.35. The new update makes the most recent node version a candidate for the final mainnet Vasil hardfork release. With the launch of the node network, all the ‌updates and fixes will have a soft and stable launch of Vasil.

In addition to constant updates of the network—which is getting ready to receive a massive Vasil upgrade—Cardano still supports smaller solutions like eUTxO blockchain explorer, which has earned praise from the project founder, Charles Hoskinson, and decentralized projects like Wingriders.

Market performance remains anemic

Despite active fundamental development, Cardano struggles to show any positive movements on the cryptocurrency market as the blockchain’s underlying cryptocurrency remains in a sharp downtrend in the last 300 days of trading.

Since September, Cardano has lost more than 84% of its valueб which makes it one of the least profitable assets in the whole industry. Unfortunately, no signals for a reversal have appeared on the market despite constant updates and rising network usage. At press time, ADA is changing hands at $0.49.

Hollywood actor Seth Green can’t catch a break. He fell for a fishing attack and someone stole four valuable NFTs from him.  A Bored Ape Yacht Club, two Mutant Apes, and a Doodle, to be exact. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Green was developing an animated show around his Bored Ape. 

You see, BAYC were among the first collections that gave holders the commercial rights of the Apes they own. The thing is, Seth Green doesn’t own the NFT anymore. To complicate things, the hacker sold the Bored Ape in question to an NFT collector that goes by DarkWing84 for around $200K. 

And, as “intellectual property and technology law professor” Eric Goldman told BuzzFeed, “Ordinarily, bona fide purchasers are legally protected if they buy an item not knowing that it’s a hot item.” This fact elevates this whole situation to landmark case status. If it ever gets to that. Seth Green has been actively trying to settle things privately with DarkWing84.

When Bitcoinist first reported on the hack, we described the situation as follows:

“Seth Green disclosed in a tweet on Wednesday that he had fallen victim to phishing scammers who took numerous expensive NFTs from his cryptocurrency wallet.
The Hollywood celebrity renowned for movies such as Robot Chicken, The Italian Job, and Party Monsters pleaded with everyone not to purchase the NFTs from the scammers and tagged one of the customers in an attempt to find a solution.”

Well frens it happened to me. Got phished and had 4NFT stolen. @BoredApeYC @opensea @doodles @yugalabs please don’t buy or trade these while I work to resolve:@DarkWing84 looks like you bought my stolen ape- hit me up so we can fix it pic.twitter.com/VL1OVnd44m

— Seth Green (@SethGreen) May 17, 2022

In the tweet, Seth Green requested, “please don’t buy or trade these while I work to resolve: DarkWing84 looks like you bought my stolen ape- hit me up so we can fix it.” At that time, no one knew about the show he was developing.

What Do We Know About Seth Green’s “White Horse Tavern” Show?

Well, the BuzzFeed article describes the animated show as: 

“On Saturday, Green teased a trailer for White Horse Tavern at the NFT conference VeeCon. A twee comedy, the show seems to be based on the question, “What if your friendly neighborhood bartender was Bored Ape Yacht Club #8398?”

And we have the “White Horse Tavern” trailer. Does the show look TV-quality to you?

https://twitter.com/FFVV1211/status/1528043201885442048

And, since Seth Green presented the trailer at VeeCon, BuzzFeed offers these quotes from the event:

“I bought that ape in July 2021, and have spent the last several months developing and exploiting the IP to make it into the star of this show,” Green told Vaynerchuk. “Then days before — his name is Fred by the way — days before he’s set to make his world debut, he’s literally kidnapped.” 

Does this whole situation sound too convenient to you? Because it could all be a hoax to get eyes on the show. On the other hand, phishing attacks happen every day. 

ETH price chart on Binance | Source: ETH/USD on TradingView.com

Legal Trouble And Possible Solutions

This case is more complicated than it sounds. Twitter lawyers think that, since the Ape was stolen, the thief doesn’t get the IP rights. There are more layers to this, though. The scammer sold it. The new owner has the NFT, that is what gives you the IP rights to the Bored Ape. The whole thing is a mess.

To clarify the situation, BuzzFeed quotes tax and litigation attorney Daniel Dubin:

“If the current owner “wanted to cause trouble for Seth Green they probably could, because that person becomes the holder” of the commercial usage rights.”

And on the platform side of things, “all four NFTs taken from Green are now marked with “suspicious activity” warnings.” OpenSea spokesperson Allie Mack told BuzzFeed: 

“We do not have the power to freeze or delist NFTs that exist on decentralized blockchains; however, we do disable the ability to use OpenSea to buy or sell stolen items.”

Not true since the art was stolen. A buyer who purchased stolen art with real money and refuses to return it is not legally entitled to exploitation usage of the underlying IP. It’ll go to court, but I’d prefer to meet @DarkWing84 before that. Seems we’d have lots in common.

— Seth Green (@SethGreen) May 24, 2022

Last but not least, after the news broke, Seth Green responded to one of the first places reporting on the situation. “A buyer who purchased stolen art with real money and refuses to return it is not legally entitled to exploitation usage of the underlying IP. It’ll go to court, but I’d prefer to meet DarkWing84 before that. Seems we’d have lots in common.” The man seems hopeful. Let’s hope the parties involved can figure something out in negotiations.

Featured Image: Screenshot from Seth Green's TV show | Charts by TradingView

According to Santiment data, Solana and Cardano remain among the top 10 fastest developed assets in April. In the list of the top 10 projects by aggregated development activity based on publicly available Github information for April, Uniswap, Solana and Status ranked in the top three. The listing positions Cardano as the seventh-most-developed asset ahead of Ethereum, which ranked eighth.

As Q2 progresses, here’s a look at the top 10 fastest developing projects in #cryptocurrency:

1) @Uniswap $UNI
2) @solana $SOL
3) @ethstatus $SNT
4) @Polkadot $DOT
5) @kusamanetwork $KSM
6) @Filecoin $FIL
7) @Cardano $ADA
8) @ethereum $ETH
9) @chainlink $LINK
10) @iota $MIOTA pic.twitter.com/cCmz0jPG2L

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) April 14, 2022

Santiment’s metric tracks the development data of thousands of public Github repositories. With more users contributing to a project, the higher place it gets in the ranking.

While development activity has little-to-no impact on near-term market prices, it may be a healthy indicator of the project’s long-term growth. Cardano topped the most developed assets in 2021, U.Today previously reported.

With the release of smart contracts technology for the Cardano blockchain, more developers have started to utilize the network and release various use cases.

Cardano’s big update, the Vasil hard fork, is expected to land in June. The upgrade in question appears to be named after Vasil Dabov, the late Bulgarian mathematician who was a prominent member of the Cardano community.

As stated in an IOHK blogpost, Plutus script referencing and reference inputs are two major improvements planned to be included in the June Vasil hard fork. Along these lines, CIPs for reference inputs (CIP-31) and reference scripts (CIP-33) have been submitted for implementation on Cardano and are expected to be implemented as part of the Vasil hard fork in June.

These Plutus enhancements, in addition to other scaling improvements, will increase throughput for decentralized apps (dApps), decentralized finance (DeFi), RealFi, products, smart contracts and exchanges built or operating on Cardano.

Solana recently announced the results of Riptide, a global hackathon focused on bringing the next wave of high-impact projects into the Solana ecosystem. Riptide is the fifth Solana hackathon and the first to take place as Solana Hacker Houses gathered builders from around the globe.

According to Santiment data, Cardano remains among the top five fastest developed assets in the last 30 days. In terms of development activity, Santiment reports that Uniswap, Solana and Cardano have been the fastest developed over the last 30 days.

30 Day Development Activity per Santiment

With 386 notable Github submissions per day from its developers, Cardano clinched third place in 30-day development activity. Uniswap remains the fastest developed project on the market and maintains first place with 1,070 Github submissions per day, while second place is held by Solana.

Santiment’s metric tracks the development data of thousands of public Github repositories. With more users contributing to a project, the higher place it gets in the ranking.

While development activity has little to no impact on near-term market prices, it may be a healthy indicator of the project’s long-term growth. Cardano topped the most developed assets in 2021, U.Today previously reported.

Positive developments in the Cardano ecosystem

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson recently shared the good news of the first Hydra Heads launching on the public Cardano testnet. Hydra Heads, the first in a suite of protocols, is a critical element in Cardano’s scaling journey. Hydra refers to a collection of Layer 2 solutions aimed at improving network security and scalability.

With the release of smart contracts technology for the Cardano blockchain, more developers have started to utilize the network and release various use cases. Cardano’s total value locked, or TVL,  continues to grow. According to the DeFi LIama tracking service, $223 million is currently locked in various contracts built on the Cardano network. With the inclusion of staking, Cardano’s TVL is greater and stood at $313 million at press time.

Although the groundwork for future improvements in the Cardano ecosystem has been built, the ADA price has failed to catch up, as it remains down nearly 75% from its all-time high of $3.10. ADA is presently trading in a tight range at $0.85, hinting at an upcoming major price movement.

According to IntoTheBlock data, ADA has a 60% 30-day correlation with BTC; therefore, traders and investors should keep a close eye on Bitcoin’s price action.

According to data compiled by CryptoRank and Santiment, Cardano (ADA) was the most developed crypto on Github in 2021, with over 140,000 events. 

Rounding out the top three were Kusama and Polkadot at second and third places, respectively, with roughly the same number of events over the year. Cardano beat Ethereum’s development activity by a wide margin, with the latter coming in at fourth place. Santiment defines a Github event as either creating an issue, creating a pull request, commenting on an issue or pull request, and forking/starring/watching a code repository, among others. 

The Most Developed Cryptos on @Github in 2021

According to @Santimentfeed, @Cardano, has become the most developed project in the industry, followed by @Kusamanetwork, and @Polkadot.

https://t.co/gjKPmOazyB pic.twitter.com/JHXmWSe0YS

— CryptoRank Platform (@CryptoRank_io) January 3, 2022

In a live Youtube session last week, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson revealed that there are approximately 127 projects under development on the Cardano blockchain. In addition, Hoskinson expects the number of ADA users to grow ten-fold from the existing 2 million thanks to the growing popularity of non-fungible tokens.

Cardano’s technological advancement is also gaining traction post-Alonzo. One of the blockchain’s notable works in progress is the layer-two Hydra upgrade, which channels transactions off-chain to staking pools without partitioning the ledger itself. Theoretically, it could enable advanced linear scaling of the network with hundreds of ‘hydra nodes’ each processing hundreds of transactions.

Related: VCs don’t understand that Cardano has a community: Charles Hoskinson

Another notable mention is a novel fintech funding mechanism, known as the initial stake pool offering (ISPO), that’s unique to the Cardano blockchain. In this setup, blockchain enthusiasts delegate their cryptos in a protocol and receive tokens of the new project they fund as rewards. In contrast, the ADA staking rewards go to the developers. Funds do not leave the delegator’s wallet, making the process rather secure. One such project, Genius Yield, saw its ISPO pools surpass $118 million within 24 hours.