When meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin skyrocketed in price early last year, vaulting from less than a penny to a high above $0.73, crypto and stock trading app was one of the biggest beneficiaries—DOGE alone represented 34% of Robinhood’s crypto revenue in Q1 2021.

But the Dogecoin boom eventually went bust, with the long-running coin now down 92% from its peak price set in May 2021. And Robinhood, which had warned of the risks associated with such a volatile asset, took some flak for being a key destination for trading the jokey, dog-themed crypto.

Christine Brown was Robinhood Crypto’s first COO from April 2021 until this past March, and previously VP of Product Operations at the fintech startup. During a recent appearance on Decrypt’s gm podcast, she discussed what she saw as the wider benefits of Dogecoin’s ascent.

“Dogecoin had a moment last year on Robinhood’s platform,” Brown told Decrypt. “And a lot of people were like, ‘This is a meme coin. Why support it? Why trade it? This is a bad thing for crypto overall.’”

“I actually think it got a bad rap,” she continued, “and in a lot of ways does not get the credit it deserves for helping onboard people into the space.”

Brown, now COO of NFT startup Floor, pointed to three barriers of entry to crypto: economics, education, and emotion. Buying crypto requires money, of course, and there’s risk associated with any cryptocurrency—especially volatile meme coins.

In terms of education, onboarding remains one of the biggest challenges in the crypto space, especially when it comes to handling crypto assets in a self-custody wallet. Robinhood, much like exchanges Coinbase or FTX, is an accessible way to start trading without deep knowledge of the tech. Brown said that education will be an ongoing piece of crypto onboarding.

“Some of this is going to be informational, and some of this is going to be baked into products that evolve in this space over time,” she said, “where you actually lower the barrier of entry from an educational perspective because it’s handled from a product perspective.”

Ultimately, Brown thinks that the “emotional barrier” is the “big one” of the three, as prospective investors may be held back by questions over whether they can really understand the space and should be handling crypto. Dogecoin, in her view, added layers of fun and accessibility to help ease those concerns for some buyers.

“Dogecoin, at the time, made it really easy for people to be like, ‘Yeah, this is for me. It’s a coin with a dog on it, and I can start with $1, and I can just try it out and see what happens and dip my toe in and go from there.’”

Brown’s new startup, Floor, is focused on NFT collectibles. Prospective members can purchase an NFT as an access pass to the platform, which lets users view all of their NFT holdings and see changes in valuation. Floor recently raised $8 million in seed funding, and plans to eventually offer features that are not token gated.

Much as Dogecoin helped introduce the crypto world to a new audience, Brown believes that NFTs can do the same. An NFT works like a proof of ownership to an item, and popular use cases include digital goods like artwork, collectibles, and video game items.

There’s rampant speculation around some tokenized collectibles, which has pushed the sale of some NFTs into the tens of millions of dollars, but they can also have utility—such as serving as an access pass to a community, an event ticket, or a deed to a physical item. The wide array of potential use cases could make them another accessible gateway into crypto, said Brown.

“I think in a lot of ways NFTs are that,” she said, “but on a much grander, bigger scheme, because it does have more use cases beyond just financial speculation.”

As the date for the launch of its long-awaited Vasil Hard Fork draws nearer, the software company behind the Cardano Project, Input-Output Global (IOG), yesterday announced the launch of its permission-less Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) sidechain alpha on the testnet. According to it, this will allow developers and builders alike to build their Solidity-based applications on the Cardano Blockchain.

In a blogpost published by IOG on 28 April, the software company describing the newly released EVM sidechain alpha stated that:

“This sidechain will allow developers to write Solidity smart contracts on Cardano, create EVM compatible DApps, and ERC20-compatible tokens (and in time, their own sidechains) while gaining many of the benefits of Cardano. That means users will benefit from far lower fees and faster settlement times on a more environmentally sustainable blockchain.

Speaking on its features, it was stated that:

“The key features of the EVM sidechain will be full compatibility with Ethereum upgrades and tools, Web3 wallet compatibility, the use of the proof-of-stake Ouroboros Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus protocol, and, of course, its ability to inherit security from the Cardano main chain.”

As the rest of the cryptocurrency market undergoes capitulation, has the ADA token found solace in the news of this upgrade?

Nowhere to hide for Ms. ADA

As the bears overrun the entire cryptocurrency market, the ADA token was not able to piggyback on the news of this upgrade to register gains in the last 24 hours. Exchanging hands at $0.4568 per ADA token at the time of press, the token managed to register a 10% decline within the last 24 hours. Although Trading Volume marked a 7% spike, the divergence in price and trading volume hinted at profit-taking in the last 24 hours. 

With price movement marked by a red candle, the Relative Strength Index was positioned below the 50 neutral region at the time of writing. Marking a spot at the 36 index on a downward curve, the bears were spotted pushing this indicator further downwards. Also taking on a downward trend was the Money Flow index (MFI). Although positioned at 52, the bears appeared to be winning the fight with the indicator positioned in a downward curve.

A trick up your sleeve?

Yesterday when the upgrade was announced, the ADA token registered a total of 62,721 addresses involved in transacting the token. This represented a 3% decline from the 64,963 addresses recorded a day before. At the time of press, this was pegged at 64,000 at a 2% growth. 

Registering a transaction volume of 842.8 million yesterday, the transaction volume quickly tumbled by over 50%. At press time, it was spotted at over 343 million.

The last 24 hours was also marked with a drop in whale transactions count as transactions above $100k registered a 56% decline. For transactions over $1 million, a 52% decline was recorded in the transactions count.

Key Takeaways

• Kraken Intelligence’s latest report bills Cardano to emerge as one of the best L1 blockchain.
• The verdict is based on Cardano’s value-driven approach to development.
• Massive network growth and plans around scalability will also play a key role for Cardano’s dominance.

Development on the Cardano blockchain has a lot of exciting prospects lined up for 2022. Some of these are highlighted in a new report published by the analysts at Kraken, a cryptocurrency exchange. While pointing out the massive network growth and key milestones Cardano has reached, the report hyped the proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain to be emerging as one of the strongest contenders in the Layer 1 blockchain space.

Cardano’s values will be a key factor to place them at the top, says Kraken Intelligence report

In the February edition of the Kraken Intelligence report on the crypto industry, the exchange focused on the biggest proof of stake blockchain in the crypto market. The report, titled “Cardano: A new generation of smart contract platform design,” eulogized the Cardano blockchain for its value-based approach to building its ecosystem.

“Cardano’s values have noticeably directed the project’s developments and design decisions, and as a result, the blockchain looks like it has been designed with the purpose and standards of providing decentralized, global, financial infrastructure rather than only focusing on providing a Web3 experience,” Kraken noted.

Source: Kraken Intelligence

To support this, Kraken points out that Cardano is one of the more resilient blockchain networks that emerged from the initial coin offering (ICO) era of the crypto market. Cardano has also continued to deliver on its promised roadmap although sometimes with significant delays. However, when they bring their products to market, the Cardano blockchain has always lived up to expectations as an emphasis on “community governance, academic peer review, and the assurance programming” has always shone through.

Kraken Intelligence highlights that Cardano is well on its way to bringing its vision of onboarding 2 billion people if it continues on its development track. This is due to the key partnerships and milestones the network has been recording from last year.

Cardano has formed partnerships with several governments, especially in Africa. Massive network growth as well continues to be recorded both on-chain and off-chain on Cardano. One key driver of the network growth is the burgeoning web 3 ecosystem that is being developed and utilizing Cardano’s unique Plutus smart contracts platform.

Looking forward to the Cardano blockchain

As outlined in Cardano’s roadmap, this year has a lineup of developments, activities, and upgrades that will bring scalability to Cardano as part of its Basho era.

Among these are Hydra, a layer 2 scaling solution that will make micro-payments possible. There is also Milkomeda which will make Cardano cross-chain compatible with EVM blockchains, and the rollout of supporting infrastructure for developers. All these make Kraken surmise that “if all goes well, 2022 could prove to be an exciting year” for Cardano.