Hours before NVIDIA officially launched its new GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card, their official Taiwan Twitter account was hacked, promoting Dogecoin, Bitcoin, and Ethereum.

The Taiwanese account for NVIDIA hasn’t been used all that much in the last few years, but then a tweet came out of nowhere promoting Dogecoin (DOGE), Bitcoin (BTC), and Ethereum (ETH). The NVIDIA Taiwan Twitter account was verified, from an official account… showing that everyone should be careful, always.

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The tweet has since been removed, so you don’t need to worry about it anymore, but screenshots were snapped for prosperity. The account has also been suspended since the tweet, which is good to see, so people don’t get ripped off. Unfortunately, the account could’ve been used for good: promoting NVIDIA’s just-unleashed GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card.

Speaking about the GeForce RTX 4080 graphic card, it just launched and I’ve got two reviews up already: NVIDIA’s awesome in-house GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition and MSI’s custom GeForce RTX 4080 GAMING X TRIO. They’re both fantastic offerings, while I’ve still got a few reviews that aren’t too far away: MSI’s other custom GeForce RTX 4080 SUPRIM X, ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition, and ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 4080 AMP! Extreme AIRO graphics cards.

They’re gaming powerhouses, offering performance that beats the GeForce RTX 3090 and GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, but falls decently short of the unbelievably fast GeForce RTX 4090. AMD has its upcoming RDNA 3-powered Radeon RX 7900 XTX and Radeon RX 7900 XT graphics cards right around the corner… competitors for the just-released GeForce RTX 4080.

Wanchain announces a partnership with Cardano-backed Input Output to promote interoperability. The collaboration will help the network facilitate interoperability between Cardano mainnet, sidechains, and other blockchains.

It will also enable other projects to deploy non-custodial, decentralized, multi-directional crosschain bridges interlinking Cardano to other L1 networks. Moreover, the integration will also upgrade Wanchain bridge nodes to peg the Cardano and Wanchain networks, securing the crosschain bridges and transactions.

In simple terms, Wanchain is soon to become an EVM-compatible Cardano sidechain. As a sustainable L1 proof-of-stake blockchain and interoperability platform, Wanchain proposes multiple use-cases to the industry. It acts as an Ethereum-like infrastructure that supports dApps, Ethereum tools, and other protocols.

Its bridges are direct, decentralized, and non-custodial, connecting non-EVM and EVM networks without intermediary networks or relay chains. In addition, the bridges use Shamir’s Secret Sharing and sMPC (Secure Multiparty Computation to secure crosschain assets.

Currently, these bridges connect over 15 L1 and L2 networks. The network will offer numerous new use-cases to ADA holders on external chains with the latest addition, which will pave the path for ETH, BTC, XRP, WAN, DOT, and similar tokens used in Cardano’s dApp ecosystem.

Once Wanchain transforms into Cardano’s EVM-compatible sidechain, dApp users and developers on Cardano will gain access to frameworks, integrated developer structures, and coding languages. This method maximizes Cardano’s security while also doubling its scalability and interoperability.

Moreover, it will allow Cardano to conduct transactions outside its network while only recording information needed on the L1 blockchain, further elevating its immutability and security. 

The quick growth of Cardano sidechains marks the start of a new for the network, as it turns into a complete multi-chain ecosystem with increased scalability and security. However, according to the officials from both networks, the recent integration is only the start of collaborations between Input Output and Wanchain.

Frederik Gregaard – Chief Executive Officer

Project Catalyst, an experiment in community innovation on Cardano, has entered its next funding round, with the voting for Fund 8 happening between 21st April and 5th May. All proposals are available for the community’s viewing and the Cardano Foundation will soon announce which Fund 9 Challenges it has decided to vote on. 

Meanwhile, as the Project stepped into this new phase, the Cardano Foundation strengthened its commitment to support the active participation of the community. We are delighted that Cardano Ambassador Bullish Dumpling accepted the appointment as our new representative in the Catalyst Circle, a position that started last March.

A member of the Ambassadors Guild and a true blockchain citizen, Dumpling brings a robust experience within the ecosystem. She considerably built the Chinese speaking community by helping Chinese speakers from places like Singapore, Taiwan, or Malaysia in understanding and joining Cardano. She has also been conducting a series of initiatives intent on promoting better connections between projects and the Cardano community. The Twitter spaces she regularly hosts welcomes anyone who wants to join the conversation. She has certainly proven to be a value-adding member to the Cardano ecosystem in advancing communication, collaboration, and positive adoption of Cardano – all traits in-line with the mission of the Cardano Foundation to sustain the positive development of the community. This standing within the community itself and awareness of its interests, concerns, and needs, made her the ideal appointee. 

Dumpling will undoubtedly continue to play a pivotal role in bridging the communication between ourselves, the general Cardano community, and the Ambassadors Guild. Those in the Guild already play a relevant role in aiding the community by lending it their substantial understanding of blockchain and cryptocurrencies technology. Dumpling will continue to extend this service to the Catalyst Circle.

When the Circle first began holding meetings, we chose an appointee from within our own team to sit as the Cardano Foundation’s representative. However, we later saw an opportunity to align with the community to a greater extent while also further empowering it. In fact, it seemed to us important that our intervention in the Circle would remain as supportive as possible so as to endorse ample community engagement within Catalyst.

Project Catalyst – the community-owned platform anticipating the future

A prelude to on-chain voting, Project Catalyst works under some chief characteristics:

• an experimental step and a key in bringing on-chain governance to the Cardano blockchain;
• a center of community participation that allows discussion and consensus at an off-chain level;
• an off-chain training space, preparing the eventual future of Voltaire’s fully on-chain reality.

As Catalyst grows, so do its active, functional groups, making the effective communication between all involved parties more complex. The Catalyst Circle emerged to facilitate it. Here’s how it works:

• An arena for dialogue – it gives voice to the several groups through their representative leadership;
• Representatives – five elected members representing the community advisors, the funded proposers, the general ada holders, the stake pool operators, and the toolmakers and maintainers; two appointed representatives, one by the Cardano Foundation and another by IOHK.
• Representatives’ role – the seven representatives express the concerns, objections, and possibilities of their respective stakeholder groups, allowing the various issues relevant to the Catalyst ecosystem to be not only detected but also debated and acted upon by the community.
• Constructing the future – the Circle presents a unique opportunity to structure community representation while also affording the chance to build expert classes of collaborators as well as decision-making agents; in this way, it fosters advisory governance and helps to bring about the reality of an inclusive, accountable community.

However, despite the project’s impressive development as well as its clear maturation, when compared to other blockchains, Catalyst still has not reached the desired volume or variety of participation.

The Cardano Foundation, along with those invested in cultivating constructive discussions within the ecosystem, understands the numbers need to increase and also come from the several stakeholder groups existing in the community. Only by having such a broad participation from the different spheres of the community can Project Catalyst create a sustainable, successful off-chain experiment. For this reason, instead of appointing a representative for the Circle chosen from within the Cardano Foundation itself, we preferred to work towards providing a community member with the tools to become more impactful.

The Cardano Foundation in the Catalyst Circle – a community representative for a community platform

We have long aimed at community strengthening. Indeed we consider it our duty to support decentralization by also equipping the community with the essential resources and opportunities. It is actually one of the core pillars and goals in our North Star and priority principles for 2022. So, with the Cardano nation blossoming, we elected to nurture a closer working relationship with the Ambassadors, thus enabling our community members to grow into eventual experts in Voltaire Governance.

Matthias Sieber from the Ambassadors Guild acted as our second appointed representative in the Catalyst Circle. Dumpling has now taken up the mantle and the Cardano Foundation looks forward to her contributions and insights.

We have an open dialogue with our representatives, upholding their own informed opinions and statements. We will therefore hold regular meetings with Dumpling to gather her educated viewpoints and articulate our common intentions. Going forth, and if the Circle so wishes it, the Cardano Foundation would also be willing to aid in collecting community insights with higher levels of inclusivity and stakeholder representation so that more members from the entire community spectrum may feel inspired and encouraged to get involved. Such wide-ranging participation will be fundamental to guarantee the future community receives the maximum benefit when joining the Cardano ecosystem, while simultaneously assisting the design of the future community governance in Voltaire. To this end, we will also ensure Dumpling engages with the senior Catalyst specialist and receives any necessary guidance and information from us.

It is the Cardano Foundation’s hope that this symbiotic relationship with Dumpling will champion the alignment of communities in Catalyst, leading to a rich class of experts, able to fulfill the role of community-based governance.

Original Source: https://cardanofoundation.org/en/news/the-cardano-foundation-promotes-impactful-action-of-the-community/

Disclaimer: Cardano Feed is a Decentralized News Aggregator that enables journalists, influencers, editors, publishers, websites and community members to share news about the Cardano Ecosystem. User must always do their own research and none of those articles are financial advices. The content is for informational purposes only and does not necessarily reflect our opinion.

The Lightning Development Kit is Spiral BTC’s latest offering to the community. And to the world. The LDK is “The simplest way to integrate Lightning into your Bitcoin wallet.” It’s free to use and it contains building blocks that anyone can merge with their product or application. The big news, however, is Jack Dorsey’s puppet. The company released this video to promote the Lightning Development Kit’s release.

Is it hilarious or cringe? Opinions vary. One thing’s for sure, however, it captured the masses’ attention and got eyeballs on the Lightning Development Kit project. So, it definitely worked as a marketing tool and the Bitcoin community should cherish it. Even though the Spiral team says that the main layer is too slow, “sucks,” and it’s “painful to use.” Nothing could be further from the truth, layer one does perfectly what it needs to do. If you want speed and ease of use, just go up to layer two. That’s where the LDK lives.

Related Reading | Jack Dorsey: Square Could Build Bitcoin Mining System

What’s The Lightning Development Kit?

The project’s documentation defines it as:

“Lightning Development Kit (LDK) is a generic library which allows you to build a Lightning node without needing to worry about getting all of the Lightning state machine, routing, and on-chain punishment code (and other chain interactions) exactly correct. LDK tends to be suitable for use cases where a degree of customization is desired, e.g. your own chain sync, your own key management and/or your own storage/backup logic.”

On the Lightning Development Kit’s introductory page, they promise the product was “designed from the ground up to be easily customized to your application needs.” Also, it’s “as lightweight as you need it to be and optimized to run on all embedded devices such as mobile phones, IoT devices, PoS terminals and more.” Plus, and this is very important, the use the Muun approach and help you create a single wallet experience. What does this mean?

“No need to create separate Bitcoin & Lightning wallets, forcing users to backup an additional recovery phrase. Instead, we let you define your own wallet and create one unified experience.”

What’s Spiral BTC And What Else Do They Do?

The company used to be called Square Crypto. When Jack Dorsey abandoned Twitter to focus on other ventures, it change its name to Spiral BTC. The aim was to convey better what their mission is all about. “Bitcoin is the best money. It should be used like it. We build and fund free, open-source projects aimed at making bitcoin the planet’s preferred currency.” When all of this happened, our sister site Bitcoinist gave us the 411:

“The year is almost at its close and as such companies have begun to make plans for the coming year. For Spiral, the year 2022 will be a year of expansion as it will be working on a number of projects in the new year. To do this, Spiral (formerly Square Crypto) plans to double the number of full-time developers in the coming year.
Some of the projects the devs will be working on include the Lightning Development Kit (LDK), the Bitcoin Development Kit (BDK), the grant program, and the Bitcoin Design Guide and Community.“

That’s right, they sponsor the fantastic Bitcoin Design Guide and already released a Bitcoin Development Kit for those who wish to build on layer one. They also give grants to Bitcoin developers, designers, and great projects like BTCPay Server, Lightning Signer, The Eye of Satoshi, and the widely used Mempool. 

BTC price chart for 12/07/2021 on Gemini | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com

Other Jack-Dorsey-Led Bitcoin Projects

As soon as the rumor of Jack Dorsey leaving Twitter hit… well… Twitter, Bitcoinist ran a piece that praised his contributions to the space and speculated on what he would do next:

“The allegedly soon-to-be former Twitter CEO is perhaps best compared to Hal Finney in terms of the positive impact he has had on the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Both of have famously tweeted about “Running Bitcoin,” and both are now names nearly as synonymous with the top ranked crypto asset as Satoshi Nakamoto themselves.
Finney’s legacy has sadly ended, but could Dorsey’s truly just be at the very beginning in terms of what the business entrepreneur could bring to the overall Bitcoin ecosystem?”

Related Reading | Is Hyperinflation Inevitable? Jack Dorsey Says It’ll “Change Everything”

Before that, Jack Dorsey’s other Bitcoin-focused company, TBD announced its first big project. The tbDEX will be a decentralized exchange and liquidity protocol. When the company released the whitepaper, NewsBTC reported on it and described the project as:

“The tbDEX aims “to build bridges between the fiat and cryptocurrency worlds,” that much is clear. We still live in a Fiat world and, if Bitcoin is going to succeed, we need new, simpler, and cheaper ways to interact with said world. “There are serious challenges to realizing this vision. Fiat rails are regulated, and no interface with either the traditional monetary system or “real world” can be completely trustless.”

At the Bitcoin 2021 Conference, Jack Dorsey said “Bitcoin changes absolutely everything. I don’t think there is anything more important in my lifetime to work on”. And now, he’s laser-focused on it. Things are moving fast since he left Twitter. It wouldn’t surprise us if the tbDEX releases a working version soon. They didn’t announce any timeline, though. Only one thing’s for sure. When the decentralized exchange is ready for the world to see, TBD should use Jack Dorsey’s puppet to promote it.

Feature Image: Screenshot from the promotional video | Charts by TradingView