As the official commercial arm of Cardano and one of its founding entities, EMURGO is committed to building the Cardano ecosystem by delivering blockchain solutions development and related services, Yoroi Wallet upgrades and maintenance, Cardano developer education, and ecosystem investments.
The Alonzo hard fork earlier this year brought smart contract support to Cardano, creating a wave of endless opportunities for decentralized services to be built on Cardano which offers a green, environmentally-friendly blockchain platform.
With many achievements and great progress made towards developing the Cardano ecosystem by EMURGO in 2021, we have put together this blog to look at our biggest highlights this year.
EMURGO Establishes $100 Million Cardano Blockchain Investment Vehicle
In September 2021, EMURGO announced the establishment of a $100 million Cardano ecosystem investment vehicle comprising two entities – EMURGO Ventures and EMURGO Africa – to invest into early startup and growth stage companies focused on building socially impactful solutions powered by Cardano.
EMURGO Ventures focuses on developed markets outside of Africa to facilitate the building of solutions and services on Cardano with seed investments into a variety of Cardano-focused startups and middleware solutions companies, including those building decentralized financial services (DeFi), non-fungible token (NFT) projects, blockchain developer education tools, and other decentralized applications.
EMURGO Africa’s goal is to ultimately support more than three hundred regional startups (one hundred within three years) through seed funding and incubation, and have Cardano’s blockchain adopted as the technological platform standard in Africa for socially impactful solutions.
For its initial launch, EMURGO Africa announced two major partnerships to rapidly expand the Cardano ecosystem in Africa.
Adanian Labs, a venture building studio operator in Africa, partnered with EMURGO Africa to support impact driven startups expanding the Cardano ecosystem across the continent.
(Read here to learn more about Adanian Labs and to apply for funding.)
Adaverse, a Cardano-focused joint accelerator program in Africa with leading blockchain industry accelerator Everest Ventures, also partnered with EMURGO Africa.
(Read here about how to apply for Adaverse’s 3-month accelerator program.)
For its initial launch, EMURGO Ventures announced its first seed investment into dcSpark’s Milkomeda.
EMURGO Announces Astarter Project to Foster DeFi on Cardano
Also in September 2021, EMURGO announced Astarter – a Cardano DeFi development project – to facilitate building of decentralized financial (DeFi) services infrastructure on Cardano.
Astarter has started developing an initial decentralized exchange offering (IDO) launchpad along with a decentralized exchange (DEX) on Cardano to eventually follow.
Astarter also plans to integrate lending & borrowing (decentralized money market) features on Cardano.
These services aim to bring more utility to Cardano ADA users and open up financial services to a greater number of people in underserved regions.
For more technical updates and other announcements, please follow Astarter’s Medium and official Twitter account here.
One Year Anniversary of EMURGO Trace Solution
As a founding entity of the Cardano blockchain protocol, EMURGO developed and launched EMURGO Trace Solution in March 2020 as an enterprise solution leveraging blockchain technology to solve the complex supply chain problems of opaqueness and administrative inefficiencies that enterprises are having today, with two real enterprises Blue Korintji Coffee and ALKO integrating it to trace their coffee beans.
EMURGO’s Trace Solution provides new added value to supply chain stakeholders and end consumers by offering a quicker and more efficient way to solve these problems using a digital blockchain-based solution.
EMURGO Trace Solution keeps it easy for stakeholders to use via a simple QR code application interface that leverages blockchain technology on the back end, providing a much needed advantage over traditional data systems.
Covered by well-known publications such as Nikkei Asia and The Japan Times, EMURGO Trace Solution has enabled our partner ALKO to be the first enterprise in Southeast Asia to leverage blockchain technology for traceability and to expand its coffee exports to additional markets.
Yoroi dApp Connector
To help meet the expected increasing demand for dApps on Cardano, EMURGO, the team behind Yoroi Wallet, announced several months ago its upcoming plans to launch the dApp Connector initially for Yoroi’s desktop browser users which will bridge interaction between users and all sorts of dApps on Cardano.
Via Yoroi’s dApp Connector, users can simply access such dApps and do so from their preferred web browser – bringing huge utility to Yoroi users holding Cardano ADA.
After enabling the dApp Connector, the user can participate in any activities that the dApp permits such as purchasing or selling tokens, gaining access to resources, or using other features offered by the dApp.
EMURGO Academy Growth: Launches Dual Cardano Education Courses
EMURGO’s 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.
For those with a technical background and wanting to become Cardano developers, EMURGO India launched Cardano Blockchain Developer course.
For those without a technical background and wanting to become proficient in blockchain, EMURGO India offers the Foundations of Blockchain course.
Click the links above to learn more about both courses and contact for more information.
Both courses are tailored and taught by experienced professionals with a deep understanding of the Cardano blockchain.
Overall, 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.
EMURGO as a Main Sponsor of Cardano Summit 2021
In September 2021, EMURGO and Yoroi were one of the key sponsors and participants to present at this year’s Cardano Summit.
The event served as the prelude to the launch of smart contract capabilities on Cardano.
Many of the brightest minds from the ecosystem attended and were on hand to present their updates for Cardano.
The event also served as a platform to showcase many of the upcoming Yoroi updates.
EMURGO’s Head of Product Sergio Sanchez Ferreros presented a talk entitled “What’s in store of Yoroi users?” to discuss improvements users could expect including:
Yoroi dApp connector – As a light crypto wallet Yoroi’s main use is as a bridge between dApps and users. Since the advent of smart contracts, the development team has been refining this role for the browser extension.
Native assets and NFT list – NFTs have exploded on Cardano, there are many of these assets on the ledger being traded by people all the time. To accommodate this demand, Yoroi is looking at ways to incorporate such assets with a better user experience as we move forward, with things such as more information about such assets and image displays.
What to Look Forward to in 2022 and Beyond
As mentioned above, this year has brought many exciting developments to the Cardano ecosystem including smart contracts support, launch of decentralized services, onboarding new users to Yoroi, education courses, and investment.
Now, Cardano will also start to explore Layer-2 scaling solutions through Hydra to build the network infrastructure for many more users.
This improvement will vastly increase the network’s throughput and allow easier mainstream adoption of Cardano’s scalable, sustainable, and interoperable third-generation blockchain.
EMURGO will continue to support the building of the Cardano ecosystem in line with its overall development and provide more services for ADA holders through solutions development, Yoroi updates, education, and investment.
Yoroi will see new features and upgrades to the user experience coming soon including many more basic user guides, as it is the official light wallet of Cardano.
Please follow EMURGO on Twitter for updates and in the social media channels in the links below.
About Yoroi Wallet
- Yoroi Twitter: @YoroiWallet
- Yoroi Homepage: https://yoroi-wallet.com/
About EMURGO
- Official Homepage: dev.emurgo.io
- Twitter (Global): @EMURGO_io
- YouTube: EMURGO channel
- Telegram: EMURGO Announcements
- Facebook: @EMURGO.io
- Instagram: @EMURGO_io
- Medium: EMURGO Announcement
- LinkedIn: @EMURGO_io
