Cardano smart contracts set for Sunday: CrossTower launches in India

Transcript

Welcome to The Daily Forkast, September 10, 2021, I’m Angie Lau, Editor-in-Chief of Forkast.News, covering all things blockchain.

What is it about India, a nation of 1.3 billion, close to 1.4 billion people, the second most populated country in the world, second only to China, a nation with so much potential…and then there’s crypto. Well, it’s starting to look like, despite political headwinds, there’s some serious tailwind coming from the investment side. We’re going to be talking about that and a whole lot more coming up.

Let’s get you up to speed from Asia to the world.

First up, Cardano confirms its long-awaited Alonzo upgrade, which is set to deploy smart contract functionality. And it’s going to go live on Sunday.

The upgrade puts the network in a better position to compete with Ethereum, supporting a much wider range of applications.

ADA, Cardano’s native cryptocurrency has been on a tear since the date for the upgrade was announced, hitting an all-time high of US$3.10 earlier this month.

But, given the market pullback after El Salvador’s bitcoin adoption, is that excitement already priced into markets? And what can we expect from the network now?

Forkast.News Lachlan Keller has all the details.

ADA has soared in value, becoming the world’s third-largest blockchain by market cap as the Alonzo suite of upgrades have rolled out over the past few months.

The hard fork promises the introduction of smart contracts, which will allow for decentralized finance applications on networks, something that has largely been running on Ethereum to date. Alonzo also brings full support for NFTs.

One expert told Forkast.News that so far ADA has been an altcoin, but this upgrade will make it a competitive layer-1. And while he’s excited about the potential of the upgrade, investors should always be careful:

“At these times, it’s always worth remembering that there is usually more volatility than there’s usually and there is the potential of hard forks and failure. So just be cautious around forks and upgrades.”

And there have been glitches along the way – the first decentralized app on Alonzo test-net Minswap was forced to shut down earlier this week due to concurrency issues.

Critics argued the use of “unspent transaction outputs” or UTxOs means it’s not up to the task of supporting such DApps. But Cardano developer InputOutHK hit back, saying the extended model it uses offers greater security.

It goes to show smooth sailing is never a certainty.

For Forkast.News, I’m Lachlan Keller.

Meanwhile, India’s crypto exchange space is heating up despite lawmakers mulling a full ban on crypto. Regardless, U.S. headquartered CrossTower has become the second international crypto exchange to enter India.

The exchange’s launch of a trading platform in India is a bold move, given regulation over crypto in the country is still very much a gray area.

But Binance already took the plunge, acquiring WazirX in 2019, and it seems like the appetite for crypto in the country is unquenchable, despite the government’s lack of clarity. But with a potential market of 1.3 billion people, there’s a lot of opportunities too. How many opportunity?

Forkast.News Monika Ghosh spoke to CrossTower CEO Kapil Rathi.

The capital market-focused exchange sees massive potential for growth in the crypto space in India. With an average age of 29, the country has the youngest population in the world, and as there are 600 million internet users and 190 million unbanked people, CrossTower says there’s plenty of appetite.

That’s certainly true if the latest numbers from Coinswitch Kuber are anything to go by – in a tweet, the exchange confirmed that it now has over 10 million users, making it the largest exchange in the country.

In comparison, competitors WazirX said it had 7.3 million users in August, and CoinDCX says it has over 3.5 million users.

Despite the explosion in numbers creating accounts with exchanges in India, CrossTower’s CEO says the lack of regulation is holding things back but is optimistic that will change.

“I’m more than 100% optimistic that the Indian government understands the power of technology. So I actually am really looking forward to having a framework in India because right now the uncertainty, unfortunately, is keeping investors on the sidelines.”

Rathi says CrossTower has been actively involved in developing regulation in the U.S. and thinks collaboration between exchanges is vital to drive progress on the matter in India.

It remains to be seen just when that progress will happen.

For Forkast.News, I’m Monica Ghosh, Pune, India.

And finally, today, what do you get when you mix a gaming platform backed by a Hong Kong-based unicorn with one of Asia’s most well-known animated penguins from Korea?

You get one heck of an NFT.

The Sandbox, Animoca Brands blockchain game platform, will release NFTs of popular kids animation Pororo the Little Penguin.

This is in partnership with Korea’s animation producer Iconix.

Now the NFTs will include the beloved characters of Pororo, which will be on sale from September 23rd.

Iconix has further plans to set up a Pororo theme park and a metaverse role-playing game on The Sandboxes of virtual real estate named Land.

Who says kids have all the fun.

And that’s The Daily Forkast. From our vantage point right here in Asia. For more visit Forkast.News. I’m Editor-in-Chief Angie Lau. Until the next time.