The Cardano blockchain has witnessed significant growth and Charles Hoskinson anticipates an active 2022 as the network explores long-term expansion in the global markets.
In a YouTube video broadcast on Friday, December 24, Cardano founder and CEO of Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) tells his 300,000 viewers about 2021 milestones and future targets he’s working toward.
The 34-year-old mathematician and technology entrepreneur is working on finalizing plans to use blockchain technology to help the world’s poorest have access to affordable loans through decentralised finance.
“My goal for the second half of 2022 is to figure out how to put all the pieces together to get an end-to-end microfinance transaction on Cardano. So that a for real person in Kenya or somewhere with a blockchain-based identity and credit score, stablecoin on the other side, Cardano is the settlement rail. Peer-to-peer, person-to-person, click a button, loan goes to them. They pay it back, [it] goes to the other side.“
The founder of Cardano, who wants to modernise blockchain technology in Africa, believes that financially empowering Africans could have far-reaching impacts that could disrupt traditional finance.
“It’s permissionless, and you can’t shut it off once that’s happened. It opens up a thousand conversations, [like] what’s a good identity? What’s a good credit score? What other products and services should exist in the realfi (real finance) space in Africa? And how do we spread this across all of Africa? That’s the dream.”
Following that, Hoskinson goes over a list of outlined technological milestones for the future year.
“Next year, what’s going to happen is that a formal open-source project structure is going to be formed, kind of like Hyperledger to Linux. We’re going to see many institutions wired in, and all the people that are currently working on it will be novated over, including me…
When you look at things like enhancing [Cardano’s smart contract platform] Plutus, there’s already three CIPS [Cardano improvement proposals] as a result of the work we’ve done with developers that need to come in.
We have pipelining that needs to come in, input endorsers that need to come in. Peer-to-peer is currently being tested with the stake pool operators on the testnet, and there’s lots of stuff happening there.”
Hoskinson had already hinted at the Cardano ecosystem’s vision in November.
Cardano Foundation CEO Frederik Gregaard praised the year as a “year of extraordinary achievement” for the cryptocurrency network with a succession of innovations over the last year, including the long-awaited smart contracts capability.
The foundation said earlier this year that it will devote 2021 to strengthening the Cardano community, which contributed to the growth.