According to the Polymarket prediction market, investors believe that Cardano’s Smart contract functionality, the highlight of the Goguen Era, won’t be released before October 1st.
The results of the prediction market resulted in odds of 65 to 35% against Cardano, with a total of $189.7k being traded by those participating.
The odds are reflective of the criticism the often-nicknamed “Ethereum Killer” has received from crypto investors due to its slow development and approach.
Prediction markets have proven to be a good mechanism to gauge investor sentiment on specific topics related to projects. The fact that money is on the line, makes investors consider the possibilities carefully, improving their predictions.
Polymarket founder, Shayne Coplan, referred back in 2020 to the potential of these platforms by commenting,
“The beautiful thing about markets, in my opinion, is their ability to aggregate information and synthesize it into an accurate forecast. That’s what price discovery is — aggregating everyone’s opinions and knowledge and synthesizing it into one metric. And that can have incredible social and informational value.”
After the second US presidential debate back in 2020, Polymarket users betted against Trump winning the elections, becoming one of the many successful predictions the platform has seen.
Now, the future will decide if Cardano is able to overcome the expectations against its timely deployment or just becomes another correct guess in the prediction market’s ledger.
Cardano Completes Alonzo Testnet Hard Fork
IOHK, the Hongkong-based company pushing the development of Cardano, announced on July 14th that it had successfully completed the hard fork of the Alonzo test net to the AlonzoWhite node.
After this hard fork, the network is already making blocks, which opens the doors to the new stages of development of the Goguen era. The IOHK team has also added members to its ranks, who come from the Project Catalyst crew and more Plutus partners.
HARD FORK SUCCESSFUL: Delighted to report around 19.44 UTC today we successfully forked the #Alonzo testnet to the new #AlonzoWhite node. The new network is happily making blocks already. 1/5
— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) July 14, 2021
At this time, IOHK is focusing on monitoring the new network while also performing Quality Assurance work and reviewing feedback and analytics. When there is sufficient data on their hands, the team will start working on developing any required fixes.
Once the Alonzo hard fork is completed on the mainnet, Cardano will finally have Smart Contract functionality, which has been a topic of controversy among critics and supporters.
As such, it will represent the most important milestone for the network, which has reached and maintained its spot in the Top-5 of cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
The current deployment, also known as Alonzo White, is the second phase of the Alonzo update deployment. The remaining phases are known as Alonzo Purple, Alonzo Red, and finally, Alonzo Black.
Cardano Is Betting on Its Community
The Cardano Foundation recently announced the launch of the Cardano Developer Portal, which will provide users with the option to learn Cardano Basics, integration, stake pool operation, native token specs and minting, project funding, and transaction metadata creation.
This is just the latest step by the Cardano Foundation to continue growing the Cardano community, especially among developers who might be interested in harvesting the network’s potential.
Despite its success in becoming one of the largest cryptocurrencies earlier this year, Cardano has been criticized for its low traction, which has been reflected by the network’s transactions being below 20k per day.
Other investors also pointed at the low number of DApps running on the network, which has been linked to the lack of Smart Contract functionality and the reliance of the network on ADA’s value.
Cardano’s founder, Charles Hoskinson, replied to the criticism by pointing out:
“To be honest, we actually have that kind of traction. There are tens of thousands of assets, over $10 million of NFTs, I think, have been sold, if we’re counting correctly, throughout the Cardano network… All things considered, the ecosystem is quite healthy and viable.”
The founder also referred to the success Cardano has over social media networks like Twitter, Reddit and Telegram, with users owning “their own projects” to create a “very vibrant ecosystem”.
The Cardano Developer Portal is live! ????
To celebrate, we minted the world's first NFTA on the Cardano blockchain.
Building on Cardano is now easier with brand new content and resources.
Get in and make the portal yours too!#Cardano #CardanoCommunityhttps://t.co/BHrFZAvrtX pic.twitter.com/rxyn1Ugr7n
— Cardano Foundation (@Cardano_CF) July 12, 2021
Cardano seems aware that it needs to drive the adoption of the Cardano network to keep its status, and has started to bet on building a community instead of its ADA token to do so.