The year 2022 was kaleidoscopically eventful for the Cardano ecosystem, with the Vasil update, the launch of EVM-compatible Milkomeda C1 and many more significant achievements. U.Today has summed up the top five things Cardano accomplished throughout the outgoing year.
Cardano’s Happy Vasil Day
No words can describe how much awaited the Vasil hardfork was for the Cardano community. Finally, after months of preparation and both the IOG and Cardano teams working around the clock, the historic upgrade went live on Sept. 22 at 9:44 p.m. UTC. Vasil introduced Plutus 2.0, a new version of Cardano’s native smart contract language, which made smart contracts more efficient and cost effective. Later on, the Vasil upgrade was implemented by such major crypto exchanges as Binance, Coinbase, Upbit, XT.com and many more, thus bringing utility to the blockchain.
“Pivotal moment”: Cardano now supports Ethereum dApps
The next milestone for Cardano in 2022 was achieving compatibility with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), thanks to the launch of Milkomeda C1, a sidechain connected directly to Cardano. Milkomeda C1 allows users to seamlessly move assets between the two blockchains, making it possible to run popular Ethereum-based dApps on top of Cardano. This is accomplished with the wrapped smart contract technology pioneered by Milkomeda. Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson called the launch of the C1 Layer-2 solution “a great development” for Cardano.
Cardano ecosystem onboards over 1,000 dApps
Another milestone Cardano can pride itself on this year is the number of onboarded dApps to its smart contracts. According to a thread shared by the Input Output Global (IOG) team in June, there are over 1,000 projects building on Cardano, and the number continues to grow. The main sphere of Cardano’s focus is NFT: 40.2% of protocols belong to the “NFT collections” category, while over 4% are marketplaces for NFTs. The top five active protocols also include community apps and social media platforms, developer instruments, gaming platforms and metaverses. This milestone allowed Cardano to break into the leaderboard of smart contracts platforms for dApps.
Cardano comes to world’s biggest dApp store
In early September, Cardano blockchain received support from Lithuania-based service DappRadar. In its announcement tweet, the world’s biggest dApp store invited developers who are working on Cardano to submit their contracts. Among the top-ranked Cardano dApps on DappRadar at the moment are JPG Store, leading Cardano NFT marketplace, MuesliSwap and Miniswap, Cardano’s decentralized exchanges. This event might not be as significant and impressive as the Vasil upgrade, but what seems to be a small step for one blockchain might be a giant leap for another, as this was the first time Cardano apps started to be added to large external trackers.
Snoop Dogg and Champ Medici popularizing Cardano
Last but not least, an important milestone for the Cardano ecosystem was being popularized by world famous celebrities, American rapper Snoop Dogg and his son Champ Medici. In April, the star family brought their music content to Cardano in collaboration with NFT project Clay Nation. In September, Champ released a mini music album dedicated to Cardano and the most high-profile NFT project of the blockchain, Clay Mates. In their collaboration with Clay Nation, the rap artists went as far as inviting Cardano creator Charles Hoskinson to feature in their music video, a wild idea that did, in fact, come to fruition. At the end of November, Hoskinson (or rather his clay avatar) indeed appeared in a song clip called “Bron and Bronny” by Champ Medici and Snoop Dogg.
Source: https://u.today/cardano-2022-recap-here-are-blockchains-most-outstanding-achievements