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Cardano Blockchain created by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson of IOHK, has in its recent virtual summit launched a decentralized identity system (DeFi) known as Atala PRISM. The project aims at giving “self-sovereign identities” for accessing decentralized finance (DeFi) services, letting the unbanked population around the world have access to funds.
IOHK in recent times has been making moves to take financial services to the unbanked from around the world who are estimated to be around 1.7 billion. At the summit which was tagged the whirlwind summit, IOHK announced that it had released its much anticipated Cardano upgrade “Shelley”, inaugurated a $20 million development fund for IOHK and Atala PRISM primed to be a new governance model for Cardano.
Atala PRISM is a decentralized identity system promised by IOHK to fulfill one of blockchain’s greatest goal, which is to “bank the unbanked.”
The innovation will deliver self-sovereign identities to people who have access to banking services and as well as to those who do not. It is worth mentioning that Atala PRISM will make everyone have access to flash loans.
Also, users of Atala PRISM will be allowed to control their own identities because of its decentralized nature. The Atala PRISM app was released to the Android app stores on the 30th of June. According to IOHK, the technology is at the moment being monitored in collaboration with the Ethiopian government.
Ethiopia and a number of other African countries have millions of people who don’t have access to bank.
IOHK’s $20 million Development project
In a similar development IOHK in partnership with Wave Financial Group, a crypto asset management fund, has launched a development fund project christened “cFund.” The fund will sum up to $20 million and it is to be used to finance projects and companies building up the Cardano ecosystem.
$10 million of the fund is to be raised by IOHK while the other half will be raised by Waves. IOHK, however, reiterated that this project will produce several years of runway to early-stage opportunities and target seed.
Cardano Upgrades Shelley
IOHK has launched the much-awaited Shelley tagged the biggest upgrade in the history of the blockchain network. The blockchain company on June 30 has rolled out Shelley on the Cardano mainnet.
Cardano mainnet will be made available for public use starting from July 7. Holders of the platform’s native token Cardano (ADA) will as from then become eligible to stake and be able to move their funds to wallets supported by the new upgrade.
IOHK Project Catalyst
Cardano also declared the launch of a decentralized treasury fund project, Project Catalyst, for holders of the platform’s native tokens. Project Catalyst allows users to vote, propose, and decide on projects that will further develop the platform.
Project Catalyst is still at its testing phase, but it will cover four components when fully launched, this includes a governance protocol, a governance blockchain node, a set of experiments to be called catalyst (0,1,…) to determine the feasibility of the system, and a voting app. IOHK remarked that calls for proposals for the Project Catalyst are to be announced later in July.