From just US$315.9 million in 2015 to an estimated US$20 billion by the end of 2024, the global blockchain market has come a long way over the past decade. This phenomenal growth underlines the potential of the nascent but thriving technology, as well as the opportunities it brings along.

In Sept. 2021, MELD Labs and CardWallet, two emerging blockchain protocols, teamed up to tap right into some of those untapped opportunities.

The birth of a new strategic alliance

For those out of the loop, MELD Labs is the platform that developed the first decentralized, non-custodial protocol for borrowing and lending fiat and cryptocurrency.

CardWallet, meanwhile, is a non-custodial Cardano-centric wallet also supporting Bitcoin and Ethereum. The mission of CardWallet is to create a “Defi in your pocket” app for the Cardano ecosystem.

CardWallet is available on both Google Play and Apple App Store and the company will soon release a web version with Chrome extension.

The important thing to note here is that the alliance between the two entities didn’t come out of thin air. Rather, it seems quite organic and based on a set of shared values and specific objectives.

One of the main goals of the MELD-CardWallet alliance is to create a joint research and development group to tackle the challenges confronting the Cardano ecosystem. And that is precisely the main topic of discussion in this article today.

Let’s start with the major pain points in the Cardano ecosystem that MELD and CardWallet have set their sight on.

The significance of the Cardano ecosystem and the challenges confronting it

Cardano has been creating ripples in the broader blockchain ecosystem right since its debut in Sept. 2017. It is, after all, a third-generation blockchain promising to help get rid of many of the shortcomings in the previous-generation blockchains.

The Cardano blockchain uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism to resolve three of the major issues confronting first and second-generation blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum 1.0. These are:

Scalability
Interoperability
Sustainability

For perspective, Cardano’s Ouroboros system promises a transaction speed of up to 257 TPS. That’s way-way higher than the transaction speed on the original Ethereum blockchain (up to 20 TPS).

That brings in the question, where is Cardano lacking despite offering a clear edge on multiple fronts?

Two major issues with the Cardano ecosystem

According to the MELD-CardWallet alliance, two major issues are confronting the Cardano ecosystem at present. These are:

Adoption: Cardano, just like pretty much all third-generation blockchains out there, is struggling to inspire mass adoption on a scale that its proponents would have liked. You could partially attribute this status-quo to Ethereum’s popularity, among other factors.

As an early-mover into the decentralized digital space, Ethereum has traditionally been the go-to destination for most decentralized applications and DeFi platforms. While several rival chains have emerged, Ethereum still finds itself in a dominant position.

And with Ethereum 2.0 now on the horizon, these rival chains including Cardano will have to up the ante to eat more into Ethereum’s market share.

Capabilities: Capabilities of a blockchain ecosystem has a direct correlation with its rate of adoption. This is so because the increasing capabilities of a network attract more real-world applications, which in turn, leads to an increase in adoption. In the current context, for example, by drawing more and more community-focused projects, Cardano will likely find itself in a good spot to inspire mass adoption at scale.

In other words, the possibilities are endless, but Cardano is still pretty much a “work in progress”, as a recent Bloomberg study claimed. That assessment is certainly not void of substance. Because, for example, while smart contract functionalities are expected to hit Cardano only by the end of 2021, some competitors have already long implemented these capabilities.

Potential solutions

The partnership between MELD and CardWallet promises to offer the following solutions for the aforementioned challenges:

To increase the rate of adoption of Cardano by developing a suite of DeFi products for the Cardano community. The goal here is to make these DeFi products lucrative in terms of investment while simultaneously making them accessible to both native and non-native crypto users.
To improve the developer tooling and create innovative solutions that add to the overall capabilities of the Cardano ecosystem.

Solutions proposed by CardWallet and MELD

To implement these solutions, MELD and CardWallet have jointly created a framework encompassing the following:

CardWallet will integrate the MELD protocol to add Web 3.0 connectivity to its non-custodial wallet. With this move, the company’s users will be able to reap the benefits of the MELD protocol functionality.
CardWallet will be providing all necessary support to the $CW/MELD liquidity pairs on external DEXs.
MELD Labs will also allow CardWallet access to its MELD Vaults (LPs), mUSD, mEUR, mBTC, mETH, and mBNB, etc.
CardWallet users will also gain access to deep liquidity pools, a move that will significantly reduce slippage during token swaps.
MELD also agreed to introduce a MELD lending market for the $CW token. This way, users of both platforms can easily swap $CW for $MELD and vice-versa.

Both entities have also agreed to set up a joint research & development group to identify and tackle the shortcomings within the Cardano ecosystem. As a starting point, the alliance will co-develop an Oracle infrastructure with Chainlink to add more meat to Cardano’s DeFi capabilities. Additionally, the development of a core wallet technology to support the Cardano blockchain and Cardano Native Tokens (CNT) is also in the pipeline.

So, all aspects considered, MELD and CardWallet have indeed taken up an ambitious initiative that, if successful, could push Cardano to the forefront of the ongoing blockchain revolution.

Download and try the CardWallet app: Google Play Store | iOS App Store

Click here for more information on MELD.

Want to check out what CardWallet is up to? Click here.

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