Since the launch of the Casper Network mainnet this March, there have been numerous announcements across multiple industries and markets about real-world solutions being built on the Casper Network. This work is a testament to the efforts of the Casper community, which has made significant headway in establishing the Casper Network’s position in the broader blockchain ecosystem, with a focus on enterprise use.
We’re also working on new ways to give developers of all experience levels an opportunity to showcase their skills and explore the Casper Network’s unique features. That’s why Casper Association partnered with Gitcoin to create the Friendly Hackathon, which will offer $135k in prizes for developers looking to build innovative dApps on Casper. The hackathon will run from September 13 to October 11, 2021, and five other organizations, including Arcadia Group and Quantstamp, and Consensus Capital, have joined the Association in sponsoring this event.
While hackathon submissions are expected to run a wide gamut, there’s been a lot of buzz within Casper’s community of builders to bring more NFTs to the Casper blockchain via high-utility smart contracts such as the CASP-721 NFT standard and CASP-20 tokens. Experienced Web3 developers and new Web2 developers without Solidity experience are welcome to join the Hackathon, and CasperLabs has a dedicated team of Web3 developers who will be directly assisting event participants.
A continued source of developer funding, education, and support has been DEVxDAO, an independent grants program to accelerate the adoption of blockchain technology by engaging both Web2 and Web3 developer audiences. DEVxDAO is open to apply to grants to build on the Casper Network.
At the same time, Casper’s success ultimately relies on the strength of its community. To that point, our focus for the remainder of 2021 and through 2022 is on user-centric developments which will make it easier for our community to engage with the Casper Network however they want. Here’s what to expect in the months to come!
Staking for Casper recently went live on CoinList, where your staked CSPR returns an estimated 8% annualized yield. In other words, you can stake CSPR on Casper and earn passive income that outpaces the vast majority of APYs from traditional investment options — as well as many other layer-1 blockchain solutions. And CoinList isn’t the only option for staking your CSPR. You can also delegate tokens directly via CSPR.Live using the Casper Signer to known staking providers like Stake.fish, Staked.US, Everstake, Figment Networks, Arcadia Group, and several other active validators.
To get started, we recommend you take a look at our video tutorial on how to stake CSPR. Every additional community member who stakes their CSPR directly contributes to the security and efficiency of the Casper Network — so come join the network and put your CSPR to work.
Mainstream blockchain adoption requires multiple access points, convenient on/off-ramps, and secure yet accessible storage solutions for individual and enterprise users alike. Casper is already listed on several major exchanges and compatible with several wallets, including Gosuto and MetalPay — with more to come!
The Casper Network’s integration with Ledger is in its final stages of due diligence, and you will soon be able to store your CSPR tokens using one of the industry’s most ubiquitous cold wallet storage solutions. Additionally, several other crypto wallet providers have recently committed to offering CSPR storage solutions, and you can expect more concrete announcements in the near future.
In terms of exchange listings, CSPR is currently tradable on around 20 exchanges, including Huobi, OKEx, BitMax/Ascendex and CoinList Pro.
During the first decade of blockchain’s existence, the technology was dismissed by skeptics as a solution in search of a problem. However, DeFi is not an abstract use case — it is a thriving ecosystem delivering tangible value for thousands of users around the world. Casper’s DeFi ecosystem is in its early stages, and we have the benefit of seeing how the broader landscape has evolved and how we can best address both enterprise and individual needs.
Casper’s unique design means that it will bypass many persistent issues that continue to plague other projects within the DeFi space. The Casper Network has solved several scalability and gas issues that have continued to hinder other blockchain networks since day one. Additionally, solutions on the Casper Network should benefit from the vast developer mindshare of today’s Web2 financial ecosystem. Casper is built to be easily adoptable by Web2 developers using traditional coding languages instead of asking developers to learn a new language altogether. By providing convenient onramps for developers who are eager to learn about Web3 with the tools they know and love, the Casper Network has unlocked tremendous potential for the blockchain industry as a whole. This is also crucial for enterprise use, given that blockchain projects that require the use of proprietary languages effectively block the roughly 26 million developers globally from easily moving to become blockchain developers. By providing easy onramps for this massive global community of developers to begin building blockchain applications and exploring new use cases, Casper is significantly accelerating the adoption and expansion of the blockchain ecosystem as a whole.
Also, several Web3 integration and AMM and borrowing/lending solutions are expected to be launched in the next 3-4 months, and with the recent involvement of Arcadia Group and AMLSafe, the Casper Network is on track to making available a full-fledged DeFi ecosystem that is easy to use, provably secure, and compliance-friendly.
Of course, no DeFi ecosystem is complete without convenient user access points and cross-chain integrations, and to that end several community members are in the process of designing and deploying multiple bridges/atomic swaps between Casper and other widely used layer-1 solutions. These developments are currently being built out and our community can expect Casper to replace theoretical use cases with real world applications at a rapidly accelerated pace.
Casper was designed to address the needs of a wide range of consumer, developer, and enterprise users. The 500 million CSPR tokens with which the Casper Association seeded DEVxDAO will continue to fund grants for developers with ambitious ideas for Casper-native dApps and decentralized infrastructure solutions. We’re thrilled to be on this journey with you and we will keep you informed of our strategic and community work.
