Less than a year after launching its IOHK-owned network of federated nodes, Cardano is on schedule to reach full decentralization at the end of March 2021. At that point, the already established network of over 1,800 community pools will be responsible for producing all new blocks.

Cardano Goes for Full Decentralization

With the approaching so-called D (=0) day, IOHK, the company behind the popular blockchain project Cardano, published a post highlighting the latest milestone in its development.

Cardano is on track to get out of the realm of centralization in less than a month. The post explained that upon the release of the Shelley update in July 2020, the developers built the network in a way that every block was produced by IOHK’s network of federated nodes.

This caused some confusion within the cryptocurrency community as such an approach was the “antithesis of decentralization.” However, the statement justified this somewhat controversial decision with enhanced security – “a wise approach for the near term while the stake pool operator (SPO) network got up and running.”

Furthermore, Cardano’s developers built in an automatic readjustment process, which reduced the parameter that governs what percentage of transactions are processed by the genesis nodes (referred to as d) at a rate of 0.02 per epoch. This means an increase by 2% in community block production every five days.

Thus, the community received a more significant role in block production over time, which led to the current situation – only 12% of blocks are produced by federated nodes. The number will continue to gradually decrease until it reached zero (also known as D=0 Day) on March 31st.

Upon doing so, the network will become “fully decentralized,” as “D=0 pushes power to the edges.”

ADA Price Update

While the Cardano community is patiently anticipating the D=0 day, the native cryptocurrency has been on a roll since the start of the year, despite the recent retracements.

ADA entered 2020 at about $0,18 before it skyrocketed to a new all-time high just shy of $1.5. Following this 730% surge, the asset retraced slightly intact with last week’s market crash but has remained well above the $1 tag.

Naturally, ADA’s price surge impacted the market capitalization as well. As such, ADA surpassed other altcoins like Binance Coin and Ripple and is currently the 3rd largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse told Reuters in an interview today that the company is still conducting and growing its business in the Asia Pacific region despite the SEC legal case against Ripple and its executives. 

The last four months have been some of the toughest for Ripple after the company was slammed with a $1.3 billion lawsuit by the United States Security and Exchange Commission (SEC). The regulator alleged that Ripple and its executives, including Garlinghouse, conducted an unregistered securities offering using XRP. 

News of the lawsuit spurred panic, and some major crypto exchanges offering services to U.S. clients were quick to delist XRP from their platforms. Ripple’s partner Moneygram also pulled the brakes on its alliance with the company following the SEC fiasco.

The price of XRP suffered severely, and the once-third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap now ranks seventh on CoinMarketCap.

No Fallout In Asia

Despite the company’s mishap in the United States, Garlinghouse noted that Ripple has continued its operation without hassle across Asia, especially Japan, thanks to the regulatory clarity in the region. 

“It (the lawsuit) has hindered activity in the United States, but it has not really impacted what’s going on for us in Asia Pacific. We have been able to continue to grow the business in Asia and Japan because we’ve had regulatory clarity in those markets,” Ripple’s CEO said during the interview.

Garlinghouse believes the lack of a clear regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies in the United States is a hindrance to innovation and the SEC lawsuit is an attack on all crypto. However, he said that Ripple will not let the regulator bully the industry.

An Attack On All 

The CEO, alongside Ripple’s co-founder Chris Larsen, recently filed two separate motions, calling for the dismissal of the lawsuit against them and the company. 

Garlinghouse described the SEC action as a “regulatory overreach.” Ripple and its executive want US regulators to treat XRP as a virtual currency just like Bitcoin and Ether, but the SEC continues to insist that it is a security. 

With a settlement very unlikely at this point, both parties have agreed to August 16, 2021, as the discovery phase deadline, during which they will present all evidence and argument.