The Founding Entities of Cardano Are Competing With Its Community
In a bombshell report, the founding entities of Cardano; including IOHK, Emurgo, and the Cardano Foundation, have been accused of unnecessarily competing with community-led projects and stealing their ideas.
Per a report released by Cardanoscan founder Ashish Prajapati, the founding entities of Cardano are being accused of competing with community-led projects and teams unnecessarily with damning evidence, allocating valuable funds that could instead have been dedicated to valuable educational onboarding initiatives or furthering the ecosystem’s growth with concrete action.
Emurgo Ventures:
At the beginning of his report, Ashish directs his attention towards Emurgo Ventures, the commercial arm and one of the founding entities of Cardano that were allocated in total over 2 billion ADA; and their Projects feature on Cardano Spot, a Cardano-based social media site developed by Emurgo.
Ashish points towards the striking similarities of the Project feature on Cardano Spot and the Project feature on Cardano Cube, a platform that has been operating for a considerable amount of time as the ultimate hub to catalog all active Cardano projects.
In the imagery provided below are the Cardano Cube UI (left) and Cardano Spot UI (right) for their respective Project feature. Although the UI for each feature is visibility different without question, the key features of the Cardano Spot Project Tab are identical to that of Cardano Cube; to identify and locate active projects in the Cardano ecosystem.
Furthermore, not only does Ashish point out that Cardano Spot developed and released this feature long after Cardano Cube had begun operations; Ashish accuses Cardano Spot and Emurgo of reaching out to all of the projects on the Cardano Cube list to persuade them into listing on the Cardano Spot Project Feature (after Cardano Spot reached out to his team at Typhon Wallet team with the same request), sharing his belief that they attempted to siphon projects off from its predecessor, Cardano Cube.
View his conversation with a member of the Cardano Spot team when they attempted to promote the Cardano social media site’s newly launched Projects Feature to the Typhon Wallet team:
Cardano Cube, the project Cardano Spot is now competing with; agreed with Ashish’s assessment in a simple response in the form of a GIF:
Input Output Global
Additionally, Ashish includes Input Output Global; the technical for-profit arm and another founding entity of Cardano, in the report detailing their initiatives to develop the Lace lightwallet despite the plethora of community-built lightwallets already available and massively used.
Input Output Global allocated valuable development funding on yet another lightwallet in an already extremely saturated market that has failed to outperform its competitors such as Eternl or Nami in terms of usage. In his report, Ashish expresses his frustration that the company allegedly “claims to have introduced them [lightwallets] newly” when releasing a wallet at a time when “there was no need for a new wallet,” but rather a need “to support the existing team[s] into improving the wallets.”
Ashish’s observation is factually correct that the Lace lightwallet released by Input Output Global came far after mainstream Cardano wallets such as Nami, Eternl, and many others launched; with Lace officially launching on the Cardano mainnet on April 11th of 2023. His observation that there are already a plethora of competing community-led lightwallets is also true, with The Cardano Times tracking a total of eight active lightwallets.
Although Input Output Global is of course a corporation entitled to make investment and/or business decisions at their own discretion, Ashish questions if it is the best allocation of funding rather than merely supporting the existing community-led lightwallets.
The Cardano Foundation
Finally, as the founder of Cardano Scan; the premier Cardano explorer used by thousands of people across the world, Ashish expressed his frustration with the Cardano Foundation allocating funding and development efforts towards building a Cardano explorer eerily similar (and in some cases, identical) to Cardano Scan.
In his report along with his private contributions to The Cardano Times investigation, Ashish identifies the striking similarities between the community-built Cardano Scan and the Cardano Foundation’s recently-released Cardano Explorer through a variety of image-based comparisons of the respective UIs of Cardano Scan and CF’s Cardano Explorer. Ashish accuses the Cardano Foundation of essentially releasing a “cut-and-paste” copy of Cardano Scan.
The Summary Feature:
As shown in the image below, the Cardano Foundation’s Cardano Explorer (pictured at the bottom) showcases a summary feature that was initially introduced by Cardano Scan; with a UI similar to that of its predecessor.
The UTXO Feature:
Additionally, as shown below; the UTXO feature on the Cardano Foundation’s Cardano Explorer shares striking similarities to that of the original feature that has been live on Cardano Scan.
The Metadata Feature:
Another feature of the recently-released Cardano Explorer, the Metadata display; shares a nearly identical experience to that of its predecessor to display metadata for transactions on the Cardano blockchain.
The Block Display Feature:
Additionally, the Block Display Feature on the newly-released Cardano Explorer yet again shares striking similarities to Cardano Scan.
The Epoch Display Feature:
Furthermore, the Epoch Display Feature of Cardano Scan and Cardano Explorer also share some extreme UI similarities as shown below:
The Instantaneous Rewards Feature:
The instantaneous rewards feature initially exclusive to Cardano Scan has also been made available on the Cardano Foundation-backed Cardano Explorer, sharing striking UI similarities.
The Filters Feature:
The filter feature initially released on Cardano Scan has also been released on Cardano Explorer, offering the exact same filtering mechanism for users on the Cardano Foundation-backed Cardano Explorer.
The Contracts Feature:
The contracts feature on Cardano Scan and Cardano Explorer also share striking similarities in the UI experience as shown below:
The Cardano Times could provide at least half a dozen additional examples of the Cardano Explorer offering a near-identical UI experience strikingly similar to that of its community-build predecessor. It is without a doubt that the experiences of both platforms are extremely similar, with subtle differences that make no real overall impact on obtaining information.
Conclusion:
As the founder of a project that Cardano Foundation has taken inspiration from and now directly competing with, Ashish’s frustration with the founding entities of Cardano is warranted as they continue this path of competing with the very community-built projects they are inspired by.
The Cardano ecosystem will only be impacted negatively by IOG’s, Emurgo’s, and the CF’s collective actions to compete against the community, and it will only deter the necessary growth Cardano needs in terms of project developers of teams adopting this revolutionary technology and attracting the masses with their attractive services.
Cardano Cube, Cardano Scan, and the plethora of community-led Cardano lightwallets are extremely valuable contributions made by the Cardano community; for the Cardano community, and it is important to appreciate the projects who have worked with limited funding and support even in the depths of this bear market.
Without intellectual leaders and business-minded individuals such as the ones amongst these mentioned teams, Cardano is doomed to fail from the start. Support community-build projects, because when you do; you are truly supporting Cardano in the best way imaginable.
