• With Plutus in sight, IOG is currently focusing on projects involving stablecoins, DEXes and oracles and other DeFi infrastructure.
• IOG will work with several consultants to build out the infrastructure around Project Catalyst.
• By the end of the year, “Mastering Cardano” is expected to be released in collaboration with the University of Wyoming.

To be as transparent as possible, Input Output Global (IOG) CEO Charles Hoskinson continues to keep the Cardano community updated with almost daily videos. In a new update, Hoskinson shared numerous smaller advances, partnerships and projects. Thus, Hoskinson informed that the “People of IOG” format has been met with a lot of interest, so the series will continue so that Hoskinson isn’t the “only one in front of the camera”.

In terms of collaborations, Hoskinson noted that he is currently inundated with requests. Therefore, in order to categorize and channel the requests, IOG will set up a dedicated funnel within the next two to three weeks. However, Hoskinson will continue to handle the most exciting inquiries personally:

Right now, NFTs are a thing that we are looking very heavily into. But we are also looking at stablecoins, DEXes and oracles and these types of DeFi infrastructure. So if you are happened to be in this space or want to do something with us, go ahead and email me.

Project Catalyst has attracted more than 16,000 subscribers at this point, and that’s despite the fact that the user experience isn’t the best yet, Hoskinson noted. As a result, IOG plans to continue building out the infrastructure around Catalyst and has brought in several consultants to do so:

[…] and it looks like we’re going to bring in the Sociocracy guys […] we’ve just been haggling over the contract, and we’ve gotten through four or five iterations of the exact engagements […]. But we are also in discussions to attach an accelerator program into Catalyst from a well run one, like maybe the MIT accelerator or someone like 500 Startups […].

Mastering Cardano, Plutus and peer-to-peer

The “Plutus Pioneers” program will be announced at the end of the month, with enrollment and admissions issues resolved. In addition, Hoskinson also revealed that a “Mastering Cardano” book will be announced “sometime this month.” IOG has been in talks with several authors for this, though it will likely end up as a project at the University of Wyoming and the Blockchain Lab there.

I think it will be very cool to make it a collaborative effort. We would write in a similar way to what Andreas Antonopoulos did for ‘Mastering Bitcoin’ and release chapter by chapter on GitHub. […] My goal is to have ‘Mastering Cardano’ done by the end of the year. […]

It will basically be the bible of Cardano. It will cover everything in a technical sense from the ledger rules, how that works; to the update system – the hard fork combinator; how our consensus protocol works; how Extended UTXO works; how Plutus works; how Marlow works […]

Furthermore, “some professional companies” will be consulted to confirm the security and functionality of Plutus. Details on this are to be announced at the latest with the “Cardano 360” event in April.

Most recently, IOG is testing an internal peer-to-peer network. This, he Hoskinson, is not a necessary feature at the moment and carries big risks, so progress is being taken rather slowly. Towards the end of the month, however, with the “Cardano 360” event, a public beta is expected to be announced for stake pool operators to do “an exhaustive amount of testing.”

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