Welcome to your April edition of Essential Cardano360! In this month's episode, we are excited to share with you the latest updates and news from the Cardano ecosystem.

Join us as we discuss the Hydra protocol and the progress towards CIP-1694, fostering a culture of self-governance and community empowerment across the Cardano ecosystem. We will also discuss how you can contribute and be a part of this journey.

We’ll bring you news about Lace, the new Web3 light wallet platform launched by Input Output Global, that promises to simplify the way we interact with the blockchain.

Later in the show, our guest, Sebastian Guillemot, will also be joining us to talk about his latest project, the Paima Engine, which is set to transform gaming on the Cardano network.

In this edition, we’ll also have an excerpt from a longer interview with Frederik Gregaard, CEO of the Cardano Foundation, who will share updates from its recent annual report. Stay up to date with all the latest news and updates from IOG by following us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK 

Timestamps: 

00:00:00 Welcome to Essential Cardano360 April Edition

00:01:15 A recap on the Lace wallet mainnet launch with Alex and Rudi from IOG’s Lace Team joined by special guest, Thomas Olofsson from auditors FYEO

00:14:07 Zero-knowledge tech briefing with Dr. Vanishree Rao, Head of applied cryptography at IOG

00:20:47 IOG Lead Software Engineer Sebastien Nagel shares the progress on Hydra, Cardano’s layer 2 scalability protocol.  

00:26:40 The latest on Cardano on-chain governance, Voltaire & CIP-1694 with Addie Girouard and Sheldon Hunt.

00:30:40 Web3 Gaming: Introduction to Paima Engine with Sebastien Guillemot.

00:33:44 Frederik Gregaard joins Cardano360 to talk about the Cardano Foundation annual report, partnerships, policies, education & more. Full length interview available soon.

00:41:34 Closing notes

Useful links: 

Lace:

Discover Lace: https://www.lace.io/

Follow Lace on Twitter for all the latest news: https://twitter.com/lace_io 

FYEO: https://www.fyeo.io/

Learn Cardano Lace overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwgJN-f52bU 

Zero-knowledge: 

ZK-Lab – investigating the foundations of zero-knowledge proofs https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2022/11/18/zk-lab-investigating-the-foundations-of-zero-knowledge-proofs/  

Models for Generation of Proof Forest in ZK-SNARK Based Sidechains https://iohk.io/en/research/library/papers/models-for-generation-of-proof-forest-in-zk-snark-based-sidechains/ 

What Makes Fiat–Shamir zkSNARKs (Updatable SRS) Simulation Extractable? https://iohk.io/en/research/library/papers/what-makes-fiat-shamir-zksnarks-updatable-srs-simulation-extractable/ 

Zswap: zk-SNARK Based Non-Interactive Multi-Asset Swaps https://iohk.io/en/research/library/papers/zswap-zk-snark-based-non-interactive-multi-asset-swaps/ 

Hydra: 

Hydra website: https://hydra.family

IOG technical discord: https://discord.com/invite/inputoutput 

Voltaire & CIP-1694:

Contribute to CIP1694: https://github.com/cardano-foundation/CIPs/pull/380 

Learn more & apply for CIP1694 community workshop grants: https://www.essentialcardano.io/article/cip-1694-community-workshops 

Explore Paima Studios: https://paimastudios.com/

A closer look at Paima with Cardano Over Coffee:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTzdDUosEu8  

Cardano Foundation: 

Cardano Foundation website: https://cardanofoundation.org/

Annual report from the Cardano foundation: https://cardanofoundation.org/en/annual-report/ 

Useful links:

State of Cardano Q1 2023 Quarterly Community Report by Messari: 

https://messari.io/report-pdf/edc353bbbc03344b99add98e1da184beccf549fe.pdf 
Essential Cardano website: https://www.essentialcardano.io/ 

Blockchain Consensus Mechanisms: https://www.essentialcardano.io/article/6-types-of-blockchain-consensus-mechanisms

Wanchain bug bounty program: https://medium.com/wanchain-foundation/help-make-cardano-interoperable-cardano-bridge-public-bug-bounty-is-live-b24ac31b01c8