Cardano Scaling To Meet Demands Of Thriving Ecosystem As Hoskinson Says ‘So Many DEXs Are Coming Online Soon’

Key Takeaways 

• Two Cardano DEXs, WingRiders and Minswap went live on testnet.

• The CEO of IOG, Charles Hoskinson, says there are many more DEXs to come soon.

• Facing issues of network congestion, Cardano has started implementing its scaling solutions.

Things are beginning to pick up speed in the Cardano ecosystem. WingRiders, a Cardano native Automatic Market Maker (AMM) decentralized exchange, has announced its testnet launch. The WingRiders testnet launch is one of many more to come soon according to Cardano founder and CEO of the blockchain’s development arm Input-Output Global (IOG), Charles Hoskinson.

Cardano-based DEXs, WingRiders and Minswap go live on testnet

In a tweet today, WingRiders, a decentralized exchange building on Cardano announced that it is now live on testnet. The testnet platform can be accessed through the NuFi wallet, a native crypto wallet for proof-of-stake blockchains including Cardano and Solana. 

The WingRiders DEX is being developed in partnership with Vacuumlabs, a leader in developing fintech and blockchain solutions. The DEX is billed to be revolutionary in its implementation of Cardano’s eUTXO blockchain model and will also leverage Cardano’s Plutus smart contracts programming language to optimize for making swaps and staking “super fast.”

WingRiders’ announcement has been given a thumbs up by the CEO of IOG, Charles Hoskinson. Hoskinson said he had been anticipating the announcement, adding that it was only one of many more to come soon.

Minswap, another AMM DEX, also launched their testnet on the Cardano blockchain today. Minswap was notably one of the first DEXs to try out its testnet shortly after the Alonzo hardfork brought smart contract capabilities to the Cardano blockchain.

The Cardano ecosystem has had a lot of dApps-related announcements this year already. Last week, it saw the launch of its first fully functional AMM DEX, Sundaeswap. Before then, there was MuesliSwap (MILK), an order book type DEX. MuesliSwap first launched on Smart Bitcoin Cash (smartBCH), a sidechain of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) blockchain.

These launches have finally brought DeFi to the Cardano ecosystem. Per data from DefilLama, the total value locked on DeFi platforms on the Cardano blockchain is currently around $87 million.

Scaling Cardano

The increased network activity on the blockchain has also come with new problems. While it is early days for DeFi, Cardano is already facing challenges of network congestion. Transaction speed on the network has been slowed down, with transactions taking hours to days to complete on Sundaeswap according to users.

IOHK has however addressed the issues the network is facing and even anticipated them. The Cardano developers plan to spend 2022 scaling the network to meet up with the increased activity. IOHK has outlined an 11 point scaling agenda that it will carry out this year that will ultimately allow the Cardano blockchain to theoretically handle enough transactions per second. IOHK took the first step in this journey yesterday with the implementation of a parameter update to increase Plutus script memory units per transaction.