The Top Five Most Promising dApps Being Built On Cardano

The top five most promising dApps being built on Cardano smart contract

Key Takeaways

• Cardano smart contracts arrival means that decentralized applications (DApps) can now be launched on the platform.
• No DApps have launched yet, in part due to Cardano’s novel design challenges of eUTXO model.
• However, several dApps are on the way that claim to have solved the design challenges.

The Cardano mainnet went live in late September 2017. However, it only recently delivered on its promise of being a smart contracts platform with its Alonzo hardfork combinator (HFC) event last Sunday.

With the highly awaited upgrade of the Alonzo testnet to the Cardano mainnet, the blockchain has become a fully-fledged smart contracts platform. This means that decentralized applications can now be launched on it.

It is still early days, however, for the platform as they are yet to see any decentralized applications launch despite several being in development. This has in part been due to the design challenges that Cardano’s novel e-UTXO model poses. Most prominent among the challenges is the fact that if the platforms are not designed properly, they may run into problems with multiple users utilizing it at the same time – technically called concurrency problems. This has already been exposed to be a serious challenge as shown in the initial testnet launch of MinSwap, a decentralized exchange. 

Irrespective of that, several (DeFi) and (DEX) platforms have already revealed their road maps for launch on Cardano. Some of these are billed to be game-changers in the cryptocurrency space in terms of cost efficiency, speed, and use cases.

One of the platforms in development is Sundaeswap, a decentralized exchange that will function much like Uniswap. The DEX is hoping to become the leading exchange on Cardano as well as a hub for initial DEX offerings or IDOs for new Cardano projects. On its roadmap, the platform intends to become fully functional, with limit orders and direct swap by the 4th quarter of the year. The team of developers has also claimed that they have solved the concurrency issues but are yet to publicize their solution.

Ariana is another exciting Cardano ecosystem decentralized application to look out for. It is billed to be the leading decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) on Cardano. This will make it possible to mint a US dollar stablecoin called sUSD using ADA as collateral. It also intends to offer a Danaswap, an automated market maker (AMM) decentralized exchange for stable multi-asset pools. The platform plans to carry out a public sale, a token generation event, as well as release its stablecoin and DEX in the 4th quarter of the year too.

Meld is also in development. It is to be a DeFi protocol comparable to Aave on Ethereum, meaning it makes it possible to lend and borrow tokens on Cardano. According to the Meld roadmap, MELDapp launch — Beta testing of the MELDapp begins on mobile and chrome — is expected in this quarter.

NFT gaming is also making its way to Cardano which has unique support for NFTs that do not require smart contracts to mint or trade the digital assets. Drunken Dragons Games is an NFT game on Cardano akin to Axie Infinity on Ethereum. 

Finally, the Cardano ecosystem is also expecting that it will have a real-world impact with the launch of Empowa. Empowa describes itself as the first ‘RealFi’ platform in the world, with a mission to increase affordable housing on the African continent, starting with Mozambique. The plans indicate that the project should start in earnest in 2023.