Who is the Cardano DeFi Alliance and why does it matter?

In line with standardizing practices for the up-and-coming Cardano DeFi ecosystem, the Cardano DeFi Alliance (CDA) offers a framework for protocol developers to work together on critical issues and strategic development.

First announced in mid-December, the CDA sets out to promote the benefits of the Cardano blockchain with a view to setting DeFi industry standards.

“The primary mission of the CDA is to provide collaboration among leading DeFi protocols, provide open-source libraries, craft best practices, and innovate within the Cardano DeFi ecosystem.”

Formally structuring Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem seems like a step in the right direction as far as collaborative development goes. But, critics maintain that fifteen weeks since Alonzo smart contracts rolled out, there is still no dApp ecosystem.

Who is the Cardano DeFi Alliance?

The CDA comprises DeFi developers, infrastructure providers, and Plutus engineers. They intend to “communicate, educate, and innovate through this organization.”

Part of their vision is to share information and solutions. More so, to establish a platform for opinions to be heard and debated in the spirit of “cooperative competitiveness.”

“Members are committed to participating in the CDA with a spirit of openness, collaboration, and cooperative competitiveness.”

To that end, the CDA encourages all Cardano DeFi projects to sign up. As they say, every voice should be heard, plus there is the added benefit of strength in numbers.

The elephant in the room

At present, the Cardano ecosystem lacks useable dApps, which in turn nullifies the point of a collaborative organization.

While this criticism has raged since Alonzo went live in September, Input Output (IO) CEO Charles Hoskinson continues to assure users that things are taking shape.

Earlier this week, Hoskinson directly addressed the talk around the Cardano ecosystem being “all lies” during a live stream.

“It’s actually the opposite, there’s actually a huge DeFi ecosystem that’s starting to present itself.”

With that, he points live stream viewers to the cardanocube.io website, which shows an interactive ecosystem map.

Here, numerous projects are categorized by DEX, wallets, lending and borrowing, marketplaces, DeFi, infrastructure, launchpad, community, meme coins, stablecoin, oracle, identity, payment, social, data, gambling, gaming, and NFT.

Hoskinson adds that he’s aware of 127 different projects that intend to, or are actively building on the Cardano blockchain at present.

As far as publically usable dApps are concerned, the IO boss said DEXes are due for roll out in the coming weeks, and the ecosystem will fill out.

That being so, the role of the CDA is as critical as ever. Hoskinson mentioned meeting with the organization at some point early in the new year.

He said he’s interested to hear what the CDA has to say regarding ways to better the platform via Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIPs), of which there are currently 30 in the process of discussion.