Three Cardano ecosystem announcements hit the stage at Consensus Hong Kong yesterday, including cross-chain rails, a new stablecoin release timeline, and the privacy-focused network’s march to the mainnet.
#1 Cardano Taps LayerZero
Intersect said with X its Critical Cardano Integrations stream it has approved to bring LayerZero to the Cardano ecosystem, positioning the move as the biggest expansion of the network’s interoperability to date. In its post, Intersect outlined the integration as a step-by-step approach to disparate assets and infrastructure:
“LayerZero is one of the most widely adopted omnichain messaging protocols on the Web3, connecting 150+ blockchains and enabling access to 400+ tokens and $80B+ of omnichain assets. This integration opens up the largest expansion of cross-chain communication in Cardano’s history, paving the way to bitcoin asset stability, bitcoin-check-to-real asset DeFi infrastructure for all cryptos ecosystem.”
A corresponding write-up describes the effort in similar terms, saying the protocol “connects more than 160 blockchains” and “facilitates more than 200 billion cross-chain volumes,” with Cardano gaining technical access to “more than 400 tokens” and “80 billion dollars in omnichain assets” once LayerZero is implemented.
The post argues that LayerZero’s messaging-layer approach is chain-agnostic “regardless of the underlying execution model,” clearly flagging Cardano’s extended UTXO design as a historical site of conflict for tools built around account-based chains.
Intersect said the delivery work is now starting to ship, “with other milestones and timelines to be shared as progress continues.”
#2 USDCx Gets Launch Date
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson used the event to put a calendar marker on USDCx, saying the product now has a target launch window at the end of February. “We announced not long ago that we will have USDCx. Now we have a launch date for USDCx, the end of February. We have done amazing engineering to have a good UX. You can go directly from any wallet to Coinbase, or Binance, and back, and there is a quick conversion to USDC,” said Hoskinson.
He also sought the advantages of the feature compared to the standard distributed USDC, saying that USDCx “has privacy, and it is immutable and irreversible, so it is actually better. [than USDC].”
#3 Targets Midnight Mainnet Before End of March
At midnight, the privacy-focused network integrated into the wider Cardano ecosystem, said its mainnet is now close. “On the stage of ConsensusHK, we share that the Midnight mainnet will officially go live before the end of March,” the team posted on X, calling it “a major milestone and the start of a live, production network designed to support early applications built with selective disclosure and real-world privacy.”
Midnight added that the mainnet is “basic,” describing it as a stable foundation for teams to “deploy, test, and iterate,” while setting expectations for a “quick protocol and future proliferation of tools.”
At press time, Cardano traded at $0.261.
The featured image was created with DALL.E, a chart from TradingView.com
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