ADA Pay 2021: A Year In Review

The previous 12 months have proven themselves to be the most transformational year for Cardano and its native cryptocurrency $ADA to date. With the long-awaited launch of ADA Pay wallet on Cardano’s Shelley Mainnet, $ADA holders finally have a seamless way to pay for goods and services with supported merchants using their favorite crypto. 

ADA Pay was the result of many months of research, development and hard work by COTI finance-on-the-blockchain ecosystem developers, and its launch in April represented a huge leap forward for Cardano. It has since witnessed a massive surge in demand by consumers and institutions looking to pay and donate using $ADA. One of the unique features of ADA Pay is it enables more than just payments, giving merchants who accept $ADA a way to immediately stake the tokens they receive to earn token rewards and create a positive feedback loop in the $ADA ecosystem. 

COTI was far from done though, and rather than sit back and rest on its laurels the team has worked hard to bring additional capabilities to ADA Pay, including support for NFT auctions. Wolfram Alpha partnered with COTI and the Cardano Foundation to enable the first ever NFT auction on ADA Pay in June following the introduction of key new capabilities including $ADA payments for NFTs, bidding and auction mechanisms, custody for auctioneers, rapid balance analysis and the new APIs needed for participants to connect. 

The partnership with Wolfram Alpha was a key moment for the entire Cardano ecosystem, which previously had to host all Cardano NFT auctions in Discord. By adding this native support, ADA Pay has streamlined the entire process of buying and selling Cardano NFTs for the entire community. 

COTI has big ambitions in the DeFi space that stretch well beyond NFTs though, as became evident with its announcement of another key partnership with Occam.fi in September that aims to explore ways to bring $ADA payments to the OccamRazer launchpad.

Later that month, COTI followed up with a second partnership with the Ardana decentralized exchange stable asset liquidity pool, which made stablecoin crypto-to-fiat payments a reality within the Cardano community for the first time. Through the alliance with Ardana, ADA Pay users can now purchase goods using their favorite stablecoins anywhere ADA Pay is accepted. 

COTI’s developers kept up their relentless drive forward with a key update to ADA Pay in October. The latest release of ADA Pay added numerous important capabilities that will help it to fulfill its ambition of playing a key role in the Cardano ecosystem. The highlight of the release was the new “Infrastructure for scale” feature that allows COTI to monitor millions of wallet addresses more efficiently and with that, support thousands of new merchants that are interested in accepting $ADA. 

The October update further boosted ADA Pay’s capabilities with improvements to its customization settings, enabling merchants to include or exclude fees from withdrawals, for example. It also makes the withdrawal system faster and more efficient through new functionality such as bulk withdrawals to help merchants save fees. 

Still, COTI wasn’t done and it ended the year with two more key partnerships that aim to increase the capabilities and usefulness of ADA Pay. First up was the integration with Lovelace, a DeFi-Enabled NFT marketplace for Cardano, that made it easier for its community members to pay with $ADA. Lovelace also agreed to work with COTI to incorporate the Djed stablecoin into the Lovelace marketplace as the default stablecoin currency on Cardano in a move that should help to boost demand and increase its value. 

Last but not least, COTI teamed up with the NFT and smart contract platform Centaurify in November, making it possible for ADA Pay users to purchase NFT event tickets, digital collectibles and more through the wallet. 

All in all it’s been an extremely successful year for COTI and the ADA Pay team, and with yet more key developments on Cardano’s roadmap expected to materialize in the coming months, there’s every reason to think 2022 holds just as much promise.  

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.