Cardano Unveils Multiple Strategic Partnerships at the Cardano Summit 2021, Pioneering Use Cases across Climate Restoration, Decentralized Finance, and NFTs

Diverse collaborations see Cardano launch a new Global Impact Challenge including the planting of 1 million trees, work with leading esports-platform Rival to facilitate NFT campaigns, make further ventures into decentralized finance via a partnership with UBX; and support the development of identity solutions with AID:Tech

ZURICH, Sept. 28, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Cardano Foundation, the non-profit organization and custodian of the Cardano blockchain, has announced a number of strategic partnerships that will drive further adoption and utilization of the Cardano blockchain following its highly anticipated launch of smart contract capabilities earlier this month. The announcements were made during the Cardano Summit 2021, a mix of virtual and community events in six major locations (NYC, Miami, Wyoming, London, Berlin and Cape Town) and 40+ community hubs to celebrate the upgrade of the Cardano network with smart contracts capabilities.

Frederik Gregaard, CEO of the Cardano Foundation, said, "At Cardano, our goal is to provide those at the cusp of societal and technological change with the tools they need to create new possibilities and drive positive impact. Strategically, the partnerships announced today serve to create the foundational structures Cardano needs to prosper from both an enterprise and technical perspective. Our new ecosystem partners cover a range of challenges and opportunities at the forefront of global society today, including climate change, NFTs, decentralized finance (DeFi), and digital identity, and they will play a pivotal role in helping us realize our vision."

Reforestation verification records to be stored on Cardano

Announcements made at the Cardano Summit 2021 include news that Cardano has teamed up with global land restoration and tree planting verification company veritree to secure its records on Cardano's blockchain. Going forward, organizations using veritree's platform will be provided with an immutable, transparent and auditable blockchain based report on all of veritree's afforestation and reforestation efforts – using a fraction of the carbon footprint of other blockchains.

To celebrate this, Cardano and veritree launched The First Global Cardano Impact Challenge, inviting its global community to make donations to veritree using Cardano's native token ada. These donations will be used to plant the world's first #CardanoForest. Once at least 15 ada have been pledged to the campaign, donors will receive 15 veritree tokens or more in return for their donations. These tokens are redeemable for a tree planting certificate with details of all actual trees once these  have been planted next year.

Derrick Emsley, Co-Founder and CEO of veritree, said, "It's very hard to get more than a GPS location or photo to verify our tree planting. By integrating with Cardano's blockchain, tree planters across the globe will deliver irrefutable proof to sponsors on what sapling has been planted where, by whom, and how that site is being maintained. This provides complete peace of mind to our partners on the legitimacy of their project."  

Partnering up with esports giant Rival

Cardano has also partnered with leading esports and gaming platform Rival to develop agnostic NFT marketplaces, fan rewards, and more for Rival and their partners. The partnership will see Cardano facilitate the ability to create and distribute NFTs, the redemption of NFTs for physical goods, and marketplace-based royalties within the Rival platform, whose clients include the National Football League's (NFL) Seattle Seahawks, National Basketball Association's (NBA) Detroit Pistons, and Aston Villa and Watford of the English Premier League (EPL).

Matt Virtue, CEO of Rival, said, "Our partnership with Cardano marks Rival's entry into blockchain and is a significant step in our evolution as an enterprise platform solution to unlock the unlimited potential in gaming and esports. Rival's integration with Cardano will help us maximize and personalize the entire Rival experience - for both gamers and partners."

Regulated institution UBX now running a public stake pool on Cardano

In addition to these partnerships, Cardano took strides to increase on-chain DeFi activity through a strategic collaboration with UBX. UBX, the fintech venture studio and fund spun out of UnionBank, has launched its own public stake pool featuring Cardano. UBX stakers are now able to earn rewards on their ada for helping to secure and operate the Cardano blockchain.

John Januszczak, President and CEO of UBX said, "To further excel and maximize the potential of blockchain, we're looking at emerging protocols like Cardano to connect traditional financial markets to the world's most innovative financial operating system."

Supporting decentralized finance identity solutions

Cardano also confirmed support for AID:tech, which provides identity based solutions for finance, payments and insurance through blockchain. The collaboration will see Cardano provide technical guidance to the AID:Tech team as they develop verifiable credentials for trusted identity management and ownership; enable customers and consumers to quickly process payments and disbursements; and reliably process vast volumes of transactions.

The Cardano Summit, and this spate of partnerships, is the latest in a series of wins for Cardano, which successfully launched its Alonzo upgrade earlier this month on the 12th September.

Frederik Gregaard, CEO of the Cardano Foundation, concluded, "In recent months, we've reached huge milestones, most notably, the launch of smart contract capabilities on Cardano and successfully minting Cardano's first Non-Fungible Tokens of Appreciation (NFTA to celebrate the launch of our Developer Portal). These partnerships mark the next phase in our development as we now seek to rapidly drive usage of our blockchain and contribute to the creation of a better economy."

For more information, visit https://cardanofoundation.org/ and for more details on The First Global Cardano Impact Challenge see here.

Frederik Gregaard, CEO of the Cardano Foundation; Derrick Emsley, Co-Founder and CEO of veritree; John Januszczak, President and CEO of UBX; Matt Virtue, CEO of Rival; and Niall Dennehy, COO and Co-founder of AID:Tech, are available for interview

About the Cardano Foundation:

The Cardano Foundation is an independent Swiss not-for-profit organization that oversees and supervises the advancement of Cardano and its ecosystem. The Foundation's core focus is in developing a Cardano adoption strategy through to integration and execution, to enable fast-track value creation for inclusive and equitable growth. As the custodian of the protocol and the owner of the Cardano brand, the Foundation works to drive adoption and partnerships, grow the wider blockchain community, shape legislation, and commercial standards, and ensure stakeholder accountability. Find out more: www.CardanoFoundation.org

About veritree:

veritree is a restoration-focused technology company that leverages blockchain to provide tree planting organizations with a robust and transparent integrated planting management platform for global restoration efforts. The veritree platform allows planting organizations to gather ground level data, manage their projects more effectively, and deliver sponsors a world-class, transparent experience. veritree's mission is to break down barriers facing more widespread adoption of nature-based solutions, with transparency being one of the largest barriers. The veritree platform provides 'sustainability as a service' to organizations, helping them join the sustainability revolution, weave positive impacts into their business model, and accelerate access to capital for the world's best nature-based solution projects.

veritree was incubated from the experience of the founder's first venture, tentree - a sustainable apparel company that plants ten trees for every item sold. After planting 68 million trees over the past decade, the tentree team was having an increasingly difficult time verifying the actual planting of trees that they sponsored with verifiable data. veritree was designed to solve this problem and is now being utilized to support other organizations in their planting efforts.

About Rival:

Rival provides a first-of-its-kind, enterprise platform solution that empowers companies and organizations to leverage the popularity of gaming and esports to acquire new customers, drive engagement, build a loyal community around their brands and create new revenue streams. Through its proprietary technology, Rival connects the massive global appeal and audience of gaming and esports with sports teams, leagues, brands and media properties. With operations in two continents, Rival's current partnership roster includes the NFL's Seattle Seahawks, Monumental Sports and Entertainment, NHL's Arizona Coyotes, NBA's Detroit Pistons, Aston Villa and Watford of the English Premier League, as well as organizations including the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) and Pop Warner Little Scholars. For media inquiries, please contact media@gorival.com | www.gorival.com.

About UBX:

UBX is the financial technology venture studio and fund of UnionBank of the Philippines, . UBX is predicated on a future where financial services are invisible: seamlessly embedded into the experiences and activities that truly matter to businesses and people. For more information, please visit www.ubx.ph 

About AID:Tech

AID:Tech is a technology company leveraging blockchain and cryptocurrencies for Web 3.0. AID:Tech has won multiple awards from the likes of Citi, the IMF, Dubai government. With offices in Singapore and Dublin, AID:Tech cooperates with governmental, institutional and private partners globally. Its vision is to provide Digital ID solutions using the most secure and privacy focused technologies available.

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