Cardano reaches important milestone and reduces parameter D to 0,5

• IOHK CEO announces increased decentralization in Cardano after updating parameter d to 0.5. 
• IOHK will launch a blockchain industry effort to fight censorship on Wikipedia and update information on Cardano and Bitcoin.

IOHK CEO and inventor of Cardano, Charles Hoskinson, came up with a surprise Ask Me Anything (AMA) session. One of the main themes for the platform has been the beginning of its journey towards decentralization. Cardano has launched Project Catalyst and is actively developing the mechanisms of decentralization that will usher in his latest era, Voltaire.

In that sense, one of the most important announcements made by Hoskinson was the modification of the Cardano D parameter. After the change, this metric is set at 0.5, down from 0.52. This puts Cardano close to reaching an important milestone on his path to decentralization. IOHK’s CEO was pleased:

This means that half of all blocks will be made by the community, not the OBFT nodes. That’s a major achievement. At that rate of speed, it looks like D will drop to 0 around March (2021).

Parameter d has decreased in accordance with Cardano’s roadmap. This value was introduced after the deployment of the Shelley era. At that time, Cardano stopped being a federated state blockchain, on the Byron era. Therefore, the OBFT nodes stopped producing all the blocks to give participation to stake pools.

Block production is one of the three components that IOHK has highlighted to achieve Cardano’s decentralization. When parameter d is equal to 0, full decentralization will have been achieved. After D falls below 0.5, according to IOHK, decentralization will be “inevitable”.

IOHK effort to update information on Bitcoin, Ethereum and Cardano

On the other hand, Hoskinson also spoke about the long struggle they have had against censorship in Wikipedia. IOHK and the Cardano community have denounced in several opportunities that the content platform has modified or removed information related to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. In that sense, Hoskinson informed that they have contacted the founders of Wikipedia:

Through an intermediary we contacted Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger (…). We have an article, it has solidified. It’s currently been labeled as unreliable (…). This is the work of David Gerard, if you look at the edits. We will work with the community and try to get the article to have a fair and balanced representation of Cardano (…).

David Gerard is a well-known editor with an opinion against cryptocurrencies, Gerard wrote the book “Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum & Smart Contracts”. In the text, cryptocurrencies are described as a “bad” technology and the author has said that the best contribution they can make is to “disappear”.

IOHK will begin a systematic approval campaign, Hoskinson said. The campaign will be expanded to all scientific articles related to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Content related to these topics is outdated and “terrible,” according to the IOHK CEO:

What we will do is talk to most of the scientific partners and see if they want to work with us and in an industry-wide effort to improve the scientific articles in our industry (…)