Emurgo to invest and fill 21 areas 'missing' from Cardano: Emurgo CEO

cointelegraph.com:

Decentralized identities and layer-2 solutions are some of the “gaps” in Cardano that the Emurgo team is working to fill, according to its founder and CEO. 

Cointelegraph Magazine editor Andrew Fenton spoke with Ken Kodama, the founder and CEO of Emurgo — which is one of the three entities governing Cardano. Kodama talked about shifting their current approach into a venture studio model to fill 21 categories that they believe are “missing from Cardano” when compared to other leading blockchains.

According to Kodama, there are two key approaches to fill the gaps. These are either building the solutions themselves or investing. He explained:

While Kodama did not enumerate all the 21 categories that they are looking to fill, the executive highlighted some of them. This includes decentralized identity (DID) for enterprise adoption and layer-2 sidechains.

According to the Emurgo CEO, decentralized identity is an important piece to be embedded in blockchain protocols. “We don't see that much DID application being built on Cardano. So, that's the first gap, or primary gap that we need to fill in,” he said.

Apart from DIDs, Kodama also mentioned that while Cardano has a scaling solution called Hydra, they are also looking into bringing layer-2 solutions into the mix. The executive said that there’s a “really vibrant layer-2 ecosystem being built” in other blockchains that they “don’t really see in Cardano.” Kodama noted that this is one of the things that they will be working on to improve the ecosystem.

In addition to decentralized IDs and layer-2 solutions, the executive also mentioned that they are looking into zero-knowledge rollups and optimistic rollups as well. According to Kodama, they are looking to invest in these