Cardano Foundation appoints Gianna Abegg as Legal Counsel

25 June 2019 • News
Ye Ji
Senior Manager of PR and Communications

The Cardano Foundation has strengthened its legal department by appointing Gianna Abegg as the new Legal Counsel

Gianna Abegg joins as Legal Counsel to strengthen its
legal function

The Cardano Foundation – in line with its international expansion plans – has strengthened its legal department by appointing Gianna Abegg as the new Legal Counsel – effective immediately.

In her new role based in both Zug and Zürich, Switzerland, Gianna will oversee the Cardano Foundation’s legal and compliance functions and support the Foundation’s growth plans by streamlining its structural framework.

Nathan Kaiser, Chairperson of the Cardano Foundation, says:

“The Cardano Foundation continues to grow internationally and to bring value across different industries. Gianna’s international experience in the legal profession — focusing on the digital economy as well as other corporate practices — will further strengthen the structural framework of our community. Her insights from practicing in both Europe and Asia will add value to the Foundation and cement our position as a globally expanding organization.”

A native of Zürich, Switzerland, Gianna is an international lawyer admitted to the bar in her home city. Before joining the Cardano Foundation, she practised law at a law firm in Taipei, Taiwan, and Shanghai, China, for six years. In Asia, Gianna focused on digital economy, corporate transactions and cross-border investments.

During her professional practice in China, Gianna also held the position of Vice President of the Swiss Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, as well as Head of its Legal Committee and its Digitalization Committee. She has a Master of Law degree from the University of Zürich, Switzerland.

Gianna Abegg

About the Cardano Foundation: The Cardano Foundation is an independent Swiss standards body 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 legal 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

Kicking off the Cardano Summit Hackathon

The Foundation has organized several workshops to support participants, starting with the Cardano Summit Hackathon Kickoff Webinar. This introductory webinar provided an overview of the rules and guidelines while also introducing some judges from the Foundation and EMURGO. Participants first heard from Takashi Hayashida, who joined EMURGO in 2019 after more than a decade of experience in investment banking.

After Hayashida provided feedback on how to onboard more people to the Cardano ecosystem, Kenny Wu of EMURGO shared his thoughts on how teams can develop viable business models despite bear market conditions. Wu noted that while Cardano has a large developer community, every blockchain ecosystem struggles with bringing viable projects to market. The key lies in understanding market pain points and developing solutions that effectively address the issues. Additionally, projects must establish a long-term revenue model that makes their business sustainable—an important consideration incorporated into the Hackathon judging criteria.

Thomas Mayfield, Lead of the Foundation's Decentralized Trust and Identity Solutions Team, provided insights into the digital identity tools available to the broader ecosystem and Cardano users in particular. Mayfield highlighted recent developments from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which established version 1 (v1) standards for decentralized identities over a year ago. Institutional and academic digital identity implementations have since occurred across the US and UK, mainly among retailers and supply chain stakeholders. Meanwhile, the introduction of version 1.1 (v1.1) standards allowed to express credentials in a cryptographically secure, machine-readable, privacy-preserving way. The European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) is also working to support cross-border applications, driving electronic ID (eID) and national identification systems to self-sovereign, interoperable identities.

On the other hand, the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) handles the regulation and application of its legal entity identifier (LEI), which underpins financial stability, oversight, and regulation. Additionally, its verifiable legal entity identifier (vLEI) has increased adoption and enabled automatic authentication and verification in a scalable manner. It provides a blockchain-agnostic solution designed to work with decentralized environments.

Regardless of the specific use case, Mayfield reiterated that these standards and protocol implementations primarily focus on scalability, interoperability, security, and privacy. For Cardano-centric development, several projects offer digital and decentralized verifiable credential implementations, with the Developer Portal serving as the best knowledge bank.

Fabian Bormann, Lead of the Foundation’s Ecosystem Architecture and Engineering Team, then examined the strengths of the Cardano developer ecosystem. He explained that the ecosystem has several great tools, but significant barriers to entry still remain when migrating from other blockchains. For this reason, APIs from Blockfrost and Koios can prove particularly helpful when tapping into the Cardano blockchain ecosystem. In addition, Fabian Bormann pointed to the importance of templates and example repositories that developers more familiar with Web2 or other blockchain protocols can copy and paste.

The panel closed the discussion by exploring the educational initiatives the Foundation and its partners undertake. Mel McCann, Vice President of Engineering at the Foundation and one of the Hackathon judges highlighted the importance of education to help startups thrive regardless of market conditions. In fact, the Foundation envisioned the forthcoming Cardano Academy as a key component of driving adoption and fostering longevity in the ecosystem. Similarly, Mayfield reiterated the significance of hackathons and the value of open source repositories for knowledge transfer.

How to build on the Cardano blockchain

The second Hackathon webinar introduced building on Cardano, including an overview of tools to support participants, such as:

  • Blockfrost and Koios: Querying data directly from the blockchain can prove tedious and also has limitations when it comes to complex queries like account balances. Blockfrost and Koios allow simple, REST API-based access to diverse data from the Cardano blockchain. Both tools can be deployed in a decentralized environment—with user-provided infrastructure, or consumed conveniently using an “as-a-service” model.
  • Mesh.js: Mesh.js is a framework that, like others, conveniently packages recurring tasks for developers so that, for example, connecting a web application to a Cardano wallet becomes as simple as calling a few functions. Frameworks like this exist for other programming languages, but Mesh.js is easy to integrate with common technology stacks for building web applications.
  • cardano-connect-with-wallet: The Cardano Foundation developed this small library to unify the way applications can connect to Cardano wallets and get access to functions like signing transactions. The library has an independent frontend framework component but also offers integrations for the popular React framework.
  • Yaci: A collection of developer tools created to enhance Cardano development with the Java development language. The most remarkable tool from this collection is yaci-devkit which lets users spin up a local Cardano network by calling a single command, offering an experience similar to the one Ethereum developers are used to from tools like Ganache.

Following a comprehensive review of these tools, Mateusz Czeladka, Senior Developer and Cardano SME liaison at the Foundation, discussed how to harness the power of smart contracts with Aiken. This novel, easy-to-learn programming language resulted from the combined efforts of multiple ecosystem stakeholders and was created to simplify as well as boost the development of smart contracts on the Cardano blockchain. Notably, it comes in a straightforward syntax designed to support effortless integration with other tools and languages. In addition, Aiken introduces multiple state-of-the-art features that meet the discerning needs of developers.

#The Hackathon judging criteria

In the third webinar of the series, the Foundation prepared an ask-me-anything (AMA) session and answered incoming questions. With more than 300 registered participants to date, we first addressed questions related to team sizes, programming languages, Demeter alternatives, and best practices for presenting solutions.

Participants should note that the Foundation does not favor any specific programming language for the solution. Demeter is not obligatory; teams can choose their own node setup or use providers like Blockfrost, Koios, or others to build their solutions. Likewise, we acknowledge the significance of team size and community standing, having an appreciation for smaller developers due to their substantial contributions to the Cardano ecosystem.

However, we do not exclude larger teams with an established presence. In short, this Hackathon emphasizes execution and ideas, encouraging participants to elaborate on their concepts comprehensively, even without immediate source code development. Each component of the judging criteria reflects this ethos.

Innovation & Necessity: 30%

The process starts with an appraisal of the concept based on its novelty and ability to address a crucial requirement within the Cardano ecosystem. Specifically, the judging panel will assess whether the submission is desirable or valuable to the Cardano community.

Product & Tech Maturity: 30%

The implementation of the concept then gets judged from a technical standpoint, examining the solution's strength, preparedness, technological choices, level of completion, and suitability for actual deployment. The evaluation of technical contributions will revolve around their feasibility, usability, and clarity. Code quality, adherence to best practices, and the potential for independent execution and expansion qualify as key factors in assessing technical skills.

Additionally, when proposing solutions or user interface designs, the execution and presentation hold significance. A well-structured submission with clear documentation, including a table of contents, easy-to-follow logic, identified gaps, and outlined next steps, if applicable, demonstrates thoroughness and awareness.

Usability & User Experience: 20%

The product's user interface is analyzed, focusing on the accessibility of the developed solution, its design aspects, and how effectively it caters to the requirements of blockchain users. The criteria here encompasses security as well as user-friendliness and visual attractiveness. For example, when creating software, participants need to consider the nature of their user interface, like whether it should involve using an API.

An API might suffice for a B2B audience or when the project serves another platform. In either case, comprehensive documentation about how to use the API becomes essential. On the other hand, providing a frontend developed for mobile or web platforms would be expected if the proposal focuses on end users, such as when building a Cardano voting center for Voltaire governance. In this scenario, the application would require a submission for thorough testing by the Foundation. Alternatively, if UI implementation poses a significant challenge, making a timely proposal impossible, a basic design or conceptual idea with novel features could instead be submitted.

Go-to-Market Strategy: 10%

On top of the more technical aspects, the judges will equally assess the team's ability to promote the concept, delving into the strategy for product introduction, methods for acquiring users, and approaches to nurturing the product's community. The evaluation will center on the feasibility and potential impact of these strategies. This criterion reflects key points raised during the first webinar, particularly in discussions with EMURGO representatives, wherein submissions should foster a sustainable business model alongside technical support.

To deliver on these points, Hackathon participants will need to share their revenue generation strategies, substantiating the potential for revenue from their solution. For example, a solution might scale with hundreds of users paying lesser fees or cater to larger B2B clients where only a few clients suffice to make the platform viable—a situation akin to exclusive luxury brands. In summary, the Foundation encourages entrants to craft compelling approaches to captivate venture capitalists while presenting robust go-to-market strategies and comprehensive analyses of revenue channels.

Team: 10%

Finally, examining the individuals driving the concept forward, judges will consider the team's competencies, track record, and collective makeup. The emphasis lies in assessing the team's capability to realize the project's goals and effectively launch the product. Likewise, the team's aptitude in presentations and interactions with the Hackathon organizing committee will be factored in.

Entrants need to present their backgrounds, define whether they are students or enterprises, and detail their motivations for joining the Hackathon as well as the reason underlying their enthusiasm for Cardano. While the prominence of large companies will not outweigh individual contributors, the Cardano Foundation and EMURGO strongly endorse the value of community participation in the Hackathon. Nonetheless, the focus will always remain on gauging the team's capacity to realize project objectives and effectively introduce the solution to the market.

A final Hackathon webinar will take place on 31 August to clarify how to make a submission’s deliverables more competitive. In the meantime, the Foundation invites all interested parties to sign up for the Summit Hackathon. With the submission deadline set for 14 September, participants still have time to help shape the future of Cardano.