On Nov. 24, Ardana, a leading decentralized finance (DeFi) and stablecoin ecosystem building on Cardano (ADA), abruptly halted development, citing "funding and project timeline uncertainty." The project will remain open-source for builders while treasury balances and remaining funds will be held by Ardana Labs "until another competent dev team in the community comes forward to continue our work."

"Development on Cardano has been difficult with alot of funding going into tooling, infrastructure and security. This alongside the uncertainty around development completion has led to the best course of action being halting development of dUSD."

The move came as a shock to many due to the sudden nature of the announcement. However, it appears that issues were already present for some time. Beginning July 4, Ardana has held an ongoing initial stake pool offering, or ISPO, to fund its operations. Unlike traditional fundraising mechanisms, developers do not receive the ADA delegated by users, but instead, the staking rewards. Users are incentivized to keep delegating by receiving the native DANA tokens as a reward.

(by Zhiyuan Sun)