Linda Reviews 12 Projects Expanding Cardano’s Use Cases

Linda welcomed proposals that could make Cardano easier to spend from and move funds into in her video “12 BIG Updates Coming to Cardano.” Her review covers 12 teams selected from 117 applications and approved for almost 2 million ADA in combined base grants. Alongside their planned products, she backs a funding model that makes most payments dependent on adoption and sustained activity.

Cardano Payments Through QR Codes and Local Networks

Linda’s enthusiasm is particularly clear when discussing anyqr, SyncAI’s proposed payment service. It would let customers scan existing merchant QR codes and pay with USDCx from a Cardano wallet, while a local payment provider delivers the merchant’s local currency.

The proposal targets ten countries. On the crypto side, funds would remain locked in a Cardano escrow contract until the customer confirms that the local payment has gone through. Merchants would continue receiving familiar local payments without introducing crypto checkout themselves.

“I personally really hope this takes off,” Linda said, pointing to the need for more practical stablecoin applications on Cardano.

She offers a similarly positive response to AnyToAny, developed by VIA Labs. The service would combine bridging, swapping, and routing between Cardano, other networks, and centralized exchanges. Someone starting with an asset on an Ethereum-compatible network could use it to receive their chosen Cardano token without arranging each intermediate step.

Linda also describes an option in which VIA Labs provides liquidity on the destination network upfront, allowing users to receive assets while settlement completes in the background.

“It’s exactly what we need to make Cardano feel a lot less disconnected from the rest of crypto,” she said.

Business checkout provides another route to spending stablecoins. Pay by Cexplorer would extend the team’s existing non-custodial payment links with stablecoin support, including USDM. Merchants could create invoices, checkout links, QR codes, or embedded payment buttons.

The proposal includes expiry times, single-use links, exact payment amounts, and detection of underpayments or overpayments. Funds would go directly to the recipient’s wallet, with payment confirmation helping businesses reconcile orders.

For users in Brazil, PagFinance proposes conversion between supported Cardano assets and Brazilian reais through the PIX instant payment system. Linda describes a service that would avoid requiring users to trade through a centralized exchange or order book. A planned business API would let Cardano applications incorporate the service into functions such as customer payouts.

Lending, Price Feeds, and Tokenized Assets on Cardano

The financial applications in Linda’s review address specific steps in trading and borrowing, from changing loan collateral to checking the prices used in liquidation decisions.

Dano Finance targets the process borrowers face when replacing pledged assets. Linda explains that this can require repaying a loan, closing the position, and opening another. Dano’s proposed collateral swap would let users change the asset within an existing position without first repaying the debt.

The team also wants independent participants with eligible wallets to execute liquidations when positions become undercollateralized, expanding access beyond the protocol’s own keeper bots.

Price verification is the focus of Liqwid’s proposed Pyth integration. Liqwid already operates a Cardano lending market, where asset prices help determine borrowing limits and liquidation eligibility.

Linda describes a move toward signed Pyth prices that can be verified within transactions, reducing reliance on a Liqwid-controlled key for price delivery. The funded work concerns how an existing lending protocol receives and checks information used in its financial operations.

Pyth Pro feeds also feature in ATLAS, the perpetual futures platform developed by House of Titans. Its proposal combines stablecoin collateral with a unified vault for liquidity providers, alongside security work and preparations for mainnet deployment.

Elsewhere in the review, L4VA proposes AI-assisted management for vaults backed by tokenized real-world assets. Agents would help with rebalancing, liquidity, and asset allocation. Linda emphasizes that their decisions and execution would remain subject to limits established by vault governance.

Rules governing asset ownership are central to Wayup, Anvil’s existing marketplace. Planned CIP-0113 support would let issuers define conditions such as verified-holder eligibility, jurisdiction restrictions, lockups, and limits on the number of holders.

Issuers would configure those conditions through Anvil’s API, and the marketplace would check them before transactions are signed. For tokenized assets with transfer restrictions, the proposal connects secondary trading with the rules attached to their issuance.

Digital Identity Beyond Wallets and Financial Markets

Linda introduces the industrial projects as a turn toward more unexpected applications. Alongside financial tools, the selected proposals use verifiable identities to connect people, machines, and physical products with records anchored on Cardano.

Aline Health focuses on people traveling abroad for medical treatment. Its proposed system would support verification of identities and credentials associated with different stages of care, while keeping sensitive patient records off the public blockchain.

Cardano would anchor proofs connected to important documents and care milestones. Providers in different locations could verify the relevant credentials without publishing the underlying medical information on-chain.

The identity concept extends to industrial equipment through nuhuman, a Nucast project. The proposal Linda describes mentions a Coastal Corporation contract covering more than 120 robotic cells in shrimp processing and exports.

Robots would receive verifiable identities, with signed production records connecting equipment to batches and quality checks. Cardano would anchor evidence used in export traceability. Linda also mentions exploring fractional ownership of the robots as an additional proposed application.

Tracking physical goods is the focus of OriLife, developed by GreenSun Tech. Linda describes visual recognition of trees and fruit, allowing products to be connected with digital identities without relying solely on physical tags or QR codes.

The proposal would link those identities with ownership records and transfers between growers and buyers. Produce-linked tokens and programmable transfer rules would connect product information with transactions on Cardano.

Despite their variety, Linda notes that the projects share an obligation to demonstrate usage under the pilot’s funding model. Successful onboarding unlocks 40% of a grant for development. Up to another 40% depends on adoption, measured through qualifying network fees paid by external users, while the final 20% requires sustained activity. The three best-performing projects can earn a bonus of up to 50% of their initial grant.

Linda calls this “a pretty big shift compared to the original model” and welcomes the change. Her closing reminder applies equally to the payment routes she praises and the less familiar industrial applications: teams must deliver products that people use. For the selected projects, continued use after launch is also a condition for receiving the final portion of their funding.