When Ethereum came along, it upended the crypto space. Until that point, Bitcoin and a couple of other related coins were having the show. But Ethereum offered a host of new features like smart contracts capability, which could fast-track payments and - well - contracts, when certain conditions are met. It became the main place for DeFi and NFTs.
ADA is a project with a new blockchain, that actually had quite a lot of ups and downs. I actually was able to meet with a couple of his developers when they were training people in Ethiopia of all places on blockchain and smart contracts. Recently, Cardano went through the roof and made it shortly to No 3 in market cap after BTC and ETH. It has since fallen back to place 5, which is still not too shabby.
A quick look at the chart shows us the parabolic growth and a huge increase in volume since February 2021.
Looking a bit closer at the daily chart, to me this looks still quite bullish, I see the price bouncing off the bullish channel. Together with the strong fundamentals and the team, I can see robust sustainable growth.
All the more reason to have a look at it:
What sets it apart?
Cardano is a public and open source blockchain. Cardano did not have a whitepaper to start with, but they had a lot of academic experts who actually gave mathematical proof that proof-of-stake works.
Cardano seeks to address some of the shortcomings of bitcoin and other first-gen blockchains, like interoperability and scalability . But most important of all, the sustainability issue. PoS uses a LOT less energy than the usual Proof-of-Work method applied by Bitcoin.
The Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) company spearheads the development of Cardano, also by signing up leading academics in the space. In 2017, Cardano launched ADA, named after Ada Lovelace.
Design
The blockchain has two layers, the Cardano Settlement Layer (CSL) and the Cardano Computation Layer (CCL). This is supposed to counter high gas fees and slow transaction speeds.
The CSL layer is supposed to facilitate p2p transactions such as token transfer via PoS. The CCL layer on the other hand powers the execution of smart contracts and is operated apart from the CSL layer.
The Ouroboros protocol of the Cardano PoS protocol works by dividing time into epochs made of so-called slots, which are divded further. Within these slots, leaders get chosen by other nodes who see the creation and confirmation of transaction blocks added to the chain. A second group of stakeholders called input endorsers further review transaction blocks. This basically aims at making the selection process random and thus make PoS more secure.
Hard-fork "mary"
The recent Mary hard fork is named after the author of "Frankenstein" Mary Shelley and introduces Cardano to a multi-asset areas. This should lead to higher acceptance among DeFi enthusiasts.
The team(s)
Basically, 3 separate entities work on Cardano: IOHK as mentioned above is the company behind the development. The Cardano Foundation is a Swiss-based non-profit aiming to standardise, protect and promote the tech through building partnerships with other companies. Last but not least, Emurgo is a founding partner and remains the project's commercial arm.
The future
Gas fees have been a grumbling point for some time now on ETH based networks. Now developers can import projects from other blockchains into the Cardano network. This could hold a lot of promise for Cardano and ADA, especially considering the strong team around Cardano. Time will tell if Cardano will win the race with ETH.
