Significant price surges are amusing. Everyone wants to hop on and have a ride to the moon: some people are driven by FOMO, some HODL for the blind faith, the others believe in DYOR. In “Rolling Stocks” series we overview the hottest outbreaks and find out the reasons for such successes.
This time we’ll dive into Cardano Coin and explore its basics, key features, recent updates and future plans!
The Basics You Should Know About Cardano (ADA)
Cardano is a multilayered PoS blockchain platform for building decentralized applications. The platform which is aimed at creating a flexible and interoperable variety of programmable money using scientific methods based on mathematical proof and game theory is named after a famous Italian Renaissance mathematician and gambling enthusiast Gerolamo Cardano.
Cardano logo consists of six dots followed by another layer of six dots and another six. The six dots are Cardano and five phases (eras) of the projects’ development: Byron, Shelley, Goguen, Basho and Voltaire, united in a ring in a "decentralized" fashion with the smaller dots representing nodes in the platform. It also brings to mind a diffraction pattern. According to other interpreters from the Cardano forum, life on our planet is carbon based. The ground state of typical carbon is six protons, six neutrons, and six electrons.
Cardano's native cryptocurrency token, ADA, is named after Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (1815 – 1852), the daughter of the poet George Byron, a mathematician who is considered to be the first programmer in history. The subunit of the Cardano cryptocurrency (0.000001 ADA) is a Lovelace.
The People Behind The Foundation
The co-founders of Cardano are mathematician and entrepreneur Charles Hoskinson and the former CEO of the Ethereum Foundation Jeremy Wood. The Cardano platform officially launched on September 29, 2017. Token trading started on October 1, 2017. Cardano Foundation is a non-profit organization responsible for the standardization, protection, and promotion of the Cardano Protocol technology.
The Features That Make Cardano Coin Special
Currently, Cardano uses the UTXO model, also used in Bitcoin. The Cardano Shelley era also allows the use of an account model (similar to EOS and Ethereum). Addresses of this format are used for calculating awards. Cardano takes advantage of both models.
Cardano Ouroboros protocol is a consensus algorithm that can become the foundation for a more reliable and scalable blockchain and a significant increase in transaction speed. Ouroboros Classic was the first iteration of the Ouroboros protocol, published in 2017. It laid the foundation for the protocol's future role as an energy efficient competitor to Proof-of-Work, provided the mathematical basis for Proof-of-Stake analysis, and introduced an innovative incentive mechanism for participants within the Proof-of-Stake analysis protocol.
The Steps That Brought ADA To Life
The Testnet era (September 2015 – January 2017) included the early stages of the Cardano network rollout, when early users could take part in beta testing.
The era of Bootstrap ("promotion era") begins with the fact that all nodes participating in the consensus are under the control of IOHK and partners, and there is no support for smart contracts. During this period, the network is completely centralized, no rewards are issued, transactions are directed not to the decentralized main network, but to the testnet.
Reward Era ("era of reward") is the period of the launch of the mainnet and the full-fledged mode of operation of the Cardano settlement layer.
The Long Road To The Top
According to Cardano roadmap, the iterative development process for Cardano has five phases (eras). Each era represents another milestone in the development of the network. Work on the various components of each era is going on in parallel.
The Byron phase is named after the poet Byron, father of Ada Lovelace. This is the initial stage (started in September 2017), at which the key components were developed, and the calculated level was prepared for decentralization.
The Shelley phase is named after the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, friend of Lord Byron and author of the famous Ozymandias sonnet. At the Shelley stage, thanks to the implementation of the Ouroboros Genesis consensus algorithm, the platform will be fully transferred to a decentralized mode. Also at the Shelley stage, staking pools will appear in the system, allowing any user to delegate ADA coins to them and receive dividends.
In mid-December 2020, the Cardano hardfork took place, which is intended to be a significant step towards the next major update of Goguen. The third phase of Goguen is named after the American mathematician Joseph Gauguin (1941 – 2006), professor at Oxford and the University of California, who was involved in research in algebraic semantics and formal verification.
During the Goguen period, native tokens will be implemented: more secure, standardized and less resource-intensive compared to similar models ERC-20 and ERC-721. Their use does not require the creation and execution of smart contracts.
The fourth phase of Basho is named after the Japanese poet Matsuo Basho, a master of the haiku poetic genre. This is an era of optimization, scalability and network interoperability. At this stage, it is expected that basic network performance will improve and Cardano will start accepting applications with high transaction volume.
The fifth phase of Voltaire is named after the 18th-century French philosopher and educator Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet). The Voltaire phase includes the implementation of decentralized on-chain governance (i.e. direct democracy associated with the Enlightenment and Voltaire) and the treasury system.
What Is the Best Cardano Wallet?
Cardano Daedalus is a reliable and secure wallet for the ADA cryptocurrency.
You Can Profit From Cardano Staking!
In November 2019, Cardano network users obtained an opportunity to earn money on ADA staking. Cardano staking calculator is available here.
The Latest Cardano News
The update Mary was deployed in the Cardano network on March 1, 2021 to test it in an environment as close to the core as possible, allowing developers and users to monitor its performance and calculate the impact its deployment will have on the core network.
Mary is one of two hardforks that allows Cardano to move into the Goguen era. Named after Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein and Walpergo magazines, it brings the network closer to the decentralized and multiactive smart contract platform it seeks to become.
This means that all tokens will behave in the same way as Cardano’s own cryptocurrency, the ADA. The only difference between proprietary tokens and the ADA will be that they can be created and destroyed and that only the ADA will be used to service fees, rewards and deposits.
This approach will lead to better scalability, performance and reduce transaction costs, which will be particularly beneficial for decentralized financing (DeFi) platforms.
In addition to the Mary update, Cardano team will also test the new Cardano Explorer, Daedalus wallet update and metadata registries.
You can follow Cardano latest news on CoinJoy Feed!
Cardano (ADA) Price Range
Cardano crypto price today is $1.39. Сardano all time high is $1.48 (27 Feb 2021).
WalletInvestor predicts that Cardano will trade in the range of $0.10 and $0.50 in 2021. ??
According to CoinSwitch, ADA crypto price will rise as high as $3 by 2025. ??
According to Crypto-rating.com, Cardano value will rise to $10 per coin by 2030. ??
While the entire cryptocurrency and blockchain ecosystem grew during 2020, Cardano became one of the biggest winners of 2020, when the ADA gained more than 600% of the value as the project progressed and reached the Shelley era.
