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Imagine what it would be like if you had a blockchain:
- Scalable
- Believe
- Interoperable
- Controllable
Doesn’t it sound like a dream?
Well, the dream is about to come true with the third generation of blockchains, with the first generation being the likes of Bitcoin and the second generation being the likes of Ethereum.
But when you combine the positive features of the first two with some additional unparalleled features, you get third-generation blockchains Cardano.
Cardano is a blockchain that was designed with exactly that in mind.
We will cover the following points in this beginner’s guide:
- What is Cardano?
- How does Cardano work?
- Cardano team
- Cardano (ADA) total supply and market capitalization
- How to buy Cardano cryptocurrency (ADA)
- Cardano (ADA) wallets.
- Cardano’s future and roadmap
- Official resources
What is Cardano?
Cardano is a third-generation open source blockchain platform that is expected to facilitate smart contracts and decentralized applications in an unparalleled way.
But we have Ethereum for that, right?
Well, Ethereum is not as good and time and again faces network congestion. Therefore, we need to develop something better from scratch keeping all these challenges in mind. Cardano is one of them.
In short, you can think about Cardano is like Ethereum for face value But within it is a strong, research-first approach that lays the groundwork for what needs to be achieved and how effective it will be.
As with Ethereum, Cardano has its own cryptocurrency called Cardano (ADA) Which serves as fuel for the Cardano network.
Cardano is more than just a cryptocurrency, but a technology platform that will be able to power financial applications currently used every day by individuals, organizations, and governments around the world. The platform is built in layers, giving the system the flexibility to maintain more easily and allowing for upgrades via soft forks. After the settlement layer that will run Ada is completed, a separate computing layer will be created to handle smart contracts, the digital legal agreements that will support future trade and business. Cardano will also run decentralized applications, or DApps, which are services that are not controlled by any single party but instead run on the blockchain. (source)
How does Cardano work?
Cardano has intentionally made itself modular so that future upgrades and iterations will be easy.
Cardano consists of two parts, namely Leveling layer And the Arithmetic layer. The settlement layer is for settling cryptocurrency transactions (ADA transactions) while the computational layer is for calculating smart contracts and DApps tokens.
For this reason, the team can change the consensus protocol on the settlement layer at any time without disturbing the computational layer and vice versa.
There is more.
The unique thing about Cardano is its long-term plans.
Charles HoskinsonCardano’s CEO stated that they want to build something like the TCP/IP protocol that can last for decades and eventually create an inclusive economy for 3 billion underserved people. This is why so much emphasis is placed on research and peer review. I also agree with this approach since this is an ancient way of making strong products.
In fact, Charles says they chose very carefully their consensus protocol, a proof of stake protocol called Ouroboros.
Through Ouroboros, time in Cardano is divided into Ages (pronounced “epics”), which are also divided into Slots They are short time slots of about 20 seconds, and each slot has a designated leader. Gambling leaders can create No more than one block in the slot allocated to it and then given in the form of transaction fees collected in a period.
But this slot leader is determined according to the stake you have in the system. So, if you have more ADA at stake in the system, the chances of being a leader in the slot are higher.
In this way, Cardano provides security as good as Bitcoin’s Proof of Work but in a cheaper and more efficient way. This method also makes Cardano much faster as one does not need to wait for 10 minutes or more for the transaction to take place.
There are more scalability developments that Cardano will implement and we will talk about them further in this article.
Cardano team
The Cardano team is also highly decentralized and distributed, with inspiring minds coming from three different organizations:
- Cardano Foundation: An independent standards body based in Switzerland with core responsibilities for supporting the Cardano user community and working with authorities on regulatory and commercial matters.
- IOHK [Input Output HongKong]: IOHK is a blockchain technology company created by Charles Hoskinson in 2015 specifically to foster peer-to-peer innovations to provide financial services to the 3 billion people around the world who do not have them. IOHK has a Cardano development contract until 2020 and some of its other clients are Binance and Ethereum classic.
- imorg: It invests in startups and helps business projects build on the Cardano blockchain.
Cardano (ADA) total supply and market capitalization
Cardano has been on the market since September 2017.
The total fixed supply of ADA is 45,000,000,000 ADA to get out of it 25,927,070,538 ADA is floating on the market.
According to CoinMarketCapthe total circulating supply of ADA is 25,927,070,538 ADA, the current price per unit is $0.28. This values it at about $7.4 billion (At the time of writing this article).
How to buy Cardano cryptocurrency (ADA)
The Cardano project is steadily gaining popularity, and thus exchange trading of the Cardano cryptocurrency is also increasing. Some of the exchanges where you can buy/sell Cardano cryptocurrency are:
- Binance: Supported pairs are ADA/BTC, ADA/ETH, ADA/BNB, ADA/USDT
- HTX: Supported pairs are ADA/BTC, ADA/ETH, ADA/USDT
- Gate.io: Supported pairs are ADA/BTC and ADA/USDT
- Bittrex: Supported pairs are ADA/BTC, ADA/ETH, ADA/USDT
- Bithumb: Supported pairs are ADA/KRW
Buying ADA for fiat currencies like USD, EUR, etc. is not possible at the moment but with the popularity of Cardano, you can expect such pairs in the near future.
Cardano (ADA) wallets.
Cardano is not an ERC20 token. Instead, it has its own blockchain from the beginning, and thus has a completely different wallet developed by the Cardano team.
The only viable and popular wallet for Cardano at the moment is the Daedalus Wallet, which is a desktop client for storing, sending, and receiving Cardano.
- Desktop wallet: Daedalus wallet (Windows and Mac)
- Mobile phone wallet: infinito wallet (Android application| iOS app)
- Hardware wallet: Very soon, you should expect Ledger Nano S to support Cardano as it is being worked on.
Cardano’s future and roadmap
Cardano focuses on solving 4 critical problems that blockchains face in the world today all in one place:
- Scalability
- Compatibility
- Sustainability
- Judgment
Believe it or not, it’s a very ambitious and complex project as well.
That’s why they don’t have any specific deadlines or dates for their milestones in the roadmap. But with them The roadmap is divided into 5 important milestoneshe is called:
- Byron
- Chilean
- Goguein
- Basho
- Voltaire
Cardano is currently in early development and is completing Byron. Besides, preparations are also underway to launch the Chilean test network.
Goguen will be taken care of and sidechains for scalability and smart contracts will be implemented as well.
Update dated 10/1/2018: We are currently in Byron, the bootstrap phase, where we are making improvements. These include code, for example, in the wallet’s backend and debugging. We will improve the design of Daedalus and make integration through APIs with third parties simpler. We will then move from Byron to Chile, where the network becomes decentralized. Over the next 18 months, work will be done that contributes to stability, interoperability and governance. Throughout development, Cardano protocols will increase in complexity and interconnectedness and will use more exotic cryptographic primitives. (source)
You see how meticulously the Cardano team is moving forward. But some might argue that it is happening at a slow pace. I agree, but since they follow a research-first and peer-review process, this speed is to be expected.
Also, when you focus on creating a protocol that can last for decades, you need very careful planning.
On the other hand, Cardano is written Haskell language There is a severe scarcity of Haskell developers around the world and this is also one of the reasons for its slow development.
But I fear that even when it is completed, smart contract and decentralized application development will require knowledge Plautus programming language. This can be a huge learning curve as well as hindering Cardano adoption.
Having said that, it is too early to make a decision now as Cardano will take another year or more to fully develop and such matters will only become clearer once development is complete.
That’s all from my side for this introductory roundup of the Cardano Cryptocurrency.
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