Cardano is a third-generation blockchain that utilizes Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. It was conceived in 2015 by Charles Hoskinson, co-founder of Ethereum, who departed his former project with the intention to improve upon Ethereum’s shortcomings and create a more complete decentralized network. Therefore, it was decided from the beginning that Cardano would be a PoS-based blockchain network. Two years after a highly successful ICO in 2015, Cardano mainnet was released. As of now, Cardano supports multiple use cases and applications such as smart contracts, DeFi, Internet of Things, NFT, etc., and it is currently the 29th biggest blockchain in the world by Total Value Locked.
It is also the first blockchain to have a research-driven approach. The project has published various peer-reviewed papers and worked with top universities to conduct blockchain-related education and research.
Regarding roadmap, Cardano’s development is divided into five main phases:
1. Byron - foundational establishment: During the Byron phase, Cardano’s mainnet was officially launched, together with two wallets and a Block Explorer for Cardano.
2. Shelley – decentralization: In this phase, staking operation, delegation preferences, and incentives for users were enhanced.
3. Goguen – smart contracts: The primary goal of the Goguen phase is to enable everyone to build dapps and create their own tokens.
4. Basho – scalability: The Basho phase will improve scalability and interoperability by refining the underlying performance of the network.
5. Voltaire – governance: The Voltaire development phase will enable the community to vote on Cardano’s development in a decentralized way.
Though Cardano is a PoS-based blockchain like many other, its PoS consensus mechanism, called Ouroboros, is quite unique. Ouroboros is the first PoS mechanism to be peer-reviewed, security-audited, and verified by third parties. It enables the operation and security of ADA (the native token of Cardano) as well as smart contracts on Cardano. Also, Ouroboros ensures that ADA rewards are given out to those who stake ADA.
Infrastructure wise, Cardano ecosystem consists of two layers:
1. Cardano’s settlement layer (CSL) is where ADA transactions are processed almost instantaneously with very low fee.
2. Cardano’s computation layer (CCL) handles and operates advanced features such as smart contracts, blacklisting, compliance, etc.
Cardano held a public token sale for ADA from September 2015 to January 2017 and raised a total of USD 79.2 million. Those who participated in the public sale could get vouchers to redeem their ADA through the Daedalus wallet.
The maximum supply for ADA cryptocurrency is limited to 45 billion token. As of now, there is about 31 billion ADA in circulation, and the remaining 14 billion is left for network incentive. More ADA was released during the first few years when the network just launched and the released amount gradually decreases over time. It is expected that ADA rewards will come from transaction fees in the future as more people come to use Cardano.
ADA’s Initial Supply: 31,112,484,644
Their allocation was as follows:
- 83.3% went to public sale buyers
- 16.7% went to the project and the founders
Consider investing in Cardano (ADA)? It only takes 2 minutes to create an account on Bitget and start trading ADA.
Check out the available ADA trading pairs on Bitget!
Futures market
Spot market
Buy Cardano in Mozambique with Bitget