Cryptocurrency #3.Cardano (ADA)
Coin
#3: Cardano (ADA)
Cardano is one of
the biggest cryptocurrencies by market cap. It’s designed to be a next-gen
evolution of the Ethereum idea — with a blockchain that’s a flexible,
sustainable, and scalable platform for running smart contracts, which will
allow the development of a wide range of decentralized finance apps, new crypto
tokens, games, and more.
As of March 2021, however, smart-contract
functionality has yet to be rolled out by developers. An upgrade scheduled for
the second quarter of 2021 will unlock smart-contract features, bringing
Cardano one step closer to its goal of providing developers with a blockchain
platform that is robust, secure, scalable, and highly energy-efficient.
Much like the
Ethereum blockchain’s native cryptocurrency is ETH, the Cardano blockchain’s
native cryptocurrency is ADA — which can be bought or sold via exchanges like
Coinbase. Today, ADA can be used to store value (perhaps as part of your
investment portfolio), to send and receive payments, and for staking and paying
transaction fees on the Cardano network.
How does Cardano
work?
Cardano’s goal is to be the most environmentally sustainable blockchain platform. It uses a unique proof-of-stake consensus mechanism called Ouroboros, as opposed to the energy-intensive proof-of-work system currently used by Bitcoin and Ethereum. (Ethereum is also moving to a proof-of-stake system via the ETH2 upgrade).
What is proof of
work? Decentralized cryptocurrency networks need to make sure that nobody
spends the same money twice without a central authority like Visa or PayPal in
the middle. To accomplish this they use a “consensus mechanism.” The original crypto
consensus mechanism is called proof of work, first popularized by Bitcoin
mining.
Proof of work
requires a huge amount of processing power, which is contributed by virtual
“miners” around the world competing to be the first to solve a time-consuming
math puzzle.
The winner gets
to update the blockchain with the latest verified transactions, and is rewarded
with a predetermined amount of crypto.
What is proof of
stake?
Rather than using
a network of miners racing to solve a puzzle, proof of stake uses a network of
invested participants called validators. Instead of contributing processing
power to secure the network and verify transactions as miners do, validators
stake their own ADA.
The network
selects a winner based on the amount of ADA each validator has in the pool and
the length of time they’ve had it there — literally rewarding the most invested
participants.
Once the winner has validated the latest block of
transactions, other validators can attest that the block is accurate. When a
threshold number of attestations have been made, the network updates the
blockchain.
All participating
validators receive a reward in ADA, which is distributed by the network in
proportion to each validator’s stake.
Becoming a
validator is a major responsibility, but interested parties can also earn ADA
rewards by “delegating” some of their crypto to a staking pool run by someone
else.
The Cardano
blockchain is also divided into two separate layers: the Cardano Settlement
Layer (CSL) and the Cardano Computing Layer (CCL). The CSL contains the ledger
of accounts and balances (and is where the transactions are validated by the
Ouroboros consensus mechanism). The CCL layer is where all the computations for
apps running on the blockchain are executed — via the operations of smart
contracts.
The idea of
splitting the blockchain into two layers is to help the Cardano network to
process as many as a million transactions a second.
What are Cardano native tokens?
On March 1, 2021,
the Cardano blockchain introduced the ability to create native tokens. Like
Ethereum tokens — which can include things like NFTs or stablecoins like USD
Coin — Cardano native assets can be created and distributed on the blockchain
and are able to interact with smart contracts.
But unlike
Ethereum-based tokens, Cardano native tokens aren’t created via smart contract.
Instead, they run on the same architecture as the ADA cryptocurrency itself.
According to the nonprofit Cardano Foundation, this makes Cardano native assets
“first-class citizens” on the blockchain. Their native architecture can
theoretically make these tokens more secure and reduce the fees associated with
transactions.
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