Cardano
Cardano is one of the biggest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization and one of the world's most popular blockchains. Cardano is a third-generation blockchain designed to overcome the limitations of other earlier blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum, seeking to offer a more scalable, sustainable, and interoperable solution for blockchain. Cardano is also the first blockchain platform to be built through peer-reviewed research, to be secure enough to protect the data of billions, scalable enough to accommodate global systems, and robust enough to support foundational change. The protocol features numerous noteworthy features thanks to its prolific developer community. ADA, named after female mathematician Ada Lovelace, is Cardano’s native utility token, used for settling payments and governing the network.
ADA
ADA is the native cryptocurrency of the Cardano platform.
ADA tokens fuel the Cardano platform much like ETH tokens fuel the Ethereum platform.
They’re used to pay transaction fees and are staked by validators who want to help maintain security and stability of the network in exchange for earning rewards.
In the future, ADA will also be used as a governance token, which will allow holders to vote on changes and upgrades to the Cardano platform.
CARDANO FEATURES
Ouroboros.
The first peer-reviewed, verifiably secure blockchain protocol. Ouroboros enables the Cardano network’s decentralization, and allows it to sustainably scale to global requirements without, crucially, compromising security.
Hard Fork Combinator.
Designed for — and used by — the Cardano blockchain, the hard fork combinator (HFC) is designed to enable smooth hard fork updates without system stoppages or fundamental chain restarts.
Plutus and Marlowe Programming Languages.
While Cardano primarily uses Haskell, it also has a programming language called Plutus that is optimized for smart contracts; its code can also be used for powering both on-chain and off-chain functions. Marlowe is a supplementary programming language for users that aren’t programmers.
CARDANO FUNCTIONALITIES
Digital Currency.
ADA is used as a digital currency for making transactions and payments. Users can quickly send and receive ADA tokens across the Cardano blockchain with low transaction fees.
Staking.
ADA holders may participate in the Cardano network’s staking mechanism, which involves holding a certain amount of ADA in a wallet and staking it to support the network’s operations.
Decentralized Applications.
These dapps cover a wide range of use cases, from finance and gaming to supply-chain management and identity verification. Cardano’s smart contract capabilities enable the creation of complex and innovative dapps.
Cardano aims to provide a platform for creating and executing smart contracts, which are self-executing agreements with the terms of the contract directly written into code.
Tokenization.
Cardano allows for the creation of custom tokens on its platform. This feature is used for a variety of purposes, such as creating loyalty tokens, representing assets like real estate or commodities, or even launching initial coin offerings (ICOs).
Governance.
Through a process called ‘Project Catalyst’, ADA holders may propose and vote on various protocol upgrades, improvements, and changes to the ecosystem.
Cross-Chain Interoperability.
Cardano has plans to implement mechanisms for interoperability with other blockchains.