Exchange Cardano (ADA)

Cardano is a third-generation blockchain network (considering Bitcoin and Ethereum as the first and the second) that aims to provide higher scalability, security, and efficiency. It positions itself as a project for innovators and change seekers and aspires to compete directly with Ethereum and other decentralized applications platforms as well as to redistribute the control over data from big companies to the people. Of now Cardano is still considered the most peer-review blockchain platform that often publishes academic research papers on its official website. 

Cardano ecosystem was built by a decentralized community of scientists, researchers, and engineers. It was launched in 201 and named after the 16th-century Italian mathematician Geronimo Cardano. The founders of Cardano Network are Charles Hoskinson, one of the Ethereum co-founders, and Jerry Wood. 

To process different tasks with higher efficiency, the Cardano blockchain is distinct from other networks and separated into two layers. The first one is Cardano Settlement Layer (CSL) and it is used to facilitate peer-to-peer transactions of ADA native tokens. Thanks to this layer the transactions on the Cardano network are fast and cheap. The second one is called Cardano Computational Layer and is used to execute smart contracts on the network, and is also responsible for most of Cardano’s functionality. 

The Cardano blockchain uses a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism called “Ouroboros” to validate transactions and add new blocks to the blockchain. It requires the token holders to stake their assets in pools operated by other users or to become pool operators. Ouroboros uses 5 days-long time periods called epochs for the creation of new blocks. Each of them has 21600 smaller slots every 20 seconds. 

Stake pools are randomly assigned to each slot to become a “slot leader” and create a new block for that slot. The chances to be assigned increase with more tokens staked in each specific pool. To prevent the domination of big pools, the system automatically reduces the reward once the staking pool reaches a specific parameter. 

The Cardano blockchain is under ongoing development and is planned to be completely launched in five stages. At the moment it’s one of the fastest-growing projects in the crypto space. In September 2021 the Alonzo hard fork was officially launched bringing smart-contracts functionality to the blockchain. From that time users can develop and deploy smart contracts on Cardano and use them to build dApps. 

The use cases of Cardano crypto include agricultural companies that track their production “from field to fork”. 

ADA is a native token of the network that was released in 2017 after a public sale of 25.9 million tokens ongoing for almost 2 years since 2015. The ADA coin got its name from the mathematician Ada Lovelace who is often regarded as the world’s first computer programmer. The token holders can stake their assets to receive the rewards.