Cardano — The Third Generation Blockchain

~ Platform, Smart contracts, Digital currency

The Cardano project was officially launched back in September 2017 and it was designed to leverage the lessons learned from the cryptos that were launched before it. The smart contract platform claims to have made significant improvements to the scaling issues faced by Bitcoin (regarded as a first-generation coin) and Ethereum (also regarded as a second-generation blockchain).

The computing platform was created by two technologists, Charles Hoskinson and Jeremy Wood. It’s interesting to know that Cardano is the first-peer-reviewed blockchain in the world. A network of scientists and academics were selected from different universities by the non-profit Foundation behind the Cardano project.

They were selected from universities such as the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Edinburg to help review its protocols before it would be released. The peer-reviewed research focused mainly on proffering solutions to the challenges plaguing the crypto world such as sustainability, interoperability and scalability. Three entities are behind the Cardano project and they all perform different roles.

They include IOHK which is an engineering firm that’s primarily focused on instrumentalizing peer-to-peer technologies. The firm is also working toward providing financial services to more than three billion individuals who lack access to such services. The engineering firm was actually contracted to design, build, and maintain the platform until 2020.

The Cardano Foundation is a Swiss non-profit that is also behind the Cardano project. The Foundation is actively working with regulatory bodies as well as governments and is establishing strategic partnerships with relevant open-source projects and other enterprises. The third company behind Cardano is Emurgo and the company was created to integrate, develop, and support businesses, companies and industries that are interested in making use of Cardano’s decentralized blockchain.

How Cardano Works

The basic use case of Cardano is to enable transactions in ADA — the native currency of the blockchain platform. Also, developers can build secure and scalable apps on the Cardano blockchain which is divided into two layers. One of the layers is known as the Cardano Computation Layer (CCL) and it contains the smart contract logic. Developers can take advantage of this layer to programmatically transfer funds.

The other layer is the Cardano Settlement Layer (CSL) and this layer is used to record all transactions and transfer ADA between accounts. Cardano has carried out five major upgrades to its platform and this includes Byron.
At the heart of the Cardano blockchain is Ouroboros. It is an algorithm that mines new coins with the Proof-of-Stake protocol (PoS) which is customized to limit the amount of energy used for creating new coins. The Ouroboros algorithm implements the PoS system differently both in the type and form of incentives that stakeholders get and in how transactions are approved.

The Cardano platform is being designed to solve a broad range of problems in multiple industries. For instance, in the retail business, the effect of counterfeited goods cost the global economy about $300 billion in 2018 and this is even getting worse. The markets will witness a significant surge in the number of fake products which would result in substantial financial losses if this trend isn’t reversed.

Atala SCAN which is part of the Cardano network is offering a solution to the problem of counterfeit goods by leveraging blockchain technology. It makes use of a tamper-proof system to create product provenance and auditability. This ensures that all the products sold are certified original.

Why Should you use Cardano?

You may find the Cardano project appealing because of its strong commitment to peer-reviewed academic research and scientific philosophy. Developers who are in search of a reliable platform where they can launch their decentralized applications (DApps) can also make use of the Cardano blockchain.

In fact, developers have already built several projects on the platform like workplace incentive platforms and enterprise traceability solutions. If you believe that the market will soon favor staking protocols as well as blockchains that enable decentralized applications, then adding ADA to your portfolio would be a lovely idea. Presently, ADA is traded on HitBTC, Bittrex, Huobi, and Binance.

Cardano may not offer us new ground-breaking features, but developers and users will love the digital currency’s optimizations based on scientific research and formal verification. Over 60 academic papers that showcase the Cardano technology has been published by IOHK and in the process, they have also secured partnerships with global universities. If you would like to learn more about Cardano, then check out their official website.

So why is Cardano unique? When compared with other blockchain projects, Cardano has several qualities that make it unique. Top on the list of reasons for its uniqueness is the fact that it is a third-generation blockchain. What this implies is that it is positioned to deal with the challenges its predecessor coins have experienced (which they haven’t been able to resolve properly).

Perhaps the most important reason has to do with the fact that Cardano isn’t fully implemented — the project is in development. Supporters of Cardano strongly believe that when the project is fully deployed, then it has what it takes to topple some top cryptos we know.

Cardano is no doubt a revolutionary blockchain technology and its real-world use cases offer us the real benefits of the platform. Cardano is also on a mission that is specially focused on developing and third world countries that are dealing with arcane bureaucracies, corruption, and lack of access to financial services.

Their goal is to redistribute power from existing unaccountable structures to people and establish itself as an enabling force for positive change and progress. When it comes to the battle of blockchains, Cardano is faced with stiff competition with smart contract platforms such as Ethereum.

But it also has a theoretical edge and if it can truly transform how certain societies function as part of its mission, then Cardano would have succeeded in accomplishing what no other blockchain project has achieved. To learn more about other top cryptocurrency projects, their achievements, challenges, and use cases, check out “The Digital World of Crypto Riches.” You will find summaries of over a hundred crypto projects in the book and this will further enlighten you about the crypto world.

~ The official website of Cardano is https://cardano.org/