- What is Cardano?
- The Ouroboros Blockchain
- What is ADA?
- Cardano's Smart Contract
- Why are smart contracts so important?
- Conclusion
Cardano is one of the fastest-growing projects in the cryptocurrency space. In general, altcoins known as alternatives to bitcoin have been surging as individual investors pile into cryptocurrencies, Cardano has emerged as a recent favourite in the pack.
Behind some of its recent momentum is enthusiasm over what is expected to be a September upgrade of Cardano's blockchain to incorporate smart contracts.
What is Cardano?
Cardano is an open-source and decentralized
blockchain platform launched in 2017 and created to facilitate peer-to-peer transactions. It has a layered architecture that facilitates smart contracts, enabling a platform that is both adaptive and scalable without having to compromise the security
Cardano is spearheaded by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson and BitShares who left Ethereum after an argument about keeping the project non-profit in 2017. Its self-described mission is to become a more environmentally sustainable and Scalable blockchain network, in part by relying less on energy-consuming cryptocurrency miners.
Hoskinson
categorizes Cardano as a third-generation blockchain, with Bitcoin and Ethereum, considered first and second-generation chains.
According to Forbes
reports, it was Hoskinson's disagreement with how Ethereum was supposed to be built that led him to create a separate movement from the team.
This is also the reason why they did not build on the already existing chains in developing Cardano but created a completely independent network from scratch. The platform is based on the Ouroboros blockchain that has undergone a peer review.
The Ouroboros Blockchain
The
Ouroboros Praos protocol is a proof-of-stake (PoS) model that guides the consensus mechanism of Cardano. It enacts a cycle for block creation through epochs that consist of 432,000 slots, each lasting for approximately five days. To manage the whole process, block-producing nodes are tasked to nominate 21,600 slot leaders per epoch.
The slot leaders are chosen from staking pools based on the volume of their stake and a random seed. The seed uses a multi-party computation(MPC) system to determine which stakeholder can be nominated to generate the next blocks.
What is ADA?
Ada is a digital token, or cryptocurrency, that runs on the Cardano blockchain. Cardano is
named after the Italian polymath and mathematician Gerolamo Cardano, while its native token (ADA) is fittingly named after an influential British, 19th-century mathematician Ada King, Countess of Lovelace and the only child of the famous poet Lord Byron who is often regarded as the first computer programmer.
Ada Lovelace is said to have recognized the mathematical potential of computers early on and published the first algorithm in 1843 that such a machine could carry out. it is said that without Lovelace's work, computers, as we know them today, wouldn't exist.
As a further homage, the smallest unit of 1 ADA (0.000001) is also called a "Lovelace," much like
Bitcoin's smallest unit is called Satoshi (0.00000001 BTC) to honour its founder, Satoshi Nakamoto.
ADA Token is a digital asset that the participants of the platform use to make peer-to-peer transfers, as well as participate in the network's staking functionality. All holders of ADA that also stake their tokens can be considered validators since they also function as a node, especially when they use Cardano's own, ADA-designed wallets.
Cardano's Smart Contract
With the announcement of Cardano's ability to incorporate smart contracts set for Sept. 12, it's become necessary to dissect the latest developmental milestone achieved by Cardano.
Cardano has been designed to use smart contract technology to its full potential. Its smart contract
support will enable the platform to establish self-executing agreements that do not require professional oversight.
With smart contracts, anyone on the platform can conveniently input any particular condition that has to be met, which will be automatically executed without the need for a user's constant involvement.
The deployment of smart contracts on the Cardano network will enable the support of decentralized applications (DApps). Ultimately, the end goal of the Cardano philosophy is to make the services once offered exclusively in the traditional financial space more accessible and inclusive through innovative blockchain solutions.
Why are Smart Contracts so important?
In the Cardano ecosystem, Alonzo is the name given to a series of smart contract upgrades implemented on the Cardano blockchain. Note that these upgrades are first onboarded on a controlled environment called a test net. In other words, this is a test run of smart contracts on Cardano
Conclusion
Cardano's latest test net launch puts the network on track to becoming a smart contract-enabled blockchain. If all goes to plan, expect Cardano to join the list of blockchains that can power decentralized finance (DeFi) and
NFT economies.
Comments
Post a Comment