Cardano Price Chart

Cardano is a decentralized blockchain platform that enables peer-to-peer transactions. Its blockchain supports smart contracts, allowing the development of a wide range of decentralized finance apps, new crypto tokens, games, and more.

Cardano has its native cryptocurrency called ADA, which can be used for storing value, sending and receiving payments, staking, and transaction fee payments, just like Ethereum’s Ether (ETH).

A Brief History of Cardano (ADA)

In 2015, Charles Hoskinson, one of the Ethereum co-founders, started developing Cardano. The blockchain network was launched in 2017. To oversee the development of the Cardano blockchain and promote its adoption, a non-profit organization called the Cardano Foundation was established in the same year (2017).

Cardano uses a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism known as the Ouroboros system in processing transaction blocks. It achieves this by dividing blockchains into time slots. During each time slot, a designated slot leader who is responsible for adding a block to the chain is elected. Each new slot leader must consider the last few blocks of the received chain as transient. It means that only the chain that precedes a prespecified number of transient blocks is considered settled. This prevents attackers from manipulating the transaction history. 

The Cardano blockchain is divided into the Cardano Settlement Layer (CSL) and the Cardano Computing Layer (CCL). The CSL focuses on efficient transaction throughput without being bogged down by complex computations using the Ouroboros technique. At the same time, the CCL can handle sophisticated smart contracts without impacting core transaction processing.

Cardano aims to strike a balance between security, scalability, and flexibility by separating these capabilities. This will make it viable for a variety of blockchain applications.