CHAPTER 5

Cardano

“It [Cardano] actually does the things that we’ve always wanted to do

in cryptocurrencies, which is build a financial operating system for

people who don’t have one, one that actually can compete with a

global financial system.” - Charles Hoskinson

Founded: 2017

Native token: ADA

Market Capitalization: $71.65B

Smart Contract languages: Plutus, Marlowe, or Rosetta but

internally uses Haskell

Launched in 2017, Cardano has consistently occupied the top 5-6

positions in the Coin Marketcap website https://coinmarketcap.com/

in terms of market capitalization. In this chapter, we will cover

Cardano and explore how it came up with a Proof of Stake model

that was secure and highly scalable, ending up being the top

competitor to Ethereum in the crypto market.

Cardano was founded in 2015 by Charles Hoskinson who had earlier

co-founded Ethereum. The name of the parent company is Input

Output Hong Kong or simply IOHK, a Blockchain-engineering

company, whose primary business is the development of Cardano,

along with the Cardano Foundation. The platform is named after the

Italian polymath Gerolamo Cardano, while the cryptocurrency itself is

named after the English mathematician and the first computer

programmer Ada Lovelace.

5.1 Consensus Model – Proof of Stake

So, what made Cardano so popular among the crypto lovers?

Well, first of all, Cardano is one of the first public Blockchains to

implement and go live with the Proof of Stake consensus