Jump to content

Cardano (blockchain platform)

Page extended-protected
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Grayfell (talk | contribs) at 07:07, 20 January 2021 (→Technical aspects: See talk). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Cardano
Cardano platform logo Ada cryptocurrency logo
Cardano platform logoAda cryptocurrency logo
Denominations
Symbol₳
CodeADA
Subunits
 1⁄1000000Lovelace[1]
Development
Original author(s)Charles Hoskinson
Implementation(s)Cardano Node
Initial release1.0.1 / 27 September 2017 (7 years ago) (2017-09-27)[2]
Latest release1.21.2 / 14 October 2020 (4 years ago) (2020-10-14)[3]
Development statusActive
Written inHaskell
LicenseApache License
Ledger
Timestamping schemeProof of stake
Block explorerexplorer.cardano.org
Supply limit45,000,000,000[4]
Website
Websitecardano.org

Cardano is a cryptocurrency network and open source project that aims to run a public blockchain platform for smart contracts.[5] Cardano's internal cryptocurrency is called Ada.[6] The development of the project is overseen and supervised by the Cardano Foundation based in Zug, Switzerland.[7][8]

History

The platform began development in 2015 and was launched in 2017 by Charles Hoskinson, a co-founder of Ethereum and BitShares.[9][10][11] According to Hoskinson, he had left Ethereum after a dispute over keeping Ethereum nonprofit. After leaving he co-founded IOHK, a blockchain engineering company, whose primary business is the development of Cardano, alongside the Cardano Foundation and Emurgo.[11] The platform is named after Gerolamo Cardano and the cryptocurrency after Ada Lovelace.[12]

The currency debuted with a market cap of $600 million. By the end of 2017, it had a market cap of $10 billion, and reached a value of $33 billion briefly in 2018 before a general tightening of the crypto market dropped its value back to $10 billion. According to Mashable, Cardano claims that it overcomes existing problems in the crypto market: mainly that Bitcoin is too slow and inflexible, and that Ethereum is not safe or scalable. Cardano is considered a third-generation cryptocurrency by its creators.[5]

Cardano is developed and designed by a team of academics and engineers.[13][14]

Technical aspects

Cardano uses Ouroboros proof of stake technology. In contrast, Bitcoin uses the proof of work system; the first blockchain entry and the longest blockchain (blockchain with the most computing power) is used to determine the honest blockchain. Cardano uses only the first blockchain entry, whereafter the honest chain is proven locally without the need of a trusted party.[15]

Within the Cardano platform, Ada exists on the settlement layer. This layer is similar to Bitcoin and keeps track of transactions. The second layer is the computation layer. This layer is similar to Ethereum, enabling smart contracts and applications to run on the platform.[5]

Atypically, Cardano does not have a white paper. Instead it uses design principles intended to improve upon issues faced by other cryptocurrencies, such as scalability, interoperability, and regulatory compliance.[16] It is funded by an initial coin offering.[14]

Development

Cardano's smart contract language allows developers to run end-to-end tests on their program without leaving the integrated development environment or deploying their code.[17][18]

In 2017 IOHK helped the University of Edinburgh to launch Blockchain Technology Laboratory.[19][20][21] In 2019, the Minister of Education of Georgia, Mikheil Batiashvili, and Charles Hoskinson, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Free University of Tbilisi to use Cardano and Atala to build a credential verification system for Georgia.[22] In 2018 Cardano teamed up with Ethiopian government so Cardano can deploy their technology in a variety of industries throughout the country.[23] IOHK, the company behind Cardano, donated $500,000 gift in Ada to the University of Wyoming to supports the development of blockchain technology.[24] Footwear manufacturer New Balance Athletics will use distributed ledger blockchain to track the authenticity of its newest basketball shoe. The platform will be built atop the Cardano blockchain.[25]

References

  1. ^ "Cardano Glossary". Retrieved October 23, 2020.
  2. ^ "Releases - input-output-hk/cardano-sl". Retrieved October 28, 2020 – via GitHub.
  3. ^ "Releases - input-output-hk/cardano-node". Retrieved October 28, 2020 – via GitHub.
  4. ^ Arslanian, Henri; Fischer, Fabrice (July 15, 2019). The Future of Finance: The Impact of FinTech, AI, and Crypto on Financial Services. Springer. ISBN 978-3-030-14533-0.
  5. ^ a b c "Cardano: a rising cryptocurrency". Mashable. February 24, 2018. Retrieved December 25, 2018. Cardano claims it will solve most of the issues that plague well-established cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum
  6. ^ "Die Grundlagen der Cardano-Kryptowährung". hamburg-magazin.de (in German). June 26, 2020. Retrieved July 2, 2020.
  7. ^ "Bitcoin's Smaller Cousins". Bloomberg L.P. December 20, 2017. Archived from the original on June 26, 2018. Retrieved December 25, 2018. Cardano, backed by the Zug, Switzerland-based Cardano Foundation, is a decentralized public blockchain that aims to protect user privacy, while also allowing for regulation
  8. ^ "ZUG: Ex-Tezos-Mann geht zu Cardano". luzernerzeitung.ch (in German). Luzerner Zeitung. February 20, 2018. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
  9. ^ "Ethereum Cofounder Says Blockchain Presents 'Governance Crisis'". Fortune. Retrieved April 1, 2020.
  10. ^ "ICOs explained". CNBC. October 6, 2017. Retrieved December 25, 2018. ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson says it has become increasingly more challenging to regulate this new asset class" and "ICO market could crash
  11. ^ a b Angel Au-Yeung (February 7, 2018). "A Fight Over Ethereum Led A Cofounder To Even Greater Crypto Wealth". Forbes Magazine. Retrieved July 12, 2020. IOHK's key project: Cardano, a public blockchain and smart-contract platform which hosts the Ada cryptocurrency.
  12. ^ "What is Ada?". Retrieved October 23, 2020.
  13. ^ "Blockchain believers hold fast to a utopian vision". Financial Times. January 27, 2018. Archived from the original on December 19, 2018. Retrieved December 25, 2018. A mathematician, Mr Hoskinson believes blockchain has the potential to reduce society's need for banks" and "working with a global group of academics" and "freely available online for other developers to use.
  14. ^ a b "Cryptocurrencies and blockchain" (PDF). European Parliament. July 2018. Retrieved October 29, 2020. What distinguishes Cardano from Ethereum, and from many other cryptocurrencies, is that it is (one of the first) blockchain projects to be developed and designed from a scientific philosophy by a team of leading academics and engineers
  15. ^ Badertscher, Christian; Gaži, Peter; Kiayias, Aggelos; Russell, Alexander; Zikas, Vassilis (January 15, 2018). "Ouroboros Genesis: Composable Proof-of-Stake Blockchains with Dynamic Availability". Proceedings of the 2018 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security. CCS '18. Toronto, Canada: Association for Computing Machinery: 913–930. doi:10.1145/3243734.3243848. ISBN 978-1-4503-5693-0. S2CID 44109228.
  16. ^ "The Blockchain Galaxy A comprehensive research on distributed ledger technologies" (PDF). Deloitte. May 6, 2020. Retrieved October 29, 2020. The distinctive feature of Cardano is its "research-first" approach to design.
  17. ^ "Say Hello to IOHK's New Cardano Blockchain Tools, Plutus and Marlowe". Crowdfund Insider. December 11, 2018. Retrieved February 18, 2019. Where programming Ethereum requires coding in two languages, Solidity for the on-chain code and Javascript for the off-chain parts, and other systems suffer a similar split, Plutus is the only system that provides an integrated language for both, based on Haskell
  18. ^ "Marlowe: Implementing and Analysing Financial Contracts on Blockchain". blockchainreporter.net. December 12, 2018. Retrieved October 25, 2020. Blockchain R&D company IOHK has announced Plutus and Marlowe software tools for smart contract creation on Cardano blockchain
  19. ^ "Beyond Bitcoin - IOHK and University of Edinburgh establish Blockchain Technology Laboratory". The University of Edinburgh. Retrieved March 31, 2020.
  20. ^ "IOHK and University of Edinburgh establish Blockchain Technology Laboratory". finextra.com. Retrieved October 25, 2020.
  21. ^ "The University of Edinburgh is launching a blockchain research lab with one of the cofounders of Ethereum". www.insider.com. Retrieved October 25, 2020.
  22. ^ "Ministry of Education signs deal with Cardano Atala". Forbes Georgia. Retrieved March 27, 2020.
  23. ^ Phillips, Ruari (June 11, 2018). "Ethiopian government-Cardano Technology team up on blockchain". East African Business Week. Retrieved March 27, 2020.
  24. ^ "UW Receives $500,000 Gift in Ada Cryptocurrency from IOHK". www.uwyo.edu. Retrieved October 25, 2020.
  25. ^ "Sneakers meet the blockchain in New Balance shoe authenticity pilot". SiliconANGLE. October 17, 2019. Retrieved March 28, 2020.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cardano_(blockchain_platform)&oldid=1001565330"