Drilling down to Cardano depths while waiting for Vasil hardfork
Cardano has been hitting the headlines of crypto news media lately mostly on the occasion of the delaying of its due hard fork, Vasil, for another time. But it’s not the only reason to set your eyes on Cardano, if you haven’t done so yet.
Let’s take a closer look at Cardano, its technology, and what makes it such an attractive cryptocurrency for many investors who put their trust in it.
Cardano is a decentralized proof-of-stake blockchain founded on peer-reviewed research, or, more globally, it is a next-generation internet platform (Web 3.0) structured as a publicly traded blockchain-based crypto network. Its open-source software network coordinates a collection of decentralized computers across the world into a fully user-owned and operated unified cloud platform.
What makes this public blockchain platform established in 2015 stand out from other competing blockchains? Cardano, a first-of-its-kind decentralized network uses using mathematical principles in its consensus mechanism and a unique multi-layer architecture. designed by experts in the fields of cryptography and engineering. Cardano’s founder, Charles Hoskinson, was one of the original developers of Ethereum. He saw the need for a more standardized, and scalable blockchain. With his mathematics background, Hoskinson began thinking about more scientific ways to build a blockchain.
Cardano, being a younger technology has taken a more deliberate approach to its rollout. The blockchain can be used to build smart contracts, and in turn, create decentralized applications and protocols. Additionally, the ability to send and receive funds instantly through, for minimal fees, have many applications in the world of business and finance. The ADA token which runs on the Cardano blockchain represents a piece of ownership in the ecosystem. Cardano, like Bitcoin but unlike Ethereum, has a finite supply limit, with only 45 billion ADA ever to be created over the coin’s existence. Presently, 33.93 billion ADA are in circulation, accounting for 75% of the maximum supply. With all the tech, and with a team that had a hand in the creation of Ethereum, many are convinced Cardano is the next generation of cryptocurrency solutions. This is what a Cardano representative says on the project: “Cardano remains a major crypto culture, aiming to build out its own version of what a crypto should be”.
Cardano has become one of the fastest growing blockchain assets in the entire cryptocurrency industry. A behavior analytics platform for cryptocurrencies providing research results based on tracking development activity on GitHub associated with different crypto projects in the industry has revealed an interesting data lately. According to their chart, Cardano (ADA) tops the list with a 402.05 development activity mark. Just to compare, Polkadot (DOT) comes with a 306.21 mark and Ethereum (ETH) 286.17 mark in development activity. This definitely makes Cardano the most developed project and chain in the crypto space.
Cardano also has a funded non-profit organization, the Cardano Foundation. The main responsibilities of the foundation are to administrate and monitor the development of Cardano and its ecosystem. The foundation works with regulators in different jurisdictions to encourage adoption, shape blockchain governance, set commercial standards, and support the community of Cardano users to ensure that Cardano solves real-life problems. The team with their strong vision and high standard values have created a great base of supporters that truly believe in the project and its potential.
Unlike other major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, Cardano has its own wallet for the ADA cryptocurrency. With the Daedalus wallet, users don’t just get a wallet, they run a full blockchain node, giving them total control over their funds and the ability to ensure transparency over the Cardano blockchain.
In times past, Cardano faced significant criticism over its UTXO model, its systematic approach to implementation, and most recently, the slow pace of growth in Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem. Currently, most of those arguments are no longer valid, and the team is focused on high-end improvements of the blockchain. Thus, the Vasil hard fork aims to upgrade the scalability of the Cardano blockchain. It will increase throughput on the blockchain and improve the development of smart contracts and decentralized apps (dApps). The Cardano blockchain is a constantly updated chain of blocks, and each of these blockchains contains a record of transaction records. What the hardfork will do is increasing the size of each of these blocks. It means there will be more space for data to be saved in each block added to the blockchain — this is important for scalability if Cardano is to compete with smart contract rivals like Ethereum and Solana.
Vasil Daboz was a Bulgarian mathematician and Cardano ambassador, who recently passed away. The Vasil hardfork is named in his honour. The hardfork was initially scheduled for the end of June 2022 but then was pushed back to July 2022. Now the patience of the Cardano users is being tried with another delay befre letting them enjoy the newest Cardano Vasil hard fork update which is due to arrive sometime in August.
