Cryptocurrencies are experiencing a new boom moment. The new 'boom' that is triggering the 'bitcoin' is dragging the entire industry behind and both new tools such as NFT and new currencies among which 'dogecoin' draws much attention are living their best moments since its appearance. More and more companies and individuals are becoming interested in everything that surrounds the world of the Blockchain, investing large amounts of money in their environments, and causing names that were not known outside to begin to stand out, as is the case of Cardano. This blockchain, which holds a cryptocurrency called ADA (although it is usually known by the name of the parent company), has become in recent days the third largest cryptocurrency in the world by market capitalization, reaching nearly 40,000 million. And its success does not stop there, as its growth rate is even higher than that of bitcoin. The price of cardano has soared by 2,500% in the last year, including a 280% revaluation in the month of February. Of course, it is a long way from the market's major rivals; right now you can get an ADA for $1.28. But how did this new digital asset get this far? As with everything that surrounds this new industry, there is no simple explanation.

As explained in specialized media such as Coindesk, Cardano is a born competitor, and maybe the biggest rival as of today, of Ethereum. With a blockchain of its own, this project was launched in 2017 and it was not done by just anyone, but is mainly backed by the trading company Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK). Who manages that company? Charles Hoskinson, who co-founded Ethereum and is now CEO of IOHK. This has made Cardano one of the most followed projects in recent years, but it's not the only reason, far from it. The main change that has led many to bet definitively on this asset is that last week it announced the launch of an update, called Mary, after the author of Frankenstein, which promises to be a before and after for Cardano. What does it consist of? In a change in its systems that will allow issuing 'tokens' and the famous NFTs from its blockchain. In other words, it completes its path towards decentralization. Anyone who wants to, and following only a series of processes marked by Cardano, will be able to use its blockchain in the same way as Ethereum, without intermediaries. Although with certain improvements, at least in theory.

The idea of Hoskinson and his team is to improve all the points in which Ethereum fails and which have made many people rethink the use of these tools or their extension. Ethereum is usually accused of having very expensive transactions, overly complex processes and a great lack of security both for those who make movements in its system and for regulators, torpedoing scalability. Cardano seeks to improve this by making processes simpler, requiring less energy and therefore much cheaper, and, finally, more secure by recording more information, helping regulators to feel more confident when taking the step into the 'crypto' world. Project transfers from one blockchain to another are starting to happen.

Will it dethrone Ethereum?

According to the CardanoAssets website there are already more than 379 assets on the Cardano blockchain, and such is the confidence of its creators that they are better than Ethereum that Hoskinson himself has gone so far as to call the project 'Ethereum killer'. "' In other words, we've beaten them up. So it's really a question of growth - can we grow this year? And that's what we're doing this year. We're fighting hard," Hoskinson said in an interview. The point of growth seems the biggest barrier that still separates the two environments, from Cardano seek to attract about 22 million software developers from around the world in the coming years, with special emphasis on the potential that Africa has, but still the difference with Ethereum is great. In the price of its currency the distance is more than $1,000 and the data does not stop there. As Coindesk explained last summer, 19 of the top 20 'dapps' (applications that run on blockchain such as the well-known CryptoKitties game) by volume are using the Ethereum network, and the remaining one is on Lightning Network, which is associated with the Bitcoin blockchain

Among open source software developers, Ethereum attracts much more attention. Some 28 people are active on IOHK GitHub, where Cardano software is hosted, compared to 61 working on Ethereum open source repositories. Moreover, in the digital asset markets, Cardano is still somewhat of a minor player compared to the Ethereum network, which is already used as a backbone for stable dollar-linked currencies such as tether and USDC, as well as first-generation decentralized exchange and lending platforms. For all these reasons it seems difficult that Cardano can 'kill' Ethereum in a short time, but some experts already point out that this fight may define the future of Blockchain environments. What is certain is that as of today is that Cardano's name is starting to sound everywhere.