Cryptocurrency world is expanding and every sector is getting it's own blockchain. One such blockchain from the STEM field is making it's round in it market this year is Cardano (ADA).
A lot of people are being optimistic about this blockchain due to it's ability to scale and the governance and peer reviewed approach. And the best part it's getting it's smart contracts developed too.
So what is Cardano and why we should care about it?
Image Credit: Cardano
Why Cardano? What problems does it solve?
ETH being one of the first smart contract blockchain, it lagged a lot in terms of the development.
And so we are facing a lot of scaling and transaction load issues over a period of years. And this has reflected in the transaction fees of ETH over the years.
Many blockchain projects came out to solve the issues faced by the ETH over period of years. Polkadot, Cardano and few others came out as an alternative in the blockchain market.
Polkadot turned to solve the interoperability and the scaling problems. While cardano started to work on the smart contract based scaling issues of the ETH.
And now after years of development in May 2021, Cardano has released it's first smart contract testing on testnet.
What is so special about Cardano?
Here are few things that may help you understand what is so special about the cardano.
Cardano has proof-of-stake algorithm for transactions instead of mining.
Cardano now supports the smart contract from May 2021.
Cardano consumes less electricity as it does not involve mining.
It is more secure and decentralized than the ETH network.
What is more so special? The blockchain is being worked on the identity management and the traceability.
This will be used by many blockchain projects for their own use cases too.
This is just a start of the use cases but more of the usage scenarios for the smart contracts would come out in the market soon.
Mining or Proof of Stake?
ETH has been facing the problem with scaling due to the mining. And considering it requires the miners from around the world, it is not really decentralized in true sense.
Considering proof of stage blockchains are much better to replace this scenario. The blockchain behind Cardano also makes use of this.
Here the validator is chosen and the users can stake their investment with validators and get rewarded for their stake.
This is pretty much common with TRON like blockchain only here you have Cardano offering anonymity for you.
What is Ouroboros?
Cardano has an interesting algorithm for working it's blockchain.
This algorithm is peer reviewed and has similar to the proof of stake concept and offers more more stability in the blockchain.
Here the transaction is divided into the epochs and then into the time slots. Then time delay mechanism is set between the slots to perform the transaction between the users.
When are the smart contracts rolling out?
Cardano is teasing the smart contracts in the market for some time now. A lot of people got disappointed over the years why they are not making that move yet.
However recently they made that move and released the smart contract on their alonzo testnet.
You can check out the tweet that explains the roadmap.
Is ADA worth the investment in 2021 onwards?
You bet.
Considering they have smart contracts, you can expect people to jump out of ETH bandwagon.
The price of ADA is extremely low as of now for some blockchain that has smart contracts. Like under 5 dollar? Go for it.
If the DeFi and the finance companies pick up the ADA like they did with the Polkadot then you can expect really good results out of the blockchain.
Use the coins to stake with some validator like Binance or others.
You can use Atomic Wallet, Exodus, Binance or few other wallets for holding and staking your ADA coins.
If you have not invested into it yet, you should go and get it invested.
Conclusion
For someone who invests in the use case based blockchains, I am going to invest into Cardano as a side investment in my portfolio.
I recommend you to DYOR ( Do your own research).
