I know, I know - /CC is an ETH sub. The reason I am writing this at 1am is because I think for the most part, Crypto is becoming more siloed over time. People dont try new protocols, they might buy the tokens or they might invest, but they dont really try to experience the ecosystem as it stands. Cardano for many years didnt do much... but that has changed, and I think it is pretty clear now to anyone keeping up with all the popular protocols, that Cardano has passed ETH in development and vision.

And since all the moonboys lost their money, perhaps it is time to now begin to discuss in real terms what cardano is bringing to the party in its latest upgrades and iterations.

but first a bit of history - If you arent aware of the cardano roadmap then welcome to the club, Cardano more or less abandoned the concept of a roadmap in about 2019 after we all learned that this whole crypto thing is harder than expected. What they moved back to was the original outline, a 5 phase plan to create a new global financial infrasctucture package, and no more hard deadlines.

1 . Byron 2017: This was the original launch of the network and had really no more functionality than dogecoin does today, send and receive on an EUTXO platform. 1 tps and even then it was often 0.7 tps. although it was technically proof of stake, all the nodes were controlled by the IOHK development team.

It launched in a bull run and shot up to about 80c (30 billion dollar market cap) before people even knew what cardano was.

This was the state of cardano until 2020. and in this time cardano got a pretty poor reputation of being a ghost chain, vaporware and all the fun things that the BTC and ETH maxis would yell across the internet at anything that wasnt their main bag. Most of the arguments were founded in the fact that cardano had been developing since 2015 - and had no interesting functionality, had missed all their roadmap deadlines and Charles Hoskinson was a polarising character on twitter, sparring with people like Justin Sun and Vitalik on what crypto should be.

In 2019-2020 the cardano team completely rewrote the whole cardano infrastructure in what was known as the Byron Reboot. why? because they didn't like how it worked, and they wanted to get it right before moving on to the next 4 steps... and fuck the road map. there is a lot of shit here about implementation of formal methods and comp-sci stuff I don't understand, other than it was going to be slow to develop - but good. I personally have always been in the camp of 'do it right the first time'.

In this time they also developed the Hardfork combinator, Which is one of the most outrageous pieces of software ever created. it allows for the cardano network to upgrade the whole protocol with new functionality, while still having backwards compatability for all the old wallets, and every old feature that has existed. No more BSV BCH BTD BTG or ETC everytime the community had an argument. When you look at all the issues that ETH had moving to POS, and BTC had trying to implement lightning, Cardano's solution was simply beautiful and painless.

2 . Shelley: in 2020 they used the HFC to launch staking and Decentralisation finally arrived. anyone who wanted to run a stake pool, could. anyone who wanted to delegate to that pool, could. no locking up of tokens, no handing over custodity, no limtations - a feature that ETH just delayed again. Byron wallets are still around and functioning today - in fact many exchanges still use them.

This staking mechanism allowed for ISPOs to rise up (initial stake pool offering). if you had an idea and wanted to fund it, people could simply stake to your pool, and get rewarded with tokens for your project. you keep the ADA, they get the tokens you minted for basically free. Tokens on cardano are treated equal to ADA, as Native Assets, and the fees to move them about are the same 0.17 ADA that it has been from the start. some of these went well.....some failed miserably - such is life in the tech world.

3 . Gougen: smart contracts finally arrived in 2021; a full 6 years behind ETHs own smart contract system. IOHK created several different languages, Marlowe, Plutus, and a few new interesting protocols like Iele (which never worked and never hit mainnet). But these languages were by modern standards hard to use and they were slow to develop....BUT they were good. no one on cardano talks about hacks, or leaks, or breaches, or contract bugs or points of vulnerability - because apart from a few that were caught before implementation...there has only been one - due to exposure to the Solana hack.

4 and 5 are still being developed. That is Basho with scalability and governance with Voltaire.

SO What does cardano look like now?

Well it has AMM dexes accessable directly in the wallet to swap tokens without going to said dex.

It has dex agrigators so you can get the best price and liquidity across the whole market of all the dexes without shopping around - all within your wallet.

The wallet connection to Dapps is seamless and secure.

It has all the usual NFTs and tokens anyone could ever want, with cheap minting fees, minimal congestion due the the First Come First Served system. But they seem to be a little better. NFTs can have automatic royalty payments to the creator, ADA locked into smart contracts can still be staked, reward tokens can be redeemed with no fuss... and fees are always known before sending, and usually always the same 0.17xxx.

It has a billion dollar treasury system to fund new projects voted on by the community by weight of their stake. 1 ADA = 1 vote. Within this system known as Catalyst, there is a hierarchy of users who review and screen proposals before the community vote - and are rewarded for their efforts in ADA.

AND it doesnt have a single L2 to make any of this possible. all of this is still running on the core protocol and the community is waiting for the implementation of Hydra - the scaling solution

The Big argument within the cardano space at the moment is around Contingent staking - whether we allow stakepool operators to deny delegators based on a variety of factors so that those stake pools can meet the KYC or money and tax regulations within the country that they operate. A stakepool was designed to be a business, and as such a business should reserve the right to refuse service.

But does that not also fly in the face of the crypto utopia that we have been striving for? will that not lead to a china-esque surveillance state?....probably not....but it might give an authoritarian state the tools to implement one with much lower effort.

Cardano is also finalising the governance voting structure for the protocol. If the community dont want CH and IOHK in charge anymore, well we can ellect a different dev team to manage the protocol - on chain, without KYC. Do we want a new feature? well now we can all vote on that feature. Do we want to change the fee structure? vote! Do we want to change the protocol so token burning can occur? VOTE!

Do you not have enough time to bother keeping up and voting on all this shit? well you can delegate your vote to someone you think shares your interests.

The fact that these are the arguments within the cardano community, while ETH is still trying to work out if it wants to unlock tokens feels worlds apart - and the reason why I think Cardano is now ahead of ETH in both development and vision.

I cant sleep. so if anyone has questions then Ill be happy to answer them (i didnt even get to the Midnight sidechain, world mobile, Empowa or any of the promissing projects that actually exist on cardano)