The Cardano project was founded in 2015 by two former core members of Ethereum, Charles hoskinson and Jeremy wood. The name of the Cardano project derives from the Italian mathematician Gerolamo Cardano in the 16th century, while the name of ADA comes from ADA levea, the first programmer in human history.

Bitcoin represents the era of blockchain 1.0, Ethereum opens the era of blockchain 2.0, and Cardano is the representative of blockchain 3.0, aiming to solve the problems of scalability and sustainability in blockchain 2.0. Cardano's goal is to build a layered (settlement layer and compute layer) blockchain system, which is used to solve the problems of currency transaction and smart contract simultaneously.

How does Cardano (ADA) Work?

Cardano mainly uses layered technology and consensus mechanism to solve scalability problems:

Cardano blockchain is divided into two layers, one settlement layer (CSL) and one control layer (CCL).

Settlement layer (CSL): responsible for transferring ADA between accounts and recording trading information. The settlement layer can be considered the foundation of the entire Cardano system.

Control layer (CCL): contains smart contract logic for developers to develop DAPP on this layer.

In terms of consensus mechanism, Cardano adopts a consensus mechanism named Ouroboros among the proof of stake mechanisms. The proof of stake mechanism is to elect the next blocker through election. For the PoS consensus mechanism, the real random election of blockers is the key to ensure the security of the blockchain. In order to realize the randomness of the elected blockers, computer scientist Aggelos Kiayias and his team designed the Ouroboros consensus mechanism.

The Ouroboros consensus mechanism divides time into slots. Each slot randomly selects a "slot leader" to add the blocks generated by this slot to the blockchain. Multiple slots are one epoch, epoch is the overall time frame, and slot is the increment of 20s in epoch. At the end of an epoch, the previous slot leader will select the slot leader of the next epoch, and this cycle will be repeated, just like the Ouroboros.

What is Cardano (ADA) ?

ADA is the native token of the Cardano project, with a total circulation of 45 billion, of which 25 billion ADA are used for the Initial Coin Offering (ICO,) 5 billion are used for the company's operation support, and the remaining 15 billion ADA will continue to be issued. The block awards of Cardano Network are issued every 3.5 minutes. 75% of the ADA generated by each block is used to reward the holders, and 25% is used for project technology development and reward the ecosystem builders.

Cardano (ADA) Crypto Wallet

In addition to placing ADA in the Gate.io exchange to facilitate trading, ADA can also be placed in the crypto wallet.

Daedalus full node desktop wallet and Yoroi light wallet are officially recommended wallets of ADA. Daedalus full node desktop wallet downloads a complete copy of Cardano blockchain and independently validates every transaction in its history; Yoroi light wallet can be used as a web-based extension or mobile application without downloading a copy of the blockchain history.