Ethereum’s co-developer Charles Hoskinson has left the Ethereum project in 2015 after the DAO incident stating that nobody should have that power over a cryptocurrency. Few people knew that during this time he worked on developing a new blockchain which has the potential to compete with Ethereum.

Cardano (ADA) is a project that began as a new idea to change the cryptocurrencies are designed. The team’s focus is set on the entire ecosystem, on innovations and better accounts for the users.

It uses a proof of stake consensus with a secure voting system which is called Ouroboros (a mythological symbol of a serpent eating its own tail). The protocol has been designed by the team of academics led by professor Aggelos Kiayias from the University of Edinburgh.

The innovation in Cardano is the secure cryptographic model which is flexible and it allows other protocols cryptocurrencies to be added to enhance the “functionality”.

Cardano has a new blockchain model, build in the shape of sidechains. This protocol was created by Kiayias and his team after analyzing the problems of other protocols like Ethereum.

For example, if the platform encounters any problems the whole blockchain does not have to suffer cryptocurrencies. The developers can simply remove the malfunctioning sidechain and repair it. This concept makes Cardano a more stable network

“The concept allows for the secure and non-interactive movement of funds from CSL to any Cardano Computation Layer or other blockchain supporting the protocol.”

At the moment the ecosystem is confronted with problems like scalability. Cardano’s consensus algorithm, Ouroboros allows the election of “a quorum of consensus nodes”. In return, the platform can run also traditional cryptocurrencies protocols large in infrastructure.

Cardano’s Value at the moment

The cryptocurrency started to increase in price even though it’s not very well known worldwide. The creation was not made public until recently after the rebranding campaign. The currency was published in 2015 on Coinmarketcap as IOHK (Input Output Hong Kong).

The cryptocurrency is available on ATM machines in Japan, which is the main reason for the price growth. The current market cap is above $740 million and it’s price at almost $0.3 with a total supply of 30 billion tokens. Which can only mean that the altcoin can go in only one direction. Up!

In the recent months, it has been speculated that Cardano is an Ethereum killer due to the new sidechain concept, sustainability and other protocols that aim to solve major issues in the blockchain technology like:

power usage which led to environmental problems;

scalability;

transactional fees.

“The value ledger is called the Cardano Settlement Layer (CSL). As the purpose is to account for value, the roadmap has the following goals:

Support two sets of scripting languages, one to move value and another to enhance overlay protocol support

Provide support for KMZ sidechains to link to other ledgers

Support multiple types of signature including quantum resistant signatures for higher security

Support multiple user issued assets

Achieve true scalability, meaning as more users join, the capabilities of the system increase”

For the moment the team behind Cardano is focusing implementing the steps featured on the roadmap.

Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency.