Blockchains are digital records of transactions duplicated and publicly available to anyone interested in taking a look. Transactions are only added to a Blockchain only after they have been verified using a consensus mechanism.
Read more about consensus mechanisms here.
Different Blockchains employ different consensus mechanisms. Cardano is a Blockchain that uses Proof of Stake (PoS) to verify transactions.
Cardano was founded in 2015 by Ethereum’s co-founder Charles Hoskinson, supervised by The Cardano Foundation. “Cardano aims to achieve the scalability, interoperability, and sustainability needed for real-world applications. Cardano is designed to be the platform of choice for the large-scale, mission-critical DApps that will underpin the economy of the future.” – Cardano Roadmap
Cardano Ecosystem
Some of the supported wallets for the Cardano Blockchain are Daedalus wallet (native), Nami, CardWallet, Yoroi (native), CCVault, etc. Cardano can also be stored safely on Cexes and hardware wallets.
Read more about setting up a wallet here.
Cardano Blockchain’s launch of the smart contract mainnet is a game-changer for the Blockchain. It was launched in September 2021 after running its testnet since May 2021.
Since the support for smart contracts, DeFi protocols have begun building on the Blockchain, which caused enormous expansion of its Ecosystem.
According to an article by Olympus Newsletter, and projects listed on CardanoCube, some of the DeFi protocols for the Cardano Blockchain include:
– Exchanges: Muesliswap, Sundaeswap, Minswap, Maladex, etc.
– Launchpads: Cardstarter, Muesliswap, Occamfi, Cardence, Kick.io, etc.
– Others: Occamfi, Ergo, anetaBTC, Ray Network, VyFinance, Berry, Spark, BIO, Meld, Paribus, Liqwid, etc.
The Cardano Blockchain is also not left out in the NFT & Metaverse space as it boasts of projects like Pavia (Metaverse), Dracards (Gaming), Spacebudz, and Zombie Hunters (NFT Projects). They have some NFT marketplaces too. Examples are Jpg.store, Cnft.io, Muesliswap, Adanft, etc.
ADA Token Utility & Tokenomics
The ADA token is the native token of the Cardano Blockchain and is used basically for three things: staking, executing transactions on the Blockchain, and governance.
Token holders can stake to validators and earn rewards in the process. They will later be able to participate in on-chain governing functions of the Blockchain.
ADA token has a max supply of 45,000,000,000 (45 billion) according to CoinGecko and has a circulating supply of 33,820,262,543 (33.82 billion) as of the time of this writing.
Below is the breakdown of ADA tokenomics according to Figment.io:
- Public Sale: 25.9 billion ADA – (57.6%)
- Reserve: 13.9 billion ADA – (30.9%)
- IOHK: 2.46 billion ADA – (5.5%)
- EMURGO: 2.07 billion – (4.6%)
- Cardano Foundation: 640 million ADA – (1.4%)
0.3% of the supply is released every epoch (5 days for the Cardano Blockchain) to reward validators and delegators. This would inflate the supply by 2% every year.
Roadmap
Unlike traditional crypto projects’ roadmaps, the Cardano Blockchain has sectioned its roadmap into five different eras as seen on its Roadmap page.
Each era will bring different functionalities released gradually. Below is an outline of the five eras and their key focus:
- Byron – Foundation
- Shelley – Decentralization
- Goguen – Smart Contracts
- Basho – Scaling
- Voltaire – Governance
Price Predictions for ADA
As of 14th May 2022, the price of ADA is up 14% and currently trading at $0.53 with a 24-hour low of $0.47 and a high of $0.59.
The entire crypto market has suffered a downturn in the last couple of days and is barely recovering. ADA at the time of writing sits at number 7 by market capitalization ranking on CoinGecko with a market cap of $17,853,760,399 (17.8 billion).
ADA can rise back to its All-Time-High of $3, leaving it with a market cap of around $60bn, provided supply stays in range. This is feasible in a full-fledged bull market as other competing Blockchains like Solana, Binance Smart Chain, and Terra have previously surpassed this market cap at their highs.
Disclaimer: This is not financial advice, and this prediction is based solely on a comparison of similar coins. Endeavor to do extensive research before making any financial decision.
