List of All Cardano Coins and Cryptocurrencies
November 2023

What is Cardano Blockchain?

Cardano is one of the biggest blockchains on the market with a market cap bigger than 32 Billion USD. Cardano was founded in 2017 by Charles Hoskinson who is among the Ethereum founders. Charles Hoskinson worked with Vitalik Buterin, Gavin Wood, and Anthony Di Lorio to create the first smart contract compatible blockchain Ethereum. Charles Hoskinson left the project after having different opinions on some vital issues about the project. Charles Hoskinson wanted Ethereum blockchain to be a for-profit organization while Vitalik wanted it to be non-profit. After leaving the project, Charles came up with a different project and created Cardano blockchain.

Cardano blockchain stands out with its deeply academic work behind its technology. Cardano Foundation is based in Zug, Switzerland. Cardano foundation runs Cardano blockchain and partnered up with many different academic institutions. Cardano foundation has founded research labs in partnered universities from all around the world including Edinburgh, Athens, Tokyo, Wyoming, Connecticut, and Virginia. Cardano’s many features are based on peer-reviewed research.

Cardano is an eco-friendly blockchain, unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains. Cardano uses the proof of stake consensus mechanism but in a different way. People stake ADA coins to delegate validators to create and confirm blocks. It is a unique system called the Ouroboros system that is established on peer-reviewed academic research. It is not very clear how many ADA should be staked to be a validator. Ethereum requires validators to possess at least 32 Ether coins. Cardano’s unique Ouroboros system is a very energy-efficient system, unlike Bitcoin. Cardano is considered one of the eco-friendly green coins.

Smart contracts on Cardano

Smart contracts are enabled in September 2021. Cardano is one of the biggest and most promising blockchains but it was not a smart contract compatible blockchain until 2021 September. Since the Cardano blockchain became the smart contract blockchain, there are many different decentralized applications created on Cardano. Cardano is unfortunately late for smart contracts and the foundation for smart contracts is different than Ethereum. Smart contract developers from Ethereum can not simply create Dapps on Cardano with a similar skill set.

Cardano ecosystem has shown significant growth since the smart contract feature was released. The ecosystem is constantly growing and there are already many Dapps built on the Cardano blockchain by now. Cardano focuses on creating a real-world solution-focused Dapps for the long term.

Many of the biggest Ethereum Dapss rapidly adopted their projects on Cardano after the update. ChainLink, COTI, and ERGO are the leading projects on Cardano from the Ethereum blockchain. Sundae swap is a leading swap on Cardano.

Critics about the Cardano ecosystem

Cardano is late for smart contracts and doesn’t have a very big Dapps ecosystem yet. Cardano is taking it slow when it comes to aggressive growth. Most projects on the market focus on aggressive growth while Cardano is more about building a better ecosystem. Cardano asks for peer review for every feature released on the blockchain.

Cardano also has one of the biggest and most active communities. There are millions of people all around the world participating in Cardano’s development. The community of Cardano is very dedicated to the project that it is criticized to be very blind allegiance. Many fans believe in Cardano to be the last Cryptocurrency standing after all others fall.