Level 3 Blockchain? Cardano ADA
If you’re familiar with the cryptocurrency space you’ve probably heard about ethereum before, the backbone of the decentralized finance ecosystem and second only to bitcoin, the number 1 cryptocurrency as of the writing of this article at over a $1 Trillion Market Cap. After Ethereum was founded several members of the original team broke off and formed their own cryptocurrencies to solve problems they saw with ethereum that were not being addressed. One such situation was Charles Hoskinson, who left to develop a cryptocurrency that, in his mind, was more efficient than the first smart contract programmable money system of Ethereum.
Cardano has several claimed solutions to problems modern cryptocurrencies may (and oftentimes do) deal with such as resistance to quantum computing, throughput performance, energy use, just to name a few. They even plan to have up to one million transactions per second which you can read about here
In July of 2020 Cardano shifted from a Proof of Work system (like that of bitcoin and ethereum) to a proof of stake system, which enabled much more decentralization and reduced the carbon footprint of the network by limiting energy used, well before ethereum 2.0 launched, a point of pride for the team.
Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson has the stated goal that cardano will become a third generation blockchain which will be interoperable with current systems (like Bitcoin and Ethereum)
This month Cardano Goguen is expected to be released which will bring smart contracts to the ecosystem and enable building on top of Cardano’s blockchain. Not only will they have a native project, Plutus, designed for technical developers to build on top of the Cardano blockchain. But they will also have Marlowe, which is “designed to be accessible to non-technical individuals such as business engineers, subject experts, and financial analysts.” according to their website
In terms of future growth Cardano’s founder Charles Hoskinson has threatened to sue and leave the youtube and twitter platforms over twitter scams. This may be incredibly bullish news because the founder could believe that cardano is about to explode in popularity and they want to avoid the same level of scam threats that they’ve had up until this point with cardano not having much development on top of its blockchain. To me this could indicate something big coming down the pipeline with the future of cardano.
As a last note Cardano has a very well established team that is all public, it is also a top project and they have been very public about development so the risk of hack or rugpull in which you’d lose all your money is very small. The only risk would be a major hack but with all the audits and time spent on the project this is a negligible possibility that I am sure the team would sort out if it occurred.
The bullish case for Cardano is that without any development as of yet from Dapp developers or businesses building on top of the blockchain it could still have a lot of positive upside. Cardano already has a market cap comparable to Binnace while the Binance Smart Chain has been live for months with pancake swap and other projects being deployed on top of it. Cardano has yet to launch which could be very bullish if they have a market cap valuing them already at the level of Binance Smart Chain without a proven working product.
The bearish case for Cardano is that for the current market cap of nearly $40 Billion and its number 4 position in the cryptocurrency space, it may not have as much room to grow. Additionally, with Cardano’s Marketcap being Comparable to Binance much of the Defi movement could have already been priced in since the Binance Smart Chain narrative has been trending for months now.