Cardano (ADA) is a decentralized platform that will allow complex programmable transfers of value in a secure and scalable fashion. Founded by Charles Hoskinson, its development started in 2015, and it then raised around $60 million in an ICO in 2017 before its release. Hoskinson was also one of the founders of Ethereum. Cardano is reportedly the first blockchain platform to evolve out of a scientific philosophy and a research-first driven approach, and one of the first to be built in the Haskell programming language. Cardano is developing a smart contract platform which seeks to deliver more advanced features than any protocol previously developed. The development team consists of a large global collective of expert engineers and researchers. The protocol reportedly features a layered blockchain software stack that is flexible, scalable and is being developed with the most rigorous academic and commercial software standards in the industry. Cardano will use a democratic governance system that allows the project to evolve over time, and fund itself sustainably through a treasury system. Cardano also notes that it will combine users’ need for privacy with regulation, so that Cardano’s style of regulated computing will foster greater financial inclusion.
Cardano is supported by three organizations that are separate in both ownership and leadership. The Cardano Foundation is an independent, Swiss-based organization that oversees the development of the Cardano ecosystem, IOHK designs and builds Cardano and Emurgo is the for-profit arm that supports Cardano with commercial ventures. Cardano’s roadmap for development has been divided into five eras: Byron, Shelley, Goguen, Basho and Voltaire. While each separate era has its own set of functionalities that will be developed and supported in multiple code releases in a sequential order, the development of each era is parallel and simultaneous across the different systems. Cardano also has its own block explorer, which allows users to check the history of ADA transactions that are publicly recorded on the blockchain.
