What are thoughts of the Cardano (ADA) blockchain project?
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Answers below are by Borislav Agapiev, Ofir Paz.
Answered Oct 4th, 2017
Cardano is a bona fide attempt to create a successor to Bitcoin, addressing all of the issues which have surfaced in the last several years, such as difficulty of proof-of-work, flexibility of scripting and smart contracts and speed of transaction.
It has open and transparent goals and is built on Haskell, a very sound choice being a functional language but also an unusual one as not too many are familiar with it.
In terms of new features, it does not seem to break much new ground as opposed to trying to incorporate the best features and practices so far. I guess they are trying to pull a Facebook, which was actually a third wave of social networks, after Friendster and Myspace, who broke through by refining the best out of the previous efforts and adding some incremental new ones.
In terms of their goals, they sound like they are trying to be everything to everyone, including existing big financial players and institutions, and in that respect they are like a Ripple wannabe. IMO that is potentially a significant drawback because such muddled messages do not have good track record of breakthroughs.
Answered December 16th, 2017
Cardano is an ambitious project tackling a large number of problems in the crypto industry. Founded by Charles Hoskinson, co-founder of Ethereum, the project has been developed to compete directly with Bitcoin and Ethereum.
How does Cardano work? Cardano is being developed to use two layers that include a) the ledger of account values, and b) why values are moved from one account to the other.
Layer 1: Cardano Settlement Layer (CSL): The CSL acts as the balance ledger and is the first layer of the platform. The CSL uses a proof-of-stake consensus algorithm to generate new blocks and confirm transactions. It helps in making the blockchain scalable, as the capabilities of the system increase as more users join. For instance, a file hosted by BitTorrent can be downloaded much faster if many peers are available for it. The speed increases because the peers provide resources while also consuming them. A similar technique is applied to Cardano’s CSL.
Layer 2: Cardano Computation Layer (CCL): The focus on why values are moved is one of Cardano’s key goals. It plans to implement this into the blockchain by way of recording transactions location, purpose and origin through a secure method of transferring user data across the blockchain. This data will only be viewable by certain parties, aimed at helping parties abide with acts such as the Anti Money Laundering Act, Anti Terrorist Funding Act and various Data Protection acts. Language: The Cardano team created a new programming language to use to develop smart contracts – Plutus. Additionally, the platform also supports Solidarity, the language behind Ethereum smart contracts. Thus, it seems that Cardano is built for the future and it might witness some interesting developments during times to come. – (AC)
Answered December 3rd, 2017
Cardano (ADA) is one of the most interesting projects at the moment in the cryptocurrency world. The founder Charles Hoskinson and his team has a large experience in the industry. Still, the project is just at the beginning so can’t really say with 100% clarity how the future will turn out for them.
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