Cardano (ADA) is a decentralized Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain founded in 2015 by Charles Hoskinson, designed to be more efficient than PoW blockchains like Bitcoin. It uses and rewards cryptocurrency for work done to review and expand the historical blockchain record. Cardano aims to evolve into a system for decentralized applications (dApps) with multiple use cases governed by stakers. The blockchain’s native token, Ada, is named after Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, an English aristocrat commonly regarded as the first computer programmer.

Cardano has undergone four notable hard forks in its history: the Shelley, Alonzo, Vasil, and Valentine hard forks. The Shelley hard fork transitioned Cardano from a federated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (fBFT) consensus mechanism to a more decentralized PoS consensus mechanism called Ouroboros. The Alonzo hard fork enabled smart contracts on the Cardano blockchain for the first time, opening up the possibility for a wide range of dApps to be built on Cardano. The Vasil hard fork brought scalability upgrades to further improve dApp functionality.

Cardano and Ethereum are both used for responsive applications and aim to build a connected system similar to the Apple and Android store but decentralized. Cardano’s PoS consensus mechanism relies on staking to validate transactions and reward cryptocurrency to validators, making its validation process more accessible to the average user than Bitcoin’s PoW.

Cardano is designed to be developed in “eras” named after notable figures in poetry and computer science history: Byron, Shelley, Goguen, Basho, and Voltaire. The all-time high price for Cardano was about $3.16 on September 2, 2021.