Cardano Breaks New Grounds, Moving Up On Crypto Top 10 Rankings

CARDANO Steps Up To Take The Reins of Smart Contract Possibilities

 

There are many existing platforms for Smart contracts development like Ethereum, Hyperledger, Stellar, Waves, EOS, NEO, TRON, Tezos and many others. All these platforms have unique qualities depending on their operation language and product features. These unique properties determine whether or not a user will select them for use in carrying out smart contracts.

 

Recently, a new smart contract development platform was put forward – Cardano. Cardano is an ambitious, up-and-coming platform built on a proof-of-stake blockchain to provide high scalability and to balance the need to regulating the decentralization and isolation of blockchain technology. The Cardano’s platform is not fully developed; it is still advancing at a slow pace.

 

The masterminders of Cardano conceived it as a platform that would be developed based on research findings. Cardano’s network is operated based on systems and principles put forth by researchers and cryptography experts. Its code base also depends on findings from research to develop. 

 

If a proposal is put forth to be implemented on Cardano’s network, it would have to go through a thorough academic peer review to check for its effectiveness, security and scalability before it can be put on the network. This process requires time; that is the reason while Cardano’s advancement is slow paced.

 

Cardano’s reliance on academic peer review for its coding practice makes it distinctive in the blockchain community. The academic approach taken by Cardano in improving on its technology would hopefully protect against scams, interrupted progress and various forms of scandal present in the blockchain industry- this automatically translates to high security.

 

Cardano’s smart contract platform is not yet up and running, but due to its unique features has been rated by market cap as one of the top 10 cryptocurrencies (out of about 3,000 cryptocurrencies currently in existence). The Cardano project is an exceptional one, although it hasn’t yet been assigned an actual value in terms of results and innovation, if it is executed as planned it will be valued greatly.

 

Unique features of Cardano

The three unique features of Cardano seek to operate with are: High scalability, staunch security and multi-layered architecture.

 

1.      High scalability: Cardano’s scalability design is still in the research and ideation phase, it is yet to be implemented, no smart contract has been so far carried out on Cardano’s network- it is still going through series of tests. Cryptography researchers have been engage to provide ideas that would be used to implement scalability to account for contract management, high user load and scalable consensus.

 

2.      Staunch security: security is an aspect of blockchain technology that should be treated with great care. Hacking a blockchain is close to impossible, but nevertheless possible. There have been recent cases of hackings of blockchain systems, for instance, Verge blockchain was severally hacked and lots of XVGs amounting to millions of dollars was stolen.

 

The masterminds and stakeholders of Cardano wouldn’t want this to happen to their platform, so they stick to their academic process of peer review, so as to make sure every action implemented on their platform wouldn’t have leakages that would tamper with security before being updated on their network.

 

3.      Haskell is the programming language in which Cardano is written. It is a programming language that focuses on security. Haskell is a pure functional programming language which has the feature of Strong static typing i.e. the language does not have state-change issues - programs work parallel to instructions. Programs written with Haskell are easier to secure and are protected from external influence.

4.      Multi-Layered architecture: The buildup of Cardano will be dual-layered and will also have side chains. This dual layer will separate data obtained from transactions from data obtained from contracts while the side chain will make interaction between the two layers and other blockchains possible. The two layers are Cardano Settlement Layer (CSL) and Cardano Computation Layer (CCL). The side chain is also known as the KMZ Sidechains.

 

Anyone is possession of Cardano coin who chooses to stake it can be a slot leader after creating a block. The Cardano Settlement Layer (CSL) is where new blocks are created and confirmed. This layer is where Ouroboros, a secure and verifiable proof-of-stake, is implemented.

 

Cardano users will be able to create their own asset on the platform, because the Cardano Settlement Layer, when implemented, will help Cardano users connect to normal networks through the use of two scripting languages; one scripting language will be used for moving value from one wallet to another and the other for enhancing overlay networking.

 

Unlike Ethereum, where computation of contracts and settlement of transactions happen on the same blockchain, Cardano will make it possible for Computation of contracts and Settlement of transaction to be done on different layers.

 

The Cardano Computation Layer (CCL) will allow Cardano users to compute their contracts (create rules that they will use to evaluate their transactions) and after that they will be able to settle their transactions on the CSL. This process will invest great regulatory power on Cardano users.

 

Most of features of the CCL are yet to be built, much of its functionalities exist as ideas which are still been test-run. On Cardano, smart contracts will be processed on the CCL and these smart contracts will be written with a programming language known as Plutus (like CCL, Plutus is not yet in the maturity phase, it still exists as a prototype).

 

Following the conceptual idea of the basis of Cardano’s development - research, Cardano’s side chains are based on research from three cryptographers: Aggelos Kiayias, Andrew Miller, and Dionyis Zindros.

 

Cardano’s side chain is also called KMZ side chain (from the names of the cryptographers). Further research from the Universities of Edinburgh and Athens have shown that the KMZ side chain has well founded potentials of compressing data from other block chains, prevent double spending and also allow cross-transactions.

 

In conclusion, the use of Academic research in creation of smart contract platforms, as with Cardano, is a welcome development. If Cardano can implement all the features it has put forth then it is actually going to be a great platform, if not the best.