Module 13 covers the history of Cardano; its organizations and provides a timeline of all the important events that have taken place up to the present day on the Cardano blockchain.
In this module, we shall move on from staking to look at the history of Cardano and the three organizations behind the blockchain.History of Cardano
Charles Hoskinson first began developing Cardano in 2015 and unveiled the platform in 2017.Prior to this, Charles Hoskinson had been an Ethereum co-founder but left in 2014 due to a disagreement with fellow Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin.
Buterin wanted Ethereum to remain a non-profit organization, while Hoskinson wanted to take venture funding and become a for-profit firm.
Hoskinson went on to co-found IOHK alongside the Cardano Foundation and Emurgo, a blockchain engineering firm whose core business is the development of Cardano.Cardano’s cryptocurrency is named after Ada Lovelace, while the platform itself is named after Gerolamo Cardano.
In the previous modules, we looked at how Cardano provided a solution to the limitations of the second-generation blockchain, Ethereum.These limitations included interoperability, scalability, and sustainability.
The solution to these issues all began with the infamous whiteboard video by Hoskinson.In the video, Hoskinoson explains Cardano’s ideas and ambitions in these three areas.
We recommend you watch this video if you are interested in finding out more about Cardano and it’s overall vision.
Many Cardano supporters refer to this video as their first introduction to the project, which led them to follow and invest in Cardano.
In the beginning, an initial coin offering (ICO) was used to fund Cardano.The currency had a market valuation of $600 million when it first launched.Since its inception, Cardano has overcome some of the crypto market’s biggest issues, such as the slowness and inflexibility of Bitcoin, and also managed to avoid scalability issues such as those experienced on the Ethereum platform.
Five Phases of Cardano
One of the unique aspects of Cardano is that it is released in phases, which is different from other projects.The phased rollout of the blockchain helps Cardano create a more secure and faster infrastructure.Cardano is being rolled out in five different phases, which are described below.
Phase 1 Byron – Foundation
In 2017, the Cardano project was released to the public using the Ouroboros PoS (proof of stake) algorithm.This release allowed users to send and receive money and store ADA coins in the Daedalus wallet.
Phase 2 Shelley – Decentralization
On July 29, 2020, the Cardano Blockchain launched the second phase of development of the highly anticipated Shelley upgrade.This upgrade made Cardano fully decentralized and enabled staking.
Phase 3 Goguen – Smart Contracts
Cardano introduced smart contracts on September 12, 2021 (Alonzo upgrade).
There were three phases of Goguen: Allegra, Mary, and Alonzo.Allegra went live in December 2020 and Mary in March 2021.
In another update, Daedalus went live on April 1, allowing users to send and receive native tokens on Cardano.
Finally, with the Alonzo update, smart contracts are fully utilized and implemented, which has created a lot of excitement in the Cardano community.
Phase 4 Basho – Scaling
The focus of the Basho era is to improve the scalability of the network.One of the most important developments will be sidechains, new blockchains that interact with Cardano and can significantly expand the potential reach of the network.
Phase 5 Voltaire – Control
The Voltaire phase, the final phase of Cardano’s development, will introduce voting for the network’s participants.With this in place, all stakeholders will have the opportunity to have a say in the future of Cardano’s development, allowing the system to become self-sustaining.
Another aspect of the Voltaire phase is the introduction of a treasury system.The Cardano roadmap states, “In order to fund the future development of the network, the Voltaire phase will introduce a treasury system in which a portion of all transaction fees will be pooled to provide funds for development activities carried out; after the voting process.” These changes will serve to make Cardano truly decentralized.Timeline of Other Important Cardano Events
December 2019
ADA holders who acquired coins before November could begin earning staking rewards by helping to test the Shelley upgrade using an incentivized testnet (ITN).
June 2021
Grayscale, the largest crypto asset manager in the world, announced that it would add Cardano (ADA) to its Digital Large Cap Fund.
August 2021
ADA hit a new all-time high of $2.65.
September 12, 2021:
Cardano officially added smart contracts capabilities during the implementation of the “Alonzo” hard fork.
The Three Organizations Behind Cardano
As we know, Cardano is different from other cryptocurrency projects because it’s built on a foundation of peer-reviewed research and takes a much more scientific approach than other blockchains.
There are three organizations behind Cardano:
IOHK (Input-Output Hong Kong)
Cardano Foundation What is IOHK?
IOHK was founded in 2015 by Charles Hoskinson and Jeremy Woods.It is a blockchain infrastructure, research, and development firm based in Hong Kong.It is a fully decentralized organization that delivers evidence-based software development.For government clients, the business creates blockchain infrastructure solutions.It also works with both the public and commercial sectors to provide services.It is the driving force behind the decentralized platform and smart contracts.
John O’Connor(Head of Operations, IOHK) also played a major role in setting up an African focused entity to work at driving adoption and bridge the gap between technologists and academics.He also is an advisor for Ardana.
IOHK offers services such as:
1.
PRISM – It provides a secure environment for issuing credentials and academic certificates.
2.SCAN – It aims to protect users from unapproved pharmaceutical products and counterfeit goods.
3.Trace – Certifies products from the agricultural sector.
The IOHK research group is engaged in global financial systems that face technological challenges as a result of decentralization.
The IOHK research team is made up of renowned academics from around the world.Through collaborative efforts, IOHK encourages research and innovation.Members of the team are encouraged to suggest project ideas and to define agendas, and collaborate.
Cryptography, networks, distributed systems, software engineering, human-computer interaction, programming languages, economics, and trusted hardware are among the IOHK research team’s core interests.EMURGO
EMURGO Global is the Cardano project’s official trading and venture arm and has been registered in Tokyo since June 2017.As a pioneer in the field of Blockchain, EMURGO enables pragmatic solutions by leveraging the “3rd Generation Blockchain Technology – Cardano.”
The EMURGO team works closely with IOHK to promote the adoption of Cardano and the growth of its ecosystem globally by building, investing, and advising projects and organizations that adopt Cardano’s decentralized blockchain ecosystem.
They have a strong presence in Singapore, New York, and Indonesia, and India.
In summary, EMURGO is a global blockchain technology company providing solutions for developers, startups, enterprises, and governments.
They also develop blockchain and smart contracts solutions for organizations.
EMURGO also founded a learning academy in India that strives to turn its students into blockchain experts and drive the adoption of the blockchain ecosystem globally.EMURGO Structure
As wholly-owned subsidiaries of parent company EMURGO Ptd Ltd, this Cardano investment vehicle consists of two separate entities, EMURGO Africa and EMURGO Ventures.
EMURGO Africa
EMURGO Africa seeks to provide seed investment and incubation to regional entrepreneurs so that the Cardano blockchain may be embraced as the technological platform standard in Africa for socially impactful solutions.
EMURGO Ventures
EMURGO Ventures focuses on other developed markets to facilitate the building of solutions and services on Cardano with a capital allocation for seed investments in a variety of Cardano-focused startups and middleware solution companies, including those building decentralized financial services (DeFi), non-fungible token projects (NFT), blockchain developer education tools, and other decentralized applications.Cardano Foundation
The Cardano Foundation is a blockchain and cryptocurrency organization based in Zug, Switzerland.It is setting the direction for a decentralized economy.
It works with regulators in various countries to shape blockchain legislation and commercial standards, and empowers the Cardano community to use the Cardano protocol to solve real-world problems.In essence, the Cardano Foundation is an independent standards body that oversees and monitors the continued development of Cardano and its ecosystem.
As the legal guardian of the protocol and owner of the Cardano brand, it works to drive adoption and create partnerships, grow the community, shape legislation and commercial standards, and ensure stakeholder accountability.The Foundation is also tasked with implementing new ideas on the Cardano platform.Conclusion
One of the unique aspects of Cardano is that it attracts highly academic professionals.
Strange as it may sound, it is indeed unusual for a blockchain to take a scientific, philosophical approach with an intense focus on academia alongside a technical team.
Most other coins copy code from existing coins and do not require intensive research and innovation.
Bitcoin and Ethereum, the two most prominent second-generation blockchains, have dominated the crypto industry in terms of trading volume, market capitalization, and price.Bitcoin has always been a liquid and easy-to-trade cryptocurrency, and Ethereum has similarly dominated the decentralized financial landscape (DeFi).
However, the scalability of both these platforms is an issue.To be precise, both cryptocurrencies require a huge amount of energy to operate.This leads to high “gas fees” on the Ethereum network and very expensive hardware requirements for Bitcoin mining.
However, the third-generation blockchain platform, Cardano, is built on the Ouroboros system, which allows Cardano to solve the problems that currently hinder the Ethereum network.
Cardano’s proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism allows it to consume a fraction of the energy used by proof-of-work (PoW) platforms like Bitcoin and Ethereum.To put these energy savings in context, the Cardano platform has the potential to be four million times more energy-efficient than Bitcoin.
But that’s why Cardano has taken a little longer to bring us this sophisticated technology.
See you in Module 14! .