Cardano is one of the most efficient blockchains in the industry. With high scalability features and an environmentally friendly ecosystem, it makes fast transactions possible, pushing the native token to reach the top cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. But Cardano is special also because it has been peer-reviewed, meaning the team developed it based on evidence-based methods.
Therefore, making an ADA price prediction should include Cardano’s commitment to including relevant research and specifications in the consensus mechanism, environmentally friendly decentralization, and smart contract functionality.
Despite its growing ecosystem and popularity, Cardano struggles with limited liquidity, low transaction volume, and an underdeveloped DeFi infrastructure. Hence, the team behind it designed a roadmap that will help manage all these challenges and make Cardano a real competitor. Let’s see what it’s about.
Explaining Cardano concepts
Cardano is a network made to facilitate transactions, but due to the market’s expansion, it could also tap into various aspects like decentralization. Still, no pursuit was done without academic research and rigorous testing, which is why the development phase is so important. This includes a high-level suite of features, including the ledger, the intra-era hard fork, and the consensus mechanism.
Cardano uses a consensus based on a hard fork called Ouroboros. This provably secure proof-of-stake protocol rewards network participants through staking pools or delegating a stake in ADA to other stake pools.
Considering the academic research approach used in developing the asset and the blockchain, a similar strategy is employed within the roadmap development:
- Prototyping allows the team of experts to experiment with different functions and implementations;
- Technical specifications are driven by research and prototyping results, which are important for the final code implementations;
- The formal development methods include mathematical techniques for testing the software;
- The functional programming involves different languages like Haskell that help minimize human errors;
Cardano has employed five development phases, so let’s dive in.
Byron
The Byron era is the beginning of Cardano, during which users could buy and sell the ADA cryptocurrency for the first time in 2017. The blockchain started with the Ouroboros consensus protocol, which evolved as the first proof-of-stake protocol based on academic research.
During this period, other innovative features, like the Daedalus wallet designed for ADA or the Yoroi wallet for daily quick transactions, appeared on the network. Therefore, the Byron era helped build the community and establish the underlying Cardano technology. From a small group of crypto enthusiasts who got involved in creating a decentralized network, Cardano became the leader by market capitalization.
Shelley
The Shelley era followed, and there was much to work on. The transition from Byron to Shelley meant growing and operating without service interruptions. This era also made it possible for network participants to run nodes and contribute to Cardano’s decentralization.
During Shelley, delegation and incentive schemes were introduced to reward users so they could delegate ADA to stake pools. At the end of this era, Cardano was considerably more decentralized than other established blockchains, and it also used less energy than networks based on the proof-of-work consensus mechanism. The fully distributed network reached popularity and encouraged greater decentralization.
Goguen
Goguen took things forward by introducing smart contracts, therefore adding the ability for users to create decentralized applications (dApps) with Plutus. The tool was a purpose-built smart contract development language that used Haskell to test, program, and improve dApps to make them more accessible to the audience.
Cardano expanded with the help of Marlowe, a domain-specific language (DLS), and the Marlowe Playground, an application-building platform that simplified the process of developing smart contracts for non-programmers as well. Another interesting addition to Cardano was the multi-currency ledger through which users could create natively supported tokens so they could integrate smart contracts and dApps with various cryptocurrencies.
Basho
The fourth stage of the Cardano roadmap is called Basho and focuses solely on scaling. It aimed to support transaction throughput without affecting decentralization through the Vasil hard fork. Therefore, Basho introduced sidechains, or new blockchains, that could extend the main chain’s capabilities.
Sidechains increased the network’s capacities through a UTXO (unspent transaction output) model. Still, an account-based model was also introduced to push for interoperability and support an increasing number of Cardano use cases. These updates helped the network upgrade its infrastructure and scale sustainably without compromising decentralization or network security.
Voltaire
Last but not least, Voltaire is the final touch to the roadmap. The update introduced the Chang hard fork in September 2024, and it successfully adapted the decentralized governance aspirations through voting and new technical standards.
For example, Voltaire addressed encoding through a “sum of products” that will boost the execution of small scripts. However, voting rights have genuinely contributed to Cardano’s decentralization by allowing ADA holders to have a right to say regarding proposals, such as protocol adjustments.
Cardano continues evolving
While some minor changes might occur to the Voltaire upgrade, the roadmap has essentially ended, delivering one of the most efficient blockchains in the industry. However, the team behind the ledger continues to work on Cardano, and these details can be checked on Essential Cardano, the website where new and old community members can learn more about it.
Weekly development reports include key highlights and statistics to date, showing the steadfast commitment to improving and being transparent to users. For example, in some of the latest reports, we notice updates linked with improved Plutus language, reaching 1000 TPS in simulations for the Leios network bandwidth and settling registration for the Cardano Days event in Athens, Greece.
Ecosystem updates are frequent and well-explained, which highlights the research nature of the Cardano team. Thus, the project is unique in the crypto industry.
Final considerations
Cardano is a public decentralized network whose native cryptocurrency became popular for fast and affordable transactions. The team behind it prides itself on an innovative approach based on research, mathematics, and scalable technologies, on top of which it built the Ouroboros consensus mechanism. Cardano has a diverse programming ecosystem where developers of all experiences can create smart contracts and contribute to the dApp marketplace. All of these features were achieved through the five updates in road development.