Saturday, August 20, 2022

Cardano Note I Wrote As A First-Year User

Cardano Recommended Videos

The future will be decentralized by Charles Hoskinson


TED Talk posted in 2014. How can blockchain and smart contracts solve the financial problems of hundreds of millions of people? Seven years later now, I still feel it has not faded.

IOHK | Cardano whiteboard; overview with Charles Hoskinson


Whiteboard posted in 2017. How will Cardano solve the scalability, interoperability, and sustainability issues of Bitcoin and Ethereum? Cardano’s great strengths are peer-reviewed papers and high-quality guaranteed code.


Cardano Overview

The following referrs to the (then) video, which remains largely consistent as of 2022, with most of it actually being developed.

The 1st Generation of Cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin

The problem that Bitcoin tried to solve was whether it was possible to create rare and tradable decentralized money by using blockchain without a trusted third party or a trusted intermediary.

The 2nd Generation Blockchain: Ethereum

Actual remittance is not just a transfer of money, but there are terms of use.
There are contracts and conditions such as “You will only get paid if you mow my lawn" and “If you repair the roof, you will get paid".

At Ethereum, contract information and processing can be written to the blockchain as a program called smart contract.

When Alice sends money to Bob, all these conditions can be embedded in the transaction and executed.

The 3rd Generation Blockchain: Cardano

It was not possible to scale from millions of users to tens of millions of users on Ethereum.

All cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum, are struggling with governance. It splits like Ethereum and Ethereum Classic, Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash to resolve disagreements.

Sustainability is also important. What should I do with the funds to develop the chain and grow the ecosystem when the funds for the project by ICO are exhausted?

Cardano is being developed to solve these challenges.

While utilizing the functions and experience cultivated through the 1st and 2nd generations, they will add many new concepts and technologies at the same time.

Features of Cardano

  • All scientific and academic papers that lead to the solution of various problems have been peer-reviewed.
  • They have adopted the same method as the development of Shinkansen and jet engines, where system malfunctions can lead to casualties, and a highly guaranteed code implementation method.
  • The PoS (proof-of-stake) method is used as consensus algorithm instead of the PoW (proof-of-work method). It allows for significantly lower power requirements.
  • For the sake of "decentralization," scalability, interoperability, and sustainability are strongly focused.

1. Scalability

The more participants you have in your network, the more transactions you have and the more data you have.

Blockchain is expected to store data permanently.

Therefore, the important point is how many transmissions and receptions can be recorded and transactions can be included in the block within a certain period and can be handled sustainably.

Ouroboros is backed by a provable peer-reviewed white paper. It is one of the most efficient consensus protocols with a focus on security. It has a modular design that assumes expansion.

While Bitcoin requires a lot of computational resources to form blocks, they choose slot leaders that are selected randomly to generate blocks like lottery.

These slot readers perform exactly the same functions as Bitcoin miners, so they can be operated at a very low cost without compromising security levels. In that respect, Cardano is clean block chain.

In addition, slot readers can maintain different blocks and different chains at the same time with the same level of security.

2. Interoperability

Interoperability is to communicate with different systems such as Ethereum and traditional banking networks.

If they do not have common means, the value will be subdivided.

Cardano emphasizes interoperability, such as the ability to move and use Ethereum-created tokens to the Cardano ecosystem, for example with an ERC20 converter.

They will build a cross-chain platform that allows reverse movement of Ethereum from Cardano.

Bitcoin, Ethereum remains, banks untouched, Cardano provides a bridge between them.

3. Sustainability

Cardano’s blockchain is an open and free infrastructure, like the internet.

Therefore, there is a problem of how to continuously raise funds when maintaining and expanding functions.

When a company invests, it is good in the short term, but there are also problems such as the company having power in the long term.

Cardano will introduce a treasury system to deposit money in decentralized bank accounts and increase funds through inflation.

Project catalysts can make project proposals and fund good proposals by democratic voting.

Because of this process, they will consider better improvements and prevent splitting like Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash.

A Reading To Understand What's Cardano


Distributed Ledger: A common database owned by the servers that generate the blockchain. Information such as transmission and reception of ADA is written, it cannot be tampered with, and it will not be rewritten forever in the future.

Past Mainnet Hard Fork Events 

The date is Japan time (UTC + 9)

  • 2020/7/29 - Shelly main net started
  • 2020/8/13 - First block generation in public
  • 2020/12/7 - Change parameter K = 500 (Saturation level of stake pool is about 64M) 
  • 202012/17 - Allegra hard fork (Token locking
  • 2021/3/2 - Mary hard fork (Multi-asset)
  • 2021/4/1 - Parameter d = 0 (Block generation is fully decentralized)
  • 2021/9/13 - Alonzo hard fork (Smart contracts support)
  • 2022/9/22- Vasil hard fork(Smart contract optimization, cost model change)

Useful Tools And Websites

Sites, communities, websites, etc. that have been a great help to me.

Major Websites

  • cardano.org - A blockchain platform designed and built by Charles Hoskinson and a talented team of IOHK. It is safe, scalable, and designed to be robust enough to support fundamental changes.
  • IOHK - (Currently IOG) The research content including numerous papers and the blog where you can find out about the future of Cardano. IOHK Technical Support has useful information as a user.
  • Cardano Foundation - The Cardano Foundation will work to popularize and standardize Cardano.
  • Emurgo - They invest in and support startups and venture companies related to Cardano.
  • Roadmap - Stages of development are named Byron, Shelley, Goguen, Basho, and Voltaire.

Official Wallets

  • Daedalus wallet - Cardano’s full node wallet. It is a desktop type and synchronizes with the blockchain. Various functions are implemented as well as remittance and delegation to the stake pool. You can always keep your money safe.
  • Yoroi Wallet - A light wallet for Cardano. You don’t need to download the blockchain to open the wallet. Therefore, you can send and receive transactions immediately. You can select the pool to delegate the stake to. A mobile version has also been released.

Explorer

  • Cardanoscan - You can see the statistics at a glance in an easy-to-read layout.
  • Cexplorer.io - Various statistics of the network. Functions of linking with the stake pool.
  • Poolpeek - Search by specifying conditions, physical locations of pools, etc.
  • pool.pm - You can visually enjoy watching the flow of ADA and block generation. You can also connect to the wallet and delegate.
  • PoolTool - A simple yet powerful tool. Supports multi-lingual. There is also a smartphone app provided.

Community

  • SPO Japan Guild -  Important and valuable information in the operation of the stake pool is shared. There are regular meetings online, meetups, and various other activities. The site displays a list of pools that have been confirmed to be in operation at regular intervals. If you want to support Japanese pools, why not look for a pool here?
  • Alliance - An alliance that supports small pools. By becoming a co-owner, they help small pools to start up. SUGAR stake pool has been indebted for more than half a year. If you are interested in alliances at SPO, you may be able to expand the world by participating.
  • Cardano Hubs - Through Twitter, I was informed and registered to be a member of. You can list various activities related to Cardano such as stake pools and artist,etc.
  • Super Secret Group - I learned a lot from this group and I was finally able to generate my first block. I will never forget the excitement at that time. It is a rush temple of operators run by CardanoGuru.
  • Cardanocube - Lists dApps and projects created on Cardano. It is categorized and the whole picture is easy to see at a glance! There is also an overview of each project.

There are so many informational sites that it is impossible to list them all here. Please try to find your favorite site or wallet!

Thank you for reading all the way to the end!

If you think it was useful, please help us, a single pool contributing to Cardano decentralization, and consider delegating to the SUGAR stake pool.

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