October 19th 2017. For our bi-weekly newsletter visit www.tokenagora.com
Cardano is live and has distributed its $ADA to the world, the token is named after Ada Lovelace, primarily known as the first computer programmer with her recorded annotations on Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine back in 1842, clever name for a more than clever token project.
Conceptualized in Osaka over two years ago, Cardano was highly influenced by the existing crypto-poster childs Bitcoin and back then newcomer Ethereum, this new iteration of blockchain is the brainchild of three main founding entities:
IOHK (Input Output Hong Kong) Corporation on the design and engineering; along with the University of Edinburgh, the University of Athens and the University of Connecticut. iohk.io
Cardano Foundation, Swiss based foundation for leading community, governmental reform and guidance. https://cardanofoundation.org/
Emurgo, Japanese based envangelist, venture capitalist and accelerator. You could say Emurgo is to Cardano as what Consensys LLC is to Ethereum.
emurgo.io
Together the three organizations introduce Cardano as the third generation, proof-of-stake (no mining but minting), most versatile and future proof blockchain platform to date. Principally built on scientific philosophy, distributed systems, mechanism design and cryptography.
The face of Cardano is the venerable Charles Hoskinson of IOHK. You may have heard of Charles from his seasoned track record in crypto, co-founding the entity that created Bitshares, being former CEO of Ethereum during its initial stages and taking partial-lead on the continuation of Ethereum Classic. But Cardano seems to be the focal point for Hoskinson and has been for the past two years through IOHK.
Input Output Hong Kong, as a company presents quite an impressive roster of PhDs, senior researchers, security experts and full stack developers from all across the globe. Upon visiting IOHK.io you can’t help but ask two questions, one…who built their beautiful website? and two, how could such a stacked team not succeed right? Irrespective of Bitcoin’s market cap dominance, we’re still in the very nascent rounds of the blockchain race. As for Cardano it is very encouraging that they aren’t just another batch of .pdfs and have recently launched their livenet, Bootstrap era of Ourboros plus $ADA token is now trading on Bittrex with other exchanges in tow.
IOHK was contracted to develop and maintain Cardano through 2020. IOHK’s ADA holdings is publicly disclosed and visible on the Cardano explorer (click here to view); the tokens are going to be committed to a contracted vesting schedule distributed in thirds, with the first third dispensed, second third after June 2018 and final third in 2019.
Cardano definitely has some of the best and tidiest documentation for any crypto-project out to date, if you have the time and are interested upon reading this, you should spend the time combing through their material. Some of the interesting highlights which defines Cardano’s unique approach to its blockchain design and deployment include:
An original blockchain, not a fork of another and equipped with a diligently designed proof-of-stake consensus system called Ouroboros, the first to be formally peer reviewed and approved by leading Cryptographic communities.
Built on “highly modular functional code” major components of Cardano are written in the software developer-lauded language Haskel, the epitome of functional programming, “better, more secure”. Paired with a virtual machine utilizing K-frame work which will allow developers to write smart contracts in the language of their choosing.
Multi-layer platform both utilizing Ouroboros: Cardano-sl (settlement layer) and Cardano-cl (control layer) separates the value/accounting chain from the computational one. The value chain is where the native $ADA token is transacted and ledgered, while the control layer will be specific towards smart contracts and other computational events. This will provide necessary flexibility to accommodate more privacy, security and regulatory requirements as distinguished between the needs of permissioned vs permissionless ledgers. The two chains will be bridged with a novel side-chain KMZ being developed in house.
Built in treasury system to ensure financial stability in the long term development and maintenance of the blockchain. Treasury system paid for by fees and portion of new ADA minted.
Governance system which is future-proof towards upgrades and major changes; avoiding detrimental, contentious soft/hard forks giving it more robust and amendable features. Voting system involves CIPs, user approved Cardano improvement proposals not just developers.
Like how Ethereum has Solidity language, Cardano will have the Plutus language. Plutus is a strictly typed pure functional programming language used for defining smart contracts in Cardano-cl (control layer) more on this later. The syntax is fairly Haskell-like, but unlike Haskell, the language is eagerly evaluated.
UIAs user issued assets will be similar concept as Ethereum’s ERC20 tokenization format; supposedly with a batch of design performance improvements.
Implementing trusted hardware security modules (HSM) to the protocol stack. We won’t get into details in this post but it involves sealed glass proof (transparent enclaves for data exchange) and some of the same hardware technologies, Intel SGX /ARM Trustzone, trending in today’s discussion around security and integrity of oracle data feeds. The type of data integral to general smart contracts and events. This will play along into Cardano’s plan to integrate light clients onto mobile devices as well.
With its conception in Japan paired with foresight of possible constricting regulatory risks of the West (SEC); Cardano has mainly been targeting the Eastern regions of the world.
Other interesting features include designing scalability solutions by implementing RINA network architecture (vs TCP/IP); one which is gaining traction in some future-internet communities.
As aforementioned there are three major eras of Cardano; Testnet Era (which we’ve passed), currently the network is in the Bootstrap Era (second) in which the first generation of Cardano-sl is live. The POS system Ouroboros is in a restricted mode with many features in-active as the network anticipates further growth and broadening of ADA holders for a wider distribution. The third era will be the Reward Era where the network is expected to be operating in a completely decentralized and trustless mode. The team anticipates staking pools will emerge during the Reward Era, as smaller stakeholders can participate in the reward batches of appending blocks during.
Current Bootstrap era runs the Cardano-sl version known as Byron. The next implementation will be Shelly in 2018 when the network not only will be running in Reward Era but also introducing the Cardano-cl (control layer) where the fancy stuff kicks in, smart contracts, side chains, multi party computation and much more.
Cardano’s roadmap announcement will further clarify dates and how-tos in which new participants, developers can contribute going forward.
One does hope there would be more information on the backgrounds of the other key figures aside from Charles Hoskinson. Who are the people and what are their experiences behind Emurgo? and the Cardano Foundation? How are they planning to onboard developers to contribute to the platform? The incentives for building a community around Cardano? Will there be a strengthening in their efforts to market the technology to European and American markets/populous? Hopefully more of these details will come to light with future announcements and the release of their official roadmap on October 31st.
Cardano definitely has an early reputation and buzz as having a very well thought out, design process which addresses not only the hard lessons learned by existing blockchains and tokens but a sharp intuitive forecast of what’s to come. Hurdles are in sight for the entire space but this team has been rigorous in foreseeing how a sufficient blockchain technology needs to accommodate and on-board both legacy assets, businesses needs and a future world full of multi-chain-cryptocurrencies.
Some key people, stats, facts and links.
Stats/facts:
•There will only be 45Billion ADA ever
•Currently 31+B in circulation
•The remaining 13+B will be created over time by minting as the blockchain grows.
•1 ADA = 1,000,000 lovelaces (6 decimal denomination)
•Initially $62MM raised
•16,000+ members
• currently running Bootstrap Era, Byron generation where limited amount of private nodes are powering the network. (transitioning soon to open public nodes once there is further distribution of substantial $ADA stakeholders)
• Offices located all across the world: Japan, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Korea, USA, Vietnam and more.
Key people involved
• @IOHK_Charles Charles Hoskinson
• @IOHK_Jeremy Jeremy Wood
• Haskell programmer Duncan Coutts head of engineering at IOHK
Tokyo Tech Bernardo David and Rafael Dowsley.”
• @BitcoinByte Michael parsons, chairman of the Cardano foundation.
• 
Links
For more in depth information here are some salient official sites for the Cardano project.
cardanohub.org
cardanodocs.com
whycardano.com
cardanoroadmap.com
https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano-sl
https://github.com/input-output-hk/plutus-prototype
October 19th 2017. For our bi-weekly newsletter visit www.tokenagora.com