In 2015, Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson and his colleague Jeremy Wood left the Ethereum Foundation to build their own company, Input Output. In 2017, that company launched Cardano ( ADA -1.52% ), a blockchain powered by the ADA token. Since its debut, its price has soared 4,700%, achieving a market value of $42 billion. That makes Cardano (or ADA) the sixth most valuable cryptocurrency today.

However, Cardano is worth 10 times less than Ethereum, but its developer team is executing an ambitious growth strategy. For that reason, this cryptocurrency still has plenty of potential upsides. Here’s what you should know.

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The five phases of development

Like Ethereum, Cardano is a programmable blockchain, meaning it was designed to support smart contracts (i.e., self-executing computer programs). However, the Cardano developer team has taken a more tactful approach to building the platform, frequently submitting research papers for academic peer review. In fact, the project itself is broken into five distinct phases: Byron, Shelley, Goguen, Basho, and Voltaire.

The first two phases are complete. They focused on building the foundation and decentralizing the network. During that period, Cardano went live featuring a unique proof of stake (PoS) consensus protocol known as Ouroboros. That term refers to an ancient Egyptian symbol depicting a dragon eating its own tail, meant to represent infinity.

In September 2021, the third phase added support for smart contracts, meaning decentralized applications (dApps) and decentralized finance (DeFi) products can now be deployed on the Cardano blockchain. Currently, very few dApps are live, but some 4,000 developers have projects in the works, meaning Cardano could be a thriving ecosystem in the not-too-distant future.

Looking ahead, the fourth and fifth phases — which have not yet been scheduled — will address scalability and governance. During that time, the Cardano developer team plans to implement Ouroboros Hydra, a version of the PoS consensus mechanism that could theoretically boost throughput to 1 million transactions per second (TPS). To understand why that matters, let’s talk about scalability.

The Ouroboros consensus protocol

The Ouroboros consensus protocol breaks time into 20-second slots. During each slot, a network participant (i.e., stake pool) is randomly chosen to verify transaction blocks and add them to the blockchain. Unlike proof of work (PoW) consensus, Ouroboros doesn’t require tremendous amounts of computing power, meaning it’s far more eco-friendly.

However, the Cardano blockchain currently supports just 250 TPS. That’s pretty good compared to Ethereum, which handles about 30 TPS. But it pales in comparison to a global payments network like Visa, which can theoretically handle 24,000 TPS. …….

Source: https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/12/11/my-best-cryptocurrency-to-buy-right-now/