Working with Cardano
Cardano in use
- transactions on Cardano in 30 days
- 2,613,142
- attributed to showcased apps
- 323,931
- curated apps to explore
- 103
- years on mainnet
- 9
Snapshot of the 30 days from October 1 to October 31, 2026.
Most active app per category, by on-chain transactions in the same period.
Minswap
Multi-pool decentralized exchange on Cardano
Dano Finance
DeFi platform for lending, borrowing, and trading
Wayup
NFT marketplace by Anvil, keeps JpgStore listings working
Also active, projects without a public app. See the full leaderboard
What makes Cardano different?
Predictable by design
Extended UTXO model
A Cardano transaction spends specific outputs and creates new ones, so its result and its fee can be checked before it is submitted. One transaction can have many inputs and outputs, paying several recipients or settling several trades together. Fees follow a fixed formula set by protocol parameters, not an auction.
Staking without strings
Non-custodial, liquid staking
Delegating ada to a stake pool never moves it out of your wallet. There is no lock-up period, no minimum amount to delegate, and no slashing: the protocol cannot take your ada as a penalty. Registering your stake key takes a refundable deposit, and you can spend or re-delegate at any time.
Governed on the chain itself
On-chain governance and treasury
Protocol changes, treasury spending and even the constitution are proposed and decided on-chain. Ada holders take part by delegating their voting power to a representative or by registering as one themselves. Stake pool operators and a constitutional committee provide checks and balances.
Backed by research
Peer review and formal methods
Cardano's core protocols were designed as academic research first, reviewed by other cryptographers, then implemented. The node is written in Haskell and the ledger is built with formal methods, so the code can be checked against its specification.
Latest News
Stay up to date with the latest developments, announcements, and community updates from the Cardano ecosystem.
Intersect opens feedback on a new approach to the 2027 budget
SPOs face a Linux kernel advisory, node 11.2 is a pre-release with the full Dijkstra set apart from Leios, and CAP-12 had 20 revisions at publication.
Cardano's developer survey asks what builders make and what blocks them
The 2026 edition runs until 30 November in nine languages, with answers recorded on-chain through CIP-179 and a governance Info Action to widen its reach.
Input Output publishes five papers on security, consensus, and governance
5am.earth registered 100,000 farms in India, CIP-0204 and CPS-0037 are completed, PRIME named its first nine funded teams, and Dev Skills v2 is in development.
Intersect returns 115,172 ada of unspent budget to the treasury
The Dijkstra testnet opened to SPOs on node 11.1.3, a portal published decentralization figures, and CAP-12 and CAP-3 reached a fourth draft.
Cardano Foundation asks MiCA review to stay technology-neutral
The Cardano Foundation's reply keeps the MiCA and MiFID II boundary, rejects standalone rules for DeFi and staking, and asks for conflict-of-laws clarity.
TOKEN2049 booth draws 2,000+ visitors as Origins teams build for the agentic economy
Cardano's 108 m² Singapore booth hosted projects from across the ecosystem, the Origins hackathon crowned three agent-payment builds, and CIP-0113 reached mainnet.