A public, permissionless Layer 1 blockchain built on peer-reviewed research. A collection of open-source, patent-free protocols for value transfer, identity, and governance.
Named after Gerolamo Cardano, the 16th-century Italian physician and mathematician, while its currency ada is named after Ada Lovelace.
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- adaThe native cryptocurrency of the Cardano blockchain, used to pay transaction fees, stake to a pool, and represent voting power in governance.View term
- OuroborosThe family of proof-of-stake consensus protocols that power Cardano, designed with formal security proofs against the known attack catalogue against PoS chains.View term
- eUTXOCardano's extension of the UTXO accounting model; each output can carry datum and script logic, so smart contracts express rules without the shared mutable state used by account-based chains.View term