Cardano Blockchain FAQ

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1.​Why do we choose Cardano? What are its advantages?​
2.​Why Cardano regarding the critics it receives from everywhere?​
3.​Why is timing particularly interesting to invest in Cardano projects?​
4.​Is it possible to mine and mint the crypto-currency?​
5.​Is the code available in open source? Where can I see it? Is it regularly commented?​
6.​How is Cardano blockchain working?​
Why do we choose Cardano? What are its advantages?
Alignment with their social vision & link with Africa Green Blockchain: Ouroboros protocol: 1000x less energy consuming than BTC Action in favor of the carbon neutrality Highly secure, scalable and peer-reviewed network Deterministic nature: functional programming + Extended Unspent Transaction Output (eUTXO) model
For additional info: https://cardashift.medium.com/the-3-reasons-why-we-choose-cardano-to-maximize-our-impact-28b2e914e894
Why Cardano regarding the critics it receives from everywhere?
Most of the attacks against Cardano are “surface attacks”.
“Where are the Dapps ?”
Cardano just released the Smart Contract functionality as of September 2021. Some simple Dapps have emerged since then. But it lacks certain tools to facilitate the development of more complicated use cases for now (although it is possible to bypass these tools, but it can be less secure and time consuming). We knew that and we are well aligned with the incremental and rigorous approach taken by IOHK. We are confident that by the time we will close our ICO, we will have the minimum tooling to deliver first versions of our products.
“Cardano is only capable of 6.5 transactions per second”
Pointing this as a limitation is misleading. The Cardano blockchain is designed to best perform at 100% saturation. Average network usage is less than 30%. As of today we only reached this 100% usage 2 times. Cardano network is very resilient and protocol parameters are fast to adapt if needed (block time, block size, transaction size,...). By the time traffic persistently increases to higher levels, the network will adjust parameters to face the demand.
“Dapps are limited to one user interaction per block”
That is not true. This FUD was generated by the deployment of a naive implementation of the Uniswap protocol on the Cardano eUTxO model which is completely different from Ethereum’s account model. As a new paradigm, developers will need to adapt and rethink the way they are developing Dapps, but that’s how we progress, led by pioneers.
“Cardano developments take far too long”
It is true that Cardano took time to build the blockchain’s foundations with code rewriting due to poor quality code delivered by some teams. It took a year to deploy the staking capabilities and another for the smart contracts infrastructure. But now that it is possible to develop Dapps on Cardano, the responsibility is not on IOHK alone, it is time for us all, the Cardano community, to build and prove the quality of the Cardano blockchain.
If you go beyond critics and dig into IOHK and Cardano’s ecosystem work, you will find that the blockchain lies on strong foundations backed by high level engineering and academic research. Of course nothing compares to the reality on the ground, but until now everything has gone well on mainnet and now let’s demonstrate the same for the smart contracts era.
Why is timing particularly interesting to invest in Cardano projects?
We are now at the cornerstone of the evolution of the Cardano ecosystem. It is now reaching a particularly interesting technological maturity (Goguen update on Smart-Contract), Hydra scalability, DEX and DeFi.
In addition, many long-term partnerships with Africa and emerging countries (DID, Impact) are emerging.
Finally, because their long-term vision and roadmap are particularly ambitious and are starting to take concrete shape.
Is it possible to mine and mint the crypto-currency?
Cardano has a fixed supply of $45b. As opposed to Bitcoin, the total ADA supply is already minted. A fraction of this supply is in a “treasury” controlled by the protocol to distribute staking rewards. That being said, it is not possible to mint new ADAs.
Cardashift has adopted the same strategy. The fixed supply of 1b CLAP is already minted. This amount will be splitted into different accounts for the team, the treasury, the ambassadors, ...
We are still looking for the best way to store the treasury CLAPs in the most decentralized and secured way, a “DAO wallet” in a sense.
Is the code available in open source? Where can I see it? Is it regularly commented?
All the code will be open source and accessible through our GitHub.
It will be maintained and regularly commented and people will be able to submit PRs to contribute to the project and its decentralization.
How is Cardano blockchain working?
Cardano blockchain is based on the same ledger model as Bitcoin: the UTxO model.
The UTxO (Unspent Transaction Output) and account-based models are the most commonly used accounting standards in blockchain networks to represent the state of the blockchain.
The UTxO model was designed to imitate the cash system where each user account is composed of “coins” of different values. You can depict a transaction as a coin foundry where you put all your inputs coins then melt them and create new outputs coins (generally 2 outputs, one going to the receiver of your transaction and the other going back to you as a change). That explains the UTxO sigle where the change output you get back is an unspent output from a previous transaction. The account model (used by Ethereum for example) is more like the banking system where user accounts are represented by the balance of tokens they own.
The UTxO model is perfect for the problem it wanted to solve: to create a digitalized trustless cash system. However it lacks certain features to support advanced logic. Namely it is not Turing Complete and doesn’t allow loops.
The UTxO model can be seen as a verification model where the account model is a computational model. The main difference lies in the perimeter of the state used by transactions. On the account model, transactions access the whole blockchain state. On the other hand, UTxO transactions reference every input and output associated with them.
The UTxO model is more deterministic than the “fire and forget” transaction system under the account model. But this feature comes with downsides, mainly that it is more complicated for developers to design Dapps on the UTxO model.
That’s why most blockchain protocols are using the account model. Wishing to leverage the potential of the UTxO model, IOHK teams worked on an extended UTxO model (eUTxO) that brings full Smart Contract capacity to Cardano blockchain.
The eUTxO model is now implemented on the Cardano blockchain as of September 2021. It introduces a new paradigm for Smart Contrat developers.
Most of the current Dapps we can see on other account based blockchains can’t be transposed to this new model. For example, some development teams tried to implement concepts from account based blockchains, they hitted blockchain limitations due to the incompatibility between the blockchain and the Dapp models. 
New ways of thinking are needed in order to design efficient Dapps on Cardano. There is an open field for researchers and builders to conceptualize and standardize Dapps on Cardano.