Cardano recently reached its all-time high with a price of $2.97 on August 23. This rapid surge placed it third on CoinMarketCap, surpassed only by Bitcoin and Ethereum. Why did Cardano grow so quickly? To explain this, it is necessary to know what’s special about this project and why it is so highly regarded.  To start, it is important to point out that Cardano is the biggest proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain at the moment. PoS is considered to be a more environmentally friendly alternative to proof-of-work (PoW), the consensus mechanism used by Bitcoin, Ethereum, and many popular blockchains. It achieves consensus by randomly selecting transaction validators according to the number of tokens they are staking. PoW, on the other hand, requires validators to run resource-intensive devices. In the current landscape, with a growing concern about climate change among the population, Bitcoin and Ethereum have been targeted as major pollutants and contributors to global warming. Thus, users and investors value Cardano’s eco-friendly approach. Cardano has entered the final, critical stage prior to the platform’s much-publicized Alonzo upgrade, according to blockchain research and engineering company Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK). IOHK has submitted an upgrade proposal to the Cardano testnet to “hardfork the chain into the Alonzo era,” according to a Twitter post from the company.

This announcement, made by the team on August 13, states that they will implement the Alonzo upgrade in September. This upgrade will introduce smart contract features which will allow decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols to run on the Cardano blockchain. Although Ethereum is still the most popular platform for DeFi and dapps, throughput limitations hinder its performance. The Binance Smart Chain (BSC), which also boasts a large dapp ecosystem and is designed to overcome these issues, had also achieved third position on CoinMarketCap prior to Cardano taking the spot. Cardano overtook BSC on the strength of the aforementioned announcement. The blockchain could look better for investors because it’s more decentralized, a fact that could drive the flip.

Cardano roadmap – the Alfonzo upgrade

Cardano said that Alfonzo will be deployed on its testnet on September 12, only a couple of weeks from now. Once this happens, developers will be able to create smart contracts and dapps on the blockchain. This upgrade marks the end of the Shelley era (a period of growth and development for the network) and the beginning of the Goguen era with the integration of smart contracts. The Goguen era represents a big step forwards in capability for the Cardano network, and it’s the third era in a five-stage development roadmap. Along with support for smart contracts, Alfonzo also introduces the Plutus Platform, a building environment where any users can create dapps. Plutus works with Haskell, the same programming language as the Cardano mainnet, so there will be no issues implementing the code. The integration will take place using Plutus Core, a programming language that compiles the smart contract and makes it easier for the Cardano blockchain to interpret it. A domain-specific language called Marlowe will also be introduced to allow any user to test their codes, even if they’re not very programming-savvy. Last, the Cardano development team will also introduce an ERC-20 converter, so tokens created on Ethereum using this standard can be converted and transferred to the Cardano blockchain.

What does it mean for users?

Implementing smart contracts, as we previously said, will allow decentralized applications to run on Cardano, which is planned to have a higher throughput than Ethereum. Cardano intends for its testnet and mainnet to process hundreds of transactions per second (TPS), while Ethereum can only process around 14 TPS. This will mean that, once dapps are built and running, the fees won’t be as high as they are on Ethereum. The network will be more effective for users. If the upcoming ERC-20 compatibility causes a migration of popular projects from Ethereum to Cardano (as happened with BSC and Solana), users will rush to the new blockchain. There are already many projects announcing future developments on the network, and they’ve gathered a lot of hype. Whenever there is enormous excitement around a new technology, both legitimate projects and scams appear. For example, a Reddit user recently raised suspicions around ADAX.PRO, a recent, much-hyped project. Whether or not the claims are true remains to be confirmed, but all users must research well in order to minimize risks to their investments.

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Kirobo considers adding ADA to the platform

We cannot be sure what the outcome of the Alfonzo upgrade will be, but the sentiment throughout the ecosystem is really positive, which has shown in Cardano’s market performance.  Kirobo is always looking to integrate the best and most used assets to its platforms so as to offer the best possible service to all its users. We support a variety of popular cryptocurrencies and tokens – like ETH, BNB, SUSHI, and INCH – and ADA, the Cardano token, may soon join the family. With Kirobo, you can make secure, error-proof transactions by setting a password that the recipient must input in order to withdraw the sent funds. This way, if you discover that you’ve entered the wrong address, you can still recover the tokens and send them again. This feature is also available for the P2P Swap Button, a service allowing two users to swap between any supported tokens. The trade has no extra fee, apart from the gas in Ethereum, and users can choose their own rates. These two aspects together make the Kirobo P2P Swap Button more profitable than other trading alternatives, such as Uniswap and 1INCH.

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