Cardano, the eighth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has been gaining popularity and attention for its innovative and ambitious vision of creating a decentralized platform that can run smart contracts, digital identities, decentralized applications and more.
But what makes Cardano different from other blockchain platforms? And how does Cardano achieve its goals of scalability, security, interoperability and sustainability?
To answer these questions, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson useв an analogy from the popular sci-fi TV series "Westworld," a futuristic amusement park populated by android hosts that cater to the fantasies of human guests.
To explain his point, Hoskinson recalled a scene where Dr. Robert Ford, the brilliant creator of Westworld Park, explained how magic was made.
Hoskinson useв this scene to explain how Cardano contrasts with the rest of the crypto industry, further adding: "What we do is subtle. And that's what makes all the difference."
Cardano's network growth is highlighted in various metrics. Per the most recent weekly report by Cardano builder Input Output Global, the total number of transactions has reached 85.8 million. Not only that, the number of native tokens has seen growth, currently reaching 9.67 million. These were minted across 105,516 token policies. One hundred sixty projects have been launched so far on Cardano, while 1,327 are in various phases of development on the blockchain.
Developments are also ongoing. For instance, work on SanchoNet functionality is ongoing. Mithril is working on a new data type for certifying Cardano transactions within Mithril networks and enhanced client CLI output.
The Mithril team made progress in supporting the verification of Cardano transactions in the browser with the WASM client. The Hydra team also made significant progress with the model-based testing framework in the past week.
At the time of writing, Cardano's ADA was down 1.75% in the last 24 hours to $0.581, mirroring the general market declines.