Cardano was started in 2015 as an effort to change the way cryptocurrencies are designed, developed and distributed. The overall focus beyond a particular set of innovations is to provide a more balanced and sustainable ecosystem that better accounts for the needs of its users as well as other systems seeking integration.
Integration is one of the key reasons, why I believe cardano will become a mainstream currency alongside the likes of Ethereum/Ethereum 2.0 and Bitcoin, the chart below is from coin market cap and shows the dominance of the various coins in the market over the last 5 years and what you'll notice is that the alt coins and bitcoin are about to reach convergence, probably within 2018 or if not, early 2019 we'll have reached that convergence point. Cardano is looking to offer several key technologies to facilitate and embrace this convergence, including providing protocols for atomic swaps between blockchains and possibly even atomic swaps back into the fiat currency systems.
https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/
They are also taking a fresh approach at how PoS and consensus is reached and addressing a number of other aspects of the blockchain technology stack including sidechains, master nodes and a number of other innovations, with the view to revolutionise, disrupt and set a new standard for the technology. Key features of Cardano are:
Separation of accounting and computation into different layers.
Implementation of core components in highly modular functional code.
Small groups of academics and developers competing with peer reviewed research.
Heavy use of interdisciplinary teams including early use of InfoSec experts.
Fast iteration between white papers, implementation and new research required to correct issues discovered during review.
Building in the ability to upgrade post-deployed systems without destroying the network.
Development of a decentralized funding mechanism for future work.
A long-term view on improving the design of cryptocurrencies so they can work on mobile devices with a reasonable and secure user experience.
Bringing stakeholders closer to the operations and maintenance of their cryptocurrency.
Acknowledging the need to account for multiple assets in the same ledger.
Abstracting transactions to include optional metadata in order to better conform to the needs of legacy systems.
Learning from the nearly 1,000 altcoins by embracing features that make sense.
Adopt a standards-driven process inspired by the Internet Engineering Task Force using a dedicated foundation to lock down the final protocol design.
Explore the social elements of commerce.
Find a healthy middle ground for regulators to interact with commerce without compromising some core principles inherited from Bitcoin.
The team behind Cardano also inspire a lot of condfidence given their experience and track recrord in the space and include big hitters such as Charles Hoskinson & Jeremy Wood, formerly with the Ethereum Project, and a host of additional talent backing the project. They also subject all their ideas and research to proper, academic peer review and react to the outcomes. So the project is always under detailed scrutiny as it's being developed.
https://iohk.io/research/library/
The team also publish their audit reports for the public to review, these can be found at
https://www.cardanohub.org/en/audit-report-summary/
The convergence I mentioned earlier is the key here (i believe), as there will shortly come a need to offer this in most coin protocols, after all, using a third party exchange to flip coins between blockchains, is innefficient and centralised, so we ideally want to maintain decentralisation in the space.
To do this, blockchains of differeing currencies should be able to exchange values without the need to use an intermediary. Extending this out into fiat systems could also open a whole host of economic benefits allowing fluid transfer of funds in and out of cryptocurrencies and making the blockchain a viable economic system for the mainsream financial services industry.
The platform also has a very detailed and well explained roadmap available on their website and so far, they seem to be largely on track with it. There is a big upgrade reputedly due this month, code named Shelley which willl bring a bunch of new features and fixes to the platform, enabling a lot fo the planned key phase one features to be deployed to users.
So if you haven't checked out Cardano yet, go and have a read at their white paper, their research papers and their roadmap, if it does indeed become Blockchain 3.0 (as some suggest) it could end up a top 3 crypto in time, it's number 5 just now and it's still very early days.
Follow the project on facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Reddit and keep yourself abreast of their progress, chat with the team, ask questions and get involved
https://www.facebook.com/CardanoFoundation/
https://twitter.com/CardanoStiftung
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbQ9vGfezru1YRI1zDCtTGg
https://www.reddit.com/r/cardano/
I believe that Cardano can be blockchain 3.0 and will be operating in a competitive space with Ethereum 2.0, Eos and Neo all fighting for that particular title, this all combined, gives the consumers choice, creates competition and encourages adoption
*Disclaimer: this is not financial advice, do your own research and invest only if you're confident in the platform, I take no responsiblity for any losses.
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