Cardano has been under development since 2015 and it was a long journey for both the Cardano fandom and developers to deploy their ideas on the platform. Cardano is now standing only behind Ethereum and Bitcoin in terms of market cap.

Moreover, the Cardano ecosystem is attracting prominent projects to thrive in a favorable environment.

Cardano's Alonzo Upgrade. Detail **here**.

In this article, there is plenty of useful information about the Cardano ecosystem that you need and some predictions from Coin98 Insights.

Cardano overview, the ADA token, and Roadmap.
DeFi Ecosystem on the Cardano blockchain.
Predictions and opportunities with Cardano Ecosystem.

So let’s get started!

Cardano Overview

What is Cardano?

In short, Cardano is a third-generation blockchain that uses the Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism to build a decentralized world of blockchain. With a scientific approach, Cardano is step-by-step assembling each lego to build a complete blockchain from the ground up.

Cardano’s view is to be a platform for developing Decentralized Applications with multi-assets and integration of Smart Contract. As the vision of Cardano is ambitious, the development progress is relatively slow when compared to other existing blockchains.

Key Points

Over 70% of the current circulating ADA tokens are staked for validating blocks in ADA pools which is relatively high and makes ADA tokens somewhat scarce.

Numerous Cardano communities and organizations worldwide are supporting the Cardano ecosystem to create profound impacts over the world.

With the most advanced technologies, such as the PoS consensus mechanism and multi-layered solution, Cardano can be scaled sustainably without sacrificing security features.

A decentralized fund, Project Catalyst lets the Cardano community determine important priorities for ecosystem growth. The higher the pierce of ADA, the more funds the treasury will have. Therefore, Cardano has a powerful decentralized launching platform with a governance system for distributing valuable funds.

Project Catalyst Funds. Source: Cardians

ADA Token

Ticker: ADA.
Blockchain: Cardano.
Consensus: Proof of Stake (PoS).
Algorithm: Ouroboros.
Token Type: Coin.
Smallest unit: 1 Lovelace = 10^-6 ADA.
Max Supply: 45,000,000,000 ADA.
Circulating Supply: 32,143,026,588 ADA.
All-time low ATL: $0.017 (1/10/2017).
Exchanges: Binance, Huobi, Kucoin, Gate, Coinbase, etc.

Exchange and Wallet Support. Source: Cardians

Cardano blockchain

TPS: 250-1000, can be up to 1 million with Hydra (will be discussed later).
Blocktime: 20s.
Total Tx: 13,100,000 Tx (updated 16/09/2021).
Avg. Tx fee: $0.2.
Total stake pools: 2975 (updated 16/09/2021).

Source: cardanoscan.io updated 16/09/2021

DApps on Cardano

In September 2021, the Cardano team will bring Smart Contracts to Cardano via a hard fork combinator event. To contribute to the Cardano ecosystem, countless prominent projects are ready to board the blockchain. When being built on the Cardano blockchain, those DApps will inherit every advanced technology feature of the blockchain.

Partners and Backers

Organizations behind Cardano. Source: Cardians

Cardano Roadmap

Byro 09/2017: It took 3 years to complete. The Cardano team focused on building infrastructure and academic-based architecture of the core network to have it running. And the Daedalus wallet and Yoroi wallet were integrated into the Cardano blockchain, offering customers to store their ADA tokens. Moreover, ADA was listed on most major exchanges.

Shelly 07/2020: Decentralization is an essential phase of the Cardano blockchain. In this phase, the Cardano community was involved in developing nodes to get ADA rewards from staking in pools. There was also the introduction of the Delegation and Incentive Program.

Goguen 09/2021: Smart Contract allows developers and startups all over the world to scale their ideas on the Cardano blockchain regardless of their programming language. In this long-waiting era, developers can create native tokens, multi-asset ledgers, and even issue stablecoins.

Basho: The Cardano platform will scale up fast. With the help of Hydra, the transaction speed will be up to one million TPS. Metadata and multi-chain will come into action on the Cardano blockchain.

Voltaire: called the Governance Era. Ada holders will have the right to vote to decide Cardano’s future changes. On-chain governance means that the Cardano blockchain is completely transferred to the ADA-holding community.

All About Cardano Ecosystem

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is now the hottest keyword in the crypto space; new ideas are published every day. Hence, for readers, it is almost impossible to keep pace with the De-Fi trend. The same happens in the Cardano ecosystem, so this section is categorized according to specific financial applications.

The Cardano Ecosystem is a massive incentive for the ADA tokens to rise. Many new projects decided to distribute their tokens through the fair-launch program. That basically means ADA holders can delegate tokens in the pools of projects or related partners to earn project tokens with or without ADA rewards.

Community

Cardano is now focusing on developing not only the blockchain ecosystem but also the activities of the Cardano community. The Cardano Foundation has directly funded multiple ambitious projects, and some were proposed on Project Catalyst, which forms the profound influence of Cardano.

To grow the social impact of Cardano, several projects are running in Africa, for example, EMPOWA makes property affordable for everyone, or Grow Your Stake transfers all ADA rewards in staking for supplying sustainable water for underdeveloped communities.

In general, Cardano is appreciated for deploying environmental-friendly projects such as Green Stakepool, or recently OpenLitterMap is an open database based on the Cardano metadata, locating trash and litter.

OpenLitterMap: https://openlittermap.com/

Infrastructure

Adapools is a website-based tool for monitoring pools and analyzing data on the Cardano blockchain. ADApools is integrated into Yoroi Wallet and Daedalus Wallet for users’ convenience.

Blockfrost is a web-based platform for providing API services on the Cardano blockchain. It takes away the complexity so that customers can create their own decentralized applications on Cardano.

AMM DEX

In 2021, it is undoubted that DEXs are now trending and can be considered the most successful application of De-Fi in the crypto space. As a result, countless promising DEX projects are being developed on Cardano. DEXs will attract lots of attention and bring the Cardano ecosystem a huge amount of volume and liquidity. There are some notable DEXs as follows:

ADAX is an automated liquidity protocol that is completely decentralized and non-custodial.
Mirqur is a pareto-optimal DEX, enabling users to delegate ADA in their pools to earn ADA and MQR rewards.
SundaeSwap is a native, scalable decentralized exchange on the Cardano blockchain
Orion Protocol is a gateway terminal to attract every CEX, DEX, and swap pool into one decentralized platform
Ray Wallet is a decentralized platform that makes Smart Contract available to everyone.
Minswap is a Vietnamese startup that brings multi-pool decentralized exchange on the Cardano platform.

Decentralized Exchanges on Cardano. Source: Cardians

Derivative DEX

MatrixSwap is a decentralized multi-chain Perpetual Trading deployed on Cardano, Polkadot, and Polygon. In September 2021, they had an IDO launching the MATRIX token on the Cardstarter platform. Being the only derivative trading platform in the Cardano ecosystem is a highly competitive advantage.

IDO Platform

LaunchPad is an amazing idea for startups in need of funds. Investors can now participate in funding startups so that projects will scale their idea as fast as possible when available funding resources come in. As a result, there is no doubt that LaunchPad will be the main factor in attracting capital for the Cardano ecosystem.

Cardstarter is a decentralized accelerator and swapping platform that is also a launchpad for startup projects. For instance, Oracle Charli3 C3 has been a successful IDO on Cardstarter. At present, numerous prominent projects are pending on Cardstarter ready to be launched.
OccamFi is an IDO platform for projects to raise funds.
TrustPad is a multi-chain fundraising platform for new startups, supporting various blockchains such as Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, Polkadot, and Cardano.
Vent Finance is an ideal fundraising platform for startups that has an easy-to-use interface regardless of users’ prior experience in the crypto space.

Oracle

Oracle is an indispensable lego in the Cardano ecosystem. It bridges data of the outside world to the Cardano blockchain in a blink of an eye. There are now 3 great projects developed to be implemented on Cardano.

Charli3 is a decentralized oracle built on Cardano. With an explosive IDO, Charli3 is now an emerging oracle project responsible for gathering real-life data into blockchains via APIs.

Charli3 x Coin98 Wallet. See detail here.

Ergo is an UTXO-based blockchain built to create secure Smart Contracts in the De-Fi space.

Wolfram Alpha is one of Cardano’s partners. Cardano, Ethereum, and Bitcoin’s data are integrated into Wolfram Alpha computational intelligent engine

Lending/Borrowing

Currently, Lending/Borrowing is a widely used application in the De-Fi world. It provides loans with no middlemen or intermediaries. Moreover, the lending protocol offers users to earn interest with their stablecoins or tokens.

MELD is a non-custodial and banking protocol built for lending/borrowing. Now they are opening Initial Stake Pool Offering (ISPO) for ADA delegation to earn MELD tokens.

Liqwid is an open-source and non-custodial interest rate protocol built for Lenders and Borrowers, which was funded by Project Catalyst.

Liqwid's Website: https://liqwid.finance/

Stablecoin

Unlike other blockchains, stablecoins are native tokens issued on the Cardano blockchain, not via Smart Contracts. In the near future, there will be many new types of stablecoins in demand from users in the crypto market.

Stablecoins play an important role in the crypto space because it indicates the money flow of the ecosystem. At present, many asset-backed stablecoins are issued by companies that are unreliable. However, stablecoins that are built on the Cardano platform are fully decentralized.

AgeUSD is a stablecoin that is created in a joint partnership of Emurgo, Ergo, and IOHK on top of the Ergo blockchain
Ardana is an AMM DEX focusing on trading stablecoins and it will issue crypto-backed stablecoins dUSD, dEUR, etc. It utilizes blockchain technologies to apply to the Forex market.
STASIS along with Occam.Fi started a project to issue a new type of stablecoin on the Cardano blockchain for Europe.

Payment

COTI is a payment method integrating Cardano Payments into their websites, e-commerces, and mobile payments. Gradually, Cardano is widely accepted in many payment methods throughout the internet.

Wallets

Cardano Blockchain Insights. Detail here.

Over 1.5 million wallets are currently active, which shows the rising demand for storing ADA tokens on the chain. As a result, numerous non-custodial wallets have supported ADA so users can connect to Centralized Exchanges and DeFi applications when the Cardano mainnet is launched.

Daedalus is an open-source wallet for ADA along with Cardano from the beginning. It is built to grow with Cardano so many holders keep their ADA in Daedalus wallet. Currently, Daedalus is the most popular way of storing ADA.

Yoroi Wallet is a light wallet for Cardano. It is designed and engineered by Emurgo and IOHK. Moreover, Yoroi can be installed on many web browsers, iOS and Android for mobile.

GeroWallet is a wallet running on the Cardano blockchain that allows users to trade, stake, leverage synthetic assets, and buy crypto directly with fiat money. In May 2021, GeroWallet had a successful IDO on Cardstarter; the IDO starting price was 0.008$.

Cardano Blockchain Top-tier Wallets. Source: Cardians

NFT

Besides De-Fi is trending now, we’re also witnessing the rise of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) which are catching lots of media and people’s attention. NFT is a decentralized application where people can create unique things. Some but not all prominent NFT projects are as follows:

Bondly Finance is a digital platform offering collectibles for projects, brands, and artists. However, the system was hacked by an unknown party which caused lots of damage and the token price shrank;
ADAZOO is an NFT game;
CNFT is a Cardano NFT marketplace, a place to mint, buy, sell and trade NFTs;
THEOS is a startup company that offers customers to create their own NFT;
ARTANO use the implementation of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to improve and customize NFTs;

The Cardano Ecosystem will be an ideal area for NFT projects to develop and thrive.

Predictions about Cardano Ecosystem's Future

In the foreseeable future, according to Cardano’s roadmap, it will expand as the Gougen era is bringing Smart Contract for Plutus programming language integration. Many new startup projects are ready to board the Cardano Ecosystem.

Smart Contract on Cardano was released, marking the beginning of the entire blockchain ecosystem. Many developers are currently heading to land their ideas on Cardano instead of sheltering on the Ethereum blockchain.
What happened on Ethereum is likely to be the same on Cardano. The DeFi surge is occurring now and Cardano is catching up. On Cardano, a large number of new DeFi projects will be deployed with various applications such as AMM DEXs, Synthetic Assets, Stablecoins, Derivatives, etc.
Catalyst Project is a great idea for decentralized governance. Through the voting mechanism by the Cardano community, it deploys requested funds and support to startup projects in need. In the Catalyst Project Fund5, 70 projects on Cardano are funded with around 33,000 voting wallets.
Cardano communities are around the world, in every continent, and there are hundreds of staking pools that show the presence of Cardano. Particularly in Vietnam, the Cardano community is huge and they are supporting each other to learn and run staking pools.
There are two more eras for Cardano in order to become a fully decentralized network governed by the community. Correspondingly, the Cardano ecosystem will flourish in quantity and quality.

The crypto space in 2021 is still relatively small in comparison to other traditional financial markets such as stocks and gold. Therefore, there is plenty of space for the crypto market and the Cardano ecosystem to grow.

Investment opportunities with Cardano Ecosystem

ADA Token

At the moment, The ADA price is too bullish and it has multiplied by 30 the price at the prior bottom. Therefore, investors should be careful of the overvalued price and patiently wait for future corrections.

However, the market cap of ADA is about $90 billion and it’s far lower than Ethereum’s market cap of ~$350 billion. In terms of new blockchain technologies, Cardano has future potentials for development, expansion, and opportunities for investors.

Staking ADA

Whenever each epoch is closed and a block is completed, an amount of ADA tokens are rewarded for ADA delegators in those ADA pools. Alternatively, ADA holders can run their own stake pools and invite others to stake their tokens to share the rewards.

Staking supported wallets: Daedalus, Yoroi, and Ray Wallet with the average APR of 5%.

Initial Stake Pool Offering (ISPO)

Instead of launching an IDO, several projects on Cardano decide to distribute their tokens through the fair-launch program - a new distribution mechanism.

When staking in the project’s pools or partners’ pools, fair-launch participants can still earn ADA rewards and receive token airdrops according to their stake. And the more staked ADA in the pool, the more rewards those pool operators can receive to fund their projects.

For instance, Minswap launches its Fair Initial Stake Offering (FISO) with over 105 million ADA in partners’ staking pools. FISO program started at epoch 285, and it will end after 20 epochs, then the rewards are distributed to the ADA delegators.

Native Tokens on Cardano

Investing in prominent projects’ tokens is a traditional and effective way for everyone. The Cardano blockchain is yet to have any token, but multiple pending projects are on the front to board such as YaySwap (YAY), Liqwid Finance (LQ), Ray Network (XRAY), etc.

Besides the pending projects, investors should consider projects on Cardano but issue their tokens on Ethereum like Charli3 (C3), OccamFi (OCC), etc.

As the Cardano ecosystem is rapidly growing, there is much fish in the sea for investors to consider.

IDO

For instance, Cardstarter and OccamFi are the first IDO platforms for Cardano’s startups, but they are now built on the Ethereum blockchain, waiting to deploy on Cardano. In the last few months, they launched Charli3, a Cardano Decentralized Oracle that has exploded in price with return on investment (ROI) over 40 times.

However, to participate in IDOs, investors need a large amount of money because the entrance requirement usually costs a bunch of tokens. And this strategy of investment is considered risky because the launched projects on IDO are sometimes influenced by unexpected factors.

Projects launched on Cardstarter. Source: Cardians

Projects launched on OccamFi. Source: Cardians

Conclusion

To conclude, the Cardano ecosystem is still new and relatively small when compared to other existing ecosystems. The Cardano team is focusing on a bigger vision that is changing the real world with blockchain technology; for example, Cardano effectively impacts Africa with the decentralization process.

To which extent will the Cardano go if it completely becomes decentralized? The network and the Project Catalyst treasury are driven by the Cardano community. All of that will decide the future of the Cardano network.

Finally, that is all you need to know about Cardano and the Cardano ecosystem. I hope you’ve gained valuable information to understand the future potential behind Cardano and the ecosystem.

If you want to know further about Cardano, please leave a comment below and join Coin98 Community for further discussions about Crypto.

Charlie