ADA under the hood - exclusive interview with Cardano Ambassador

What is happening in the Cardano(ADA) world and why the popularity of this blockchain platform is growing - find out in an exclusive interview with the Cardano Ambassador Marin Kramarić.

Cardano was founded by Charles Hoskinson, best known as the co-founder of Ethereum - the largest blockchain platform today. The project represents a new generation of cryptocurrencies that seek to address the shortcomings of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Development of Cardano began in 2015. Two years later, a fundraiser ($ 60 million) was held for further development. Shortly afterward, the network was launched.

In recent years, the network has been centralized and managed by the founders. Things started to change with the activation of the Shelly upgrade which laid the foundations for decentralizing the blockchain network and unlocking long-awaited functionalities.

Where is Cardano now, and what can we expect in the future, you can find out in the interview with Marin Kramarić.

How did your crypto story begin and why did you join the Cardano community as an ambassador?

I got into crypto in the second half of 2017, experimenting and composing a mining rig. At that time, ZEC, later ETH, was still passing. I soon realized that you can't do much with one rig, so I started discovering Bittrex exchange and various altcoins.

As Bittrex was the first exchange platform to list Cardano ADA, I noticed the project relatively early and it immediately caught my attention. Unfortunately, I was not investing at the time.

As prices then rose sharply, and then in 2018 equally steeply began to fall, I decided to sell the rig and invest something in crypto. Then I set a goal to gather as much ADA as possible. Of course, prices were still much higher then than they are today.

Then I decided that I no longer wanted to invest in crypto, but that I wanted to become part of the crypto community and earn cryptocurrencies (this has not yet happened to this day).

I applied to the Cardano Foundation for the first anniversary of Cardano mainnet on November 29, 2018. We held the first successful Cardano meetup in Zagreb and that qualified me to become an Ambassador. As they would say, the rest is history.

What are the main advantages of Cardano in relation to Ethereum? Can Cardano continue to resist the competition coming from various "Ethereum killers" such as Cosmos or Polkadot?

The advantages of Cardano over Ethereum are numerous. Cardano managed to solve the so-called blockchain trilemma without sacrificing any of the three properties, namely safety, speed, and scalability.

Through a true POS (proof of stake) system, Cardano has already brought, and for the near future announced many more radical and innovative solutions, all developed on an academic basis, with peer-review and strict security audits, which guarantees stable, fast, and secure a network that aims to become the world's leading platform for decentralized finance (DeFi) - the world's financial operating system.

With the recent transition to a decentralized POS system, Cardano has only just begun to discover the "trump cards", so I have no dobut at all about Cardano's dominance over time.

How does Cardano plan further development of decentralized applications on the ADA blockchain? When can we expect the first projects on the Cardano network?

With their two new blockchain programming languages ​​Marlowe and Plutus, for the upcoming smart contracts, I think developers and authors of various projects will come themselves because they will simply want to run their applications on a secure, fast, and cheap high-performance platform.

I expect the first projects immediately after the integration of the native set and smart contract (announced in the 4th quarter of 2020).

I myself am looking forward to starting a project on Cardano. The Cardano community already includes many top developers, investors, and private entrepreneurs.

What is the long-term funding plan for the developers and the entire team working on the development of the Cardano blockchain?

Since the activation of the Shelley (decentralized) POS phase, there has been a so-called Treasury (treasury) in which a part of the funds from stakeholder rewards (a kind of tax) is accumulated.

From these funds, it is planned to finance the further development of the platform, but also the Cardano community and projects that contribute to the development of Cardano.

All participants in the Cardano platform can submit the so-called "The CIP" (Cardano Improvement Proposal) and ADA holders can vote on which proposal to accept. Cardano will have a natively implemented Cardano Identity and Cardano Voting System for this purpose.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the Proof of Stake (ADA) over the Proof of Work (BTC, ETH) consensus?

I would rather ask what are the advantages and challenges when creating a POS (Proof Of Stake) algorithm. The Cardano POS algorithm is called Ouroboros. Simply put, the POS algorithm uses wallets, (their addresses), to validate transactions.

Unlike the PoW (Proof of Work) system, which uses an algorithm that requires incomparably more hardware resources and power (read - power consumption), transactions in the Cardano PoS system can be processed by hardware that consumes only a few tens of W of electricity.

With all of this, Cardano PoS is mathematically proven to be as secure a protocol as the Bitcoin or Ethereum PoW protocol. Plus it’s faster and transactions are cheaper.

The flaw? The biggest drawback of any new project is that it has to be proven, it takes some time for people to start noticing the differences, as they get used to the new and better.

Why is Cardano Proof of Stake system unique, and what does the annual yield of ADA coins depend on?

As I mentioned before, the Cardano PoS Ouroboros protocol is a pure peer-to-peer Proof-of-Stake system. This means that transactions are not processed by a small number of large company servers (so-called dPoS - delegated PoS), but Cardano is a truly decentralized platform with a theoretically unlimited number of pools that can be registered online.

There is a big difference in the process of delegating ADA coins, as you call them. For a wallet user to delegate their ADAs and start earning, it is necessary to select a pool and delegate ADAs through one of the supported wallets (eg Daedalus or Yoroi).

There is no minimum ADA, no locks, etc. The user can add and spend funds as needed at all times. Of course, the more there are in the wallet, the bigger the prizes.

The prize distribution process itself performs the protocol, and the most important thing is to choose a pool that is active and processes blocks.

It is not necessary to "push" into the big pools that can often be crowded, so the amount of prizes is reduced. All pools, regardless of size, if they have enough delegates to receive blocks, have, on average, over a longer period, similar to RoS (Return over Stake). Currently, RoS is about 5-6% per year.

Is staking safe, is there a possibility of theft or loss of ADA coins?

Staking is as secure for the user as his wallet is secure, i.e. access to the wallet, the sending code, and the mnemonic words to recover the wallet.

The staking process itself does not expose ADAs out of the wallet, and the rewards are distributed by the Ouroboros protocol itself automatically, so staking is absolutely safe from that aspect.

I would warn ADA users to always use only verified wallets and to never send their ADAs or keywords to anyone, as this is not necessary for staking. Everything is done inside the wallet and no ADAs are sent to anyone. Prizes are added alone to that same wallet after each completed Epoch (5 days).

The Shelly upgrade successfully activated the Proof of Stake system marking the end of the Cardano network centralization. What is the next important milestone for Cardano?

I mentioned earlier the upcoming On-chain Identity, the decentralized voting system (Voting) that comes with the Voltaire era, and the Smart contracts and Native assets that come with the Goguen era.

Both phases are planned for implementation by the end of 2020.

After that, there remains the Basho era which will enable communication between different crypto platforms (switching assets from e.g. Litecoin blockchain to Cardano and back, smart contract communication on different platforms), the so-called Internet of blockchains, and a significant increase in network capacity by activating the Hydra protocol.

You can view the current roadmap here.

At the end of this year, IOG (Input Output Global - formerly IOHK) will propose a roadmap with a development plan for the next 5 years.

I am sure they are preparing a total revolution. Cardano is aiming for No. 1 spot in the crypto world in the long run, and project development and a sneak-peek in the dev team tell me that this is quite realistic and possible.

To quote Charles Hoskinson - "number one, we're going for No. 1."

What message would you like to send to our readers at the end?

In the end, I can say that, after more than three years as part of the Cardano team, I am more convinced than ever that we will achieve all this we have talked about and much more.

Cardano is no longer a "sleeping giant" as he was called until recently, Cardano has woken up, he is powerful and hungry. It hasn’t been easy through these years, the bear market hasn’t gone our way, but I think Cardano’s best days are ahead of us.

Take care of your ADAs and of course, delegate them to our local, high-performance Ambassador pool (APOOL).

Thank you for the opportunity to present this phenomenal project that will change the world!