Cardano Cryptocurrency Research Report
Summary
Cardano is a decentralised public blockchain and cryptocurrency project and is fully open source. Cardano is developing a smart contract platform which seeks to deliver more advanced features than any protocol previously developed. It is the first blockchain platform to evolve out of a scientific philosophy and a research-first driven approach. The development team consists of a large global collective of expert engineers and researchers.
I. General
1. Supply
25,9B ADA
2. Market cap:
$7,4B // $0.29
3. Marketcap class:
Very High
4. Industry:
General purpose cryptocurrency
4. Type:
Smart Contracts Platform
5. What Problem does it solve?
A research-first innovative smart contracts platform that offers more advanced features than existing competitors.
6. Competitors
Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Ethereum (ETH), EOS (EOS), DASH (DASH) to name the strongest competition, but as a general-purpose cryptocurrency they are essentialy competing with everyone on the market.
General Category Score
II. Online Presence
7. Domain name
The domain name is short and recognizable.
8. Design
The website is consistent and makes a good impression.
9. Roadmap
Ambitious roadmap that has an innovative approach: The development is proven in theory first, before it gets implemented in the practical blockchain.
10. Branding
The brand does not have pre-existing associations and sounds professional. However, they do not have clear message that “sticks” and let’s a newcomer know what they are about and what exactly they are solving.
11. Overall Impression
The website has potential to expand upon by delivering more content aimed at the casual reader. However, it’s branding is consistent and makes a good impression overall. The numerous academic papers listed on the website, available for public examination add credibility to the project.
Branding Score
III. Technicals
12. Whitepaper
One of the most sophisticated whitepapers in the crypto space to date. The Cardano project is building a decentralized smart contracts platform much like Ethereum. It is designed to become an Ecosystem on which dApps can thrive and connect the world. The big difference is that Cardano aims to provide the most efficient and secure solutions by diving deep into the research and proving all concepts on paper first. Not only does that sound like a reasonable approach, the project has attracted numerous prominent academics and partnerships with universities have been formed. The whitepaper delivers a consistent roadmap on the concepts planned for Cardano and include mathematical proofs that go beyond the scope on the casual reader, but are interesting to fellow researchers. At this point it is worthy to mention that no blockchain project has published as many academic papers as Cardano.
13. Pre-mining
[To be added]14. Mining
Proof of Stake mining with 60% of token in circulation at the moment.
Technicals Score
IV. Team
15. Collective
The team seems to be very competent with a lot of prominent researchers on board, at the helm mathematician Charles Hoskinson.
16. Flags
There are no team members who have a shady history, however the coin supply is extremely large and something to consider when investing.
17. Developers
The team looks very trustworthy. They have 54 contributors in GitHub.
18. Github
The code repository can be found in https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano-sl
It is one of the most active and huge repositories out there.
19. Activity
Latest commit 6h ago (High activity level). Huge number of commits and activity.
Developers Score
V. Community
20. Bitcoin thread
There is not Bitcoin thread but there is a Reddit forum: https://www.reddit.com/r/cardano/
21. Facebook page
Present and active, 18K likes, link
22. Twitter page
Present and active, 118K followers, link
23. Slack channel
6K members in Slack
24. Community activity
Community manager is active, especially on facebook.
Community Score
VI. Perception
25. Google search check
Mostly positive results.
26. Google sentiment
Lot’s of great articles and interviews with professors and researchers.
27. Youtube sentiment
Overall good support from Crypto influencers.
28. Community sentiment
Very bullish sentiment and amazing facebook community.
29. Criminal activity
No criminal activity found.
Sentiment Score
VII. Product
30. State
They are progressing well on their roadmap and establishing promising partnerships along the way.
31. Partnerships
Confirmed partnerships and interests:
- Metaps Plus – South Korean Mobile Payments platform
- Z/YEN Group
- Sirin Labs
*Information source. Last updated 07.05.2018
32. Positive news
Partnerships with universities and payment gateway companies.
33. Negative news
This is not negative news but rather crypto drama. Recently, Dan Larimer, the Developer and CTO of Bitshares, Steem and EOS came out with a lengthy blog post that attacks Cardano and in essence describes it as an over-glorified, inferior version of Bitshares DPOS model.
Keep in mind: On the one hand, Charles Hoskinson is a former colleague of Dan and it’s bound to get personal, on the other hand Dan is a respected blockchain enterpreneur that has 2 successful blockchain projects on his list of achievements. Make of this what you want.
Product Score
VIII. Exchange Listings
You can purchase Cardano on:
Which are very reputable and trustworthy exchanges. We recommend using binance for smaller exhcange fees, fast verification process and highly reliable interface.
Listing Score
VVI. Verdict
Cardano is one of the safest investments in the cryptocurrency space given it’s high credibility. It is built on solid fundamentals and innovative ideas. It has a team with a very high reputation, the largest number of researchers on board. It has the largest amount of university partnerships and the largest amount of public research papers published in the blockchain ecosystem. Their github repository has 54 contributors and is highly active.
That being said, they are a general-purpose cryptocurrency and thus face all the problems that come with this sector: High competition, the neccessity to distinguish themselves, the scarce user base & the ambiguity of the problem they solve.
Is Cardano strong enough to overcome these adversities? For now, it has a team and foundation that looks like it’s here to stay and challenge the existing projects.
Cardano
Disclaimer: This is not financial advice. Investing in cryptocurrency assets is a risky, do not invest funds you are dependent on.
