

ADA stakers are also considered validators since they function as nodes that record the network's current state. As well as value transfer and trading, network participants can also use the token to take part in staking and the platform's governance systems.

The ADA TokenĪs of June 2021, the ADA token has appreciated by over 1000% since the start of the year. This enables the network to process a considerable number of transactions, all while hugely reducing network congestion, gas fees, and helping to maintain consensus on the network. If the slot leader fails to oversee the creation and confirmation of blocks, the next slot leader is elected for that epoch or its subpartition.Ĭurrently each epoch can contain up to 432,000 slots. Slot leaders can mine their specific epoch or slot, and the higher their stake, the better their chances of being selected. These selected nodes are known as slot leaders. To achieve consensus, the network randomly nominates a few nodes to validate new blocks for every slot. The Cardano blockchain splits time into divisible epochs (around five days), which are further divided into slots.

Using a permissioned version of the Ouroboros family of PoS consensus protocols ( Ouroboros-BFT), Cardano aims to offer a greater level of security than PoW chains at a fraction of their energy costs. It uses the proof-of-stake ( PoS) consensus mechanism but with a slight twist. The Cardano blockchain was written using a universally recognized and secure programming language known as Haskell.
