The Cardano Foundation partnered with Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) — a technology company founded by Charles Hoskinson and Jeremy Wood who were previously involved in Ethereum. IOHK also employs Professor Aggelos Kiayias, a cryptographer from the University of Edinburgh, along with a team of researchers and scientists that have contributed to the protocol. With these great minds at the forefront of cryptography and distributed ledgers working together, Cardano has the potential to improve upon the existing platforms. Cardano is also the first academically peer-reviewed distributed ledger.