Review on Cardano by Mark Hassett

I have enjoyed watching the development of the Cardano blockchain from the time Charles Hoskinson stepped down as a co-founder of Ethereum in 2015 and began the journey to apply his personal perspective to the cryptoverse. What I like is that Hoskinson decided to create a scientifically robust and comprehensive blockchain platform that would, provide a diverse as possible, functional blockchain ecosystem for a number of different use cases, compared to some of his competitors that are rather singularly focused on the financial sector. The Cardano ethos also inspires me because it is endeavouring to provide opportunity to the millions of unbanked people and communities around the world, with its eyes focused, to begin with, on the African continent.



From my perspective Cardano's development, although slow, it has been extremely thorough, quite detailed, planned and scrutinized through its testing and retesting of code and its peer review process. For some observers this slow but steady pace, to ensure compliance and functionality, has them questioning whether Cardano has the capacity to catch up to its competitors who are ahead in terms of utility and functionality.



It is Cardano's due diligence that has influenced me in terms of how heavily invested I am in its rollout and its vision to provide a way for the under-privileged to access the same level of autonomy that we, who live in the more developed and democratic countries often take for granted. I have great faith in the functionality and security that the Cardano blockchain ecosystem will provide given the fact that they are continually offering rewards to anyone who can identify any possible bugs in their code during the testing phase on their testnet called Alonzo before any code they develop is ever let go live on the Cardano mainnet.



Compared to other blockchain platforms that endeavoured to get up and operational as quickly as possible, for what I believe was for purely monetary gain are now probably regretting that decision as they are now having to deal with operational problems such as rising gas fees and slow transactional speeds. I know that it is hard to compare Cardano's operational success as it is yet to go live as a fully functional blockchain but I believe their due diligence and desire to get things right will eventually pay dividends. These issues with poor TPS and high gas fees has resulted in code fixes that in most cases have caused hard forks to occur. I truly believe that Hoskinson has been watching all the issues that other blockchain competitors have faced and he is sitting their rubbing his hands together and smiling, as he now has all the data and evidence he needs to be able to develop and ensure that the Cardano blockchain does not encounter or face similar issues.



This is why I'm so excited because when the Cardano blockchain eventually becomes fully operational, in early September 2021, I truly believe that they will have put in place every possible operational code fix to ensure the cardano ecosystem will be truly secure, scalable, well governed, decentralised and provide the best environment for every possible Dapp, DeFi, Dex, Oracle, social networking, filing app, storage app, collectibles NFT app, marketplace app, tracking app, music app, movie app, etc without the issues that are plaguing other blockchains. I know that people out there would question my view as Cardano is not even fully functional yet but it is their due diligence that I am betting on.



I like the fact that the blockchain code is open-sourced, meaning that it is available for anyone to view and utilise, whereas some other platforms are still very much in control of their code and quite protective and guarded, controlling and even centralised in nature' like Ripple, which is quite removed from the vision of decentralisation. I like the fact that the Cardano blockchain offers voting and a staked treasury to be able to provide a self-sustaining governance system, together with a scalability solution that incorporates side chains which basically facilitates the use of scaling using multiple blockchains.



They are also decentralising the Cardano network through incentivizing hosts to encourage them to establish nodes across a diverse landscape rather than have multiple nodes being hosted in one place by a single entity. They obviously understand the issues surrounding having multiple nodes operating out of only one place most likely from having observed what happened to Bitcoin when China banned all the miners and the hashrate impacted Bitcoins functionality and therefore affected Ethereum and other blockchains that are attached to Bitcoin. It is because of this event that occurred in China that I see Cardano's endeavours to be truly decentralised that it will be able to deliver a truly secure blockchain ecosystem that is governed in a truly decentralised, autonomous, democratic and egalitarian manner.





The other aspect that appeals to me as there have been a lot of comment from the FAFT (Financial Actions Task Force) as well as governments around the world and also from law enforcement agencies like the CIA, as to the ease with which criminals can exploit the cryptoverse and launder money. This has lead to these agencies bad mouthing the cryptoverse and highlighting the ease and anonymity with which criminals can easily transfer "dirty money" anywhere around the world. So I was extremely pleased to hear that just like Ripple did back in 2019 Hoskinson's planning has also seen Cardano partnered with "Coinfirm" to ensure compliance with financial institutions and government regulations around the world. This is their way of Addressing the requirements for AML (Anti-money Laundering) regulations and preventing and reducing criminal activity and at the same time providing security to all legitimate users of Cardano through implementing KYC (Know Your Customer) registration requirements, which I believe they are betting on as being one of the main characteristics that will entice governments and also large institutions to consider engaging with Cardano's ecosystem.





I feel Cardano once it goes live and is fully operational and functioning, with Smart Contracts, on the mainnet it will definitely offer strong competition to other blockchains operating in the cryptoverse.





Ada King, Countess of Lovelace after whom the Cardano cryptocurrency token "ADA" is named.