Is Cardano a Good Investment? • Find Out Here • Benzinga

Cardano has received a ton of hype so far in 2021, and many fans hail it as the Ethereum-killer. Does Cardano actually have a shot at beating Ethereum? And should it be in your crypto portfolio? Let’s take a look!

Cardano: Fundamental Analysis

Background

Cardano is a layer 1 blockchain project with over 70% of the total currency, ADA, staked for network validation (a really impressive rate).

The Cardano project began in 2015 in an attempt to take on some of the problems the open-source community saw within the thousands of altcoins in existence at the time. Cardano was officially founded by Charles Hoskinson, who is a former co-founder of Ethereum. 

Some of Cardano’s key improvements are multiple layers for settlements and computations, proof of stake consensus, and the ability to upgrade easily in the future. 

The Cardano Settlement layer launched in 2017 and raised around $63 million through the ADA ICO. Since then, the ever-growing team of developers has been hard at work preparing for the launch of smart contracts on the Cardano Computation Layer.

Cardano Development 

Cardano currently has between 100 and 150 developers actively working on the project and pushes out around 700 commits per week. These factors make Cardano one of the most actively-developed projects in the blockchain space today, and suggest that they will be able to deliver on their development roadmap. 

This level of developers places Cardano in the higher tier of Layer 1 solutions, however, it is still not close to the size and pace achieved by Ethereum, Polkadot and Cosmos as seen below in the Electric Capital Developers Report from 2020. 

Cardano Smart Contracts 

Cardano plans to add support for smart contracts in the 3rd stage of its development roadmap, known as Goguen. 

Cardano smart contracts will run on the Cardano computation layer, which will support legacy Solidity contracts as well as its own language, Plutus. 

Partnerships

Cardano has already inked some notable partnerships with universities, governments and businesses including the University of Illinois, Ethiopia and New Balance. 

Hoskinson has pushed hard to see Cardano’s potential to come to fruition in Africa, where he believes blockchain can make a huge impact. 

New Balance also has plans to use Cardano’s network to track the authenticity of its shoes. 

Cardano vs. Ethereum

As Etheruem faces continued delays along the way to its 2.0 overhaul, many investors see Cardano as the solution. 

Pros for Cardano

Cardano is already proof of stake and has a strong development team behind its future upgrades. 

Cardano’s separation of the settlement and computation layers results in much lower transaction fees, which are already much lower than Ethereum’s to begin with.

Cons for Cardano

Cardano is fighting an uphill battle with an army a tenth the size of Ethereum’s. Competitor Polkadot also has a much larger development team and is growing even quicker. 

Low fees are nice, but also indicate a low level of demand for space on the network. 

Cardano also has yet to implement its own smart contract system, and has 0 chance to overtake Ethereum’s smart contract market share until they launch. 

Pros for Ethereum

Etheruem’s network is already established and boasts over 1,500 active developers (over 10 times more than Cardano). Ethereum is the foundation of the DeFi movement, and it boasts a rich ecosystem already built on top of it. If Cardano wants to defeat Ethereum, they will need to pick up the weight of this entire ecosystem as well (This is why Cardano has already promised to support smart contracts written in Ethereum’s programming language, Solidity).

Ethereum is also far more decentralized than Cardano, making it much more secure (even before Ethereum 2.0 upgrade security gains). 

Cons for Ethereum

Ethereum’s lengthy transition to proof of stake is giving their competitors time to catch up and gain market share. Ethereum’s insanely high network fees also make it unusable for many of its potential applications. 

In Conclusion, Is Cardano a Good Investment?

Cardano is without a doubt one of the more promising applications in the blockchain space today, with strong fundamentals and a lot of momentum behind the project. 

While touted by many as the Ethereum-killer, this is extremely unlikely. In my opinion, Cardano will carve out its own niche within the global computer ecosystem, but fail to flip Ethereum. 

If you are bullish on crypto and blockchain in general, then it makes a lot of sense to have a position in Cardano. If you own Ethereum, Cardano is the perfect hedge, that will more than likely result in a net increase in gains. It’s truly a win-win. 

Remember, this is just my opinion and not financial advice. Crypto investments are inherently risky and you should not invest any money you are not willing to lose. Crypto is extremely volatile, but I’m guessing that’s the reason you’re here to begin with. 

Where to Buy Cardano

Cardano is available almost anywhere you can buy crypto. You can pick it up on Binance.US, Kraken and even Coinbase as of May 2021. 

Staking Your Cardano

Cardano is a proof of stake network, and you can become a valitor by staking some or all of your position. Staking earns you the network fees for all of the transactions that you validate. This is a great way to support the decentralized community and earn passive income in ADA!

FAQ about Cardano