In our previous blog post, we discussed Alonzo ‒ our name given to the protocol upgrade that will introduce smart contract support on Cardano. Alonzo will establish the infrastructure and add tools for functional smart contract development using Plutus.

The Plutus platform provides a native smart contract language for the Cardano blockchain. To understand and become proficient…

Setting solid parameter values – while maintaining flexibility for the future – will be key to the growth and ongoing decentralization of Cardano. After consulting with the community, and working closely with my colleagues Kevin Hammond and Alex Appledoorn, we believe we’ve identified a good place to start.

The behavior of Cardano Shelley is controlled by around 20 parameters…

As we approach Shelley on the Cardano mainnet, decentralization has, inevitably, become a topic of debate. Regardless of any initial founding intent, proof-of-work cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum have become more centralized over time. The early days of Bitcoin enthusiasts mining blocks at the weekend are long gone and today we see a small group of specialized…

When I got off the plane at Bole airport in Addis Ababa on the evening of January 4, I did not know what to expect. It was my first time in Ethiopia, and all I knew was that my Canadian colleague Dr Polina Vinogradova, an IOHK formal methods expert, and I were supposed to teach a three-month-long Haskell course to a class of young Ethiopian and Ugandan women. When our students…

Building on last week’s post by Professor Aggelos Kiayias, IOHK’s chief scientist, I want to use this post to discuss another choice we made when designing Cardano’s reward mechanism. The mechanism is designed to give an incentive to stakeholders to ‘do the right thing’ and participate in the protocol in a way that ensures its smooth, efficient and secure operation. As was…