Blockchain finally comes of age with the world’s biggest blockchain deployment

Technology rollout to 5 million Ethiopian students and their teachers brings a new unique solution to improve educational outcomes and futures

27 April 2021 John O'Connor 3 mins read

Blockchain finally comes of age with the world’s biggest blockchain deployment

Today we have announced an exciting new partnership with the Ethiopian Government to implement a national, blockchain-based student and teacher ID and attainment recording system to digitally verify grades, remotely monitor school performance, and boost education and employment nationwide.

We’ll deliver this using our identity solution – Atala PRISM, built on Cardano, which will…

Plutus: what you need to know

Developers are now preparing for the arrival of Cardano smart contracts, enabled by Plutus and the Alonzo protocol upgrade

13 April 2021 Lars Brünjes 9 mins read

Plutus: what you need to know

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…

Smart contracts – here we come

Alonzo will build on Cardano’s token upgrades to give developers the tools for crafting business applications

8 April 2021 Olga Hryniuk 6 mins read

Smart contracts – here we come

At the start of March, we implemented Mary ‒ a multi-asset protocol upgrade that allows users to create unique tokens for transactions on Cardano. With the introduction of transaction metadata, then token-locking with Allegra in December, and native token creation, we are laying the foundation to establish Cardano as the leading smart contract platform.

Alonzo, our next…

Boosting network decentralization with P2P

Peer-to-peer communication between stake pools will make Cardano more dynamic and more efficient as the network grows

6 April 2021 Olga Hryniuk 7 mins read

Boosting network decentralization with P2P

The decentralization of Cardano puts responsibility for running the blockchain in the hands of stake pools. An essential element in this is reliable and effective connections between all the distributed nodes, and ensuring that the network is resilient to failure.

With the simpler Byron version of the blockchain, federated (OBFT) nodes controlled by the Cardano Foundation…

Announcing a new round of community stake pool delegation

We’re using our ada to support operators running single pools helping support the Cardano network and community

1 April 2021 Ben O'Hanlon 4 mins read

Announcing a new round of community stake pool delegation

As we celebrated in yesterday’s blog about D=0 day, block production is now 100% in the hands of the Cardano stake pool operator (SPO) community. Community pools are the lifeblood of the network. And earlier this year we confirmed our commitment to a vibrant proof-of-stake (PoS) ecosystem when we delegated over 300M ada to our first cohort of community stake pools.

The number of pools now stands at over 2,000 – responsible for nearly three-quarters of the ada in circulation. Their efforts sustain the network and greatly contribute to the success and recognition of the Ouroboros protocol, setting a clear standard for any