New in the cryptocurrency space, being available to investors who bought through exchanges in October, 2017, Cardano was the first, self-acclaimed ''third-generation blockchain''. This idea was generated by Charles Hoskinson who was previously a co-founder of the second largest cryptocurrency known as Ethereum. The Cardano protocol had endured two years of research and one year of development before being available to the market and this time was spent exploring the difficulties and issues that Bitcoin and Ethereum face regarding scalability, interoperability, and sustainability.

The Cardano protocol is made up of three organisations. IOHK, which is an scientific and engineering company for blockchain technologies, Emurgo who runs the business and commercial ventures for ADA, and the Cardano Foundation who is suppose to be committed to the community and the growth of the Cardano ecosystem. The reason Charles Hoskinson made the protocol up into three entities was to ensure that if one entity collapsed due to poor performance or other issues, then the Cardano protocol could still remain strong with the remaining two entities. This was the case in recent times with the Cardano Foundation who failed to provide any support or effort towards the protocol representing the effectiveness of separating the overall power of Cardano between different entities before the protocol becomes officially decentralized.

Cardano has focused their efforts targeting poorer regions who could really benefit from blockchain technology to allow for greater productivity and allow fair agreements where producers receive true worth for the resources in these poorer regions. Firstly, this effort is highly focused upon Africa where Cardano looks to aid the supply chain of coffee in certain regions which will show a use case for Cardano's technology and will further encourage other regions to adopt this technology.

The circulating supply of ADA is 26 billion, with a max supply of 45 billion. The remaining ADA has been held onto by these three entities to allow for the unique Proof-of-Stake algorithm that the protocol uses to process transactions and ensure the blockchain continues to grow with high level security.

The all-time high of ADA happened on January 5th, 2018 where a single ADA was worth $1.13 USD with a total market capitalization of $29 billion USD. The trading volume on this day was at $603 million USD. The resulted in the initial price of an ADA when first released being at .03 USD cents in October 2017 and in three months, reaching a price of $1.13 during the bull run of late 2017.

The current price of ADA is $0.07 USD with a total market capitalization of $1.8 billion USD and a daily trading volume of $12 million. The Cardano system aims to provide the best technological advancements to the crypto space whilst providing a ecosystem with many features and use cases. This is a wildcard with great potential if the vision stays true.

Have you heard of Cardano? What are your thoughts on the Cardano protocol? Leave a comment below!