The 3 reasons why we choose Cardano to maximize our impact
The choice of the blockchain used to support our project is no coincidence
An impact-oriented claim aligned with our ambition
The sustainable development including environmental and social issues we want to target is at the heart of Cardano and Cardashift DNA.
“We’re Cardano, and if you’ll permit us, we would like to change the world” Charles Hoskinson, Cardano’s founder
Exploiting the blockchain potential for social purposes
By its intrinsic properties, the blockchain technology is a powerful enabler for humanitarian activities. This technology offers a unique level of traceability, transparency and data security for organizations. Several understood that very early and set up pilot programs using blockchain. One interesting example is Building Blocks, developed within the WFP Innovation Accelerator in 2017.
Cardano chose to go further and put social ambition at the top of its agenda. Its non-profit branch, the Cardano Foundation, plans to dedicate over $500m to humanitarian projects.
Heading to Africa
The main focus is on the African continent where decentralized finance & digital technologies can be a development booster.
The foundation has worked with the Ethiopian government to create a digital identity for 5 million students, enabling them to record their information & certify their performance.
Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), in charge of Cardano development, has also developed a network inside the humanitarian ecosystem. Within their partnership with Save the Children, they are setting up ADApay, the first platform to receive and store donations in ADA.
The “Green” Blockchain
On the environmental aspect, Cardano also emerged as the network most in line with our claim.
IOHK wants to do more to put an end to the polluter’s image of this technology and set the tone for the green blockchain movement.
The Climate Neutral Cardano Group (CNCG) is an alliance of Cardano stake pools committed, alongside the Cardano Foundation, to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality by following two objectives:
1) Encouraging stake pool operators to use renewable energy
2) Offsetting carbon emissions created by the nodes by seeding 1-million trees Cardano forest
A scalable and sustainable protocol to support this ambition
The Bitcoin protocol has been heavily criticized for being energy-intensive. Indeed, recent figures show Bitcoin’s estimated annual emissions are over 95 million tonnes of CO2 per year, which is comparable to the carbon footprint of Nigeria.
The Ouroboros protocol used by Cardano tackles this energy waste issue since it does not use an intensive computing puzzle to produce new blocks. A Bitcoin transaction consumes an estimated 707 kWh while Cardano consumes around 0.54 kWh…, making it 1,300 times less energy-consuming.
For comparison, a single bitcoin transaction consumes as much as 2 refrigerators plugged in constantly for a whole year. It also amounts to 7,070 hours of charging an average laptop, i.e. 4 years of use if you charge your laptop for 5 hours a day.
In contrast, a transaction on Cardano consumes barely as much as 5 hours of charging a laptop…
What’s the operating system behind this achievement?
The Ouroboros protocol is a pure proof-of-stake consensus protocol that privately and randomly selects stake pool leaders proportionally to their stakes (amounts of ADA currency) to generate new blocks. This very innovative system offers the same level of security than Bitcoin proof-of-work protocol while being more scalable & energy efficient.
To illustrate further…
A stakeholder can delegate his stake to a stake pool run by someone else. More precisely, he gives away his rights to participate in the protocol to a stake pool that acts on his behalf.
The more stake is delegated to a stake pool, the more likely it is to make the next block.
The reward is shared among the stakeholders proportionally to their stake. The incentive mechanism is underpinned by scientific research that combines mathematics, economic theory, and game theory to ensure the longevity and health of the Cardano ecosystem.
Breaking news: We have just reached 1m wallet staking on Dec 5, 2021 on Cardano network!
A trusted network for truthful impact investment
Our ambition is to develop impact investing in new playgrounds: we need to be truthful to convince new investors and project owners to rely on our launchpad.
Cardano offers this safety net thanks to its deterministic nature. The purpose is the following: when you launch a transaction, you know in advance what will happen, notably the fees’ amount or the transaction process. That mechanism is extremely valuable when it comes to large amounts of money.
When determinism serves security
To put this vision into practice, IOHK first took the bold decision to build its network on a strongly typed purely functional language, named Haskell. It is a powerful combination of mathematical and software engineering concepts that allows the code to be based on mathematical proofs.
Functional programming gives more context on the transaction’s rules and by doing so, reduces the potential side effects that can occur during the execution.
What difference does it make with non-functional programming?
Let’s make it more concrete. Imagine you are creating a recipe to make pancakes.
In non-functional programming, like Solidity or C, you won’t bother yourself with the context and call for the actions “Buy ingredients” followed by “Make pancakes”. So, you keep a high level of uncertainty on the recipe’s execution.
However, in functional programming, you will precise the context (each step from the used measuring cup to the spatula for serving), like this excellent recipe.
This considerably reduces the potential side effects that can happen during the execution.
This way of doing things brings significant advantages in terms of security, predictability and simplification of complex business processes.
Haskell is not the only aspect of Cardano that serves this purpose
IOHK also developed an extension of the Bitcoin UTXO model (which is not Turing Complete). Their Extended Unspent Transaction Output (eUTXO) model enables outputs to contain complex logic in the form of scripts that determine the conditions to use them. Thus, it offers greater security allowing for smart contract execution cost predictability.
Whether it be on the global claim, innovative protocol or the technological choices, Cardano offers a complete response to our requirements to develop an ecosystem of impactful and reliable products.
Join Cardashift on Discord and be one of the pioneers.
Let’s debug the world together!
Written by Anaïs Bouchet & Yannis Baala — Impact Projects Managers and Medium Enthusiasts
