Recently, some people have been asking me about the Ada coin again, and I realized that many still don’t really understand the ADA project. To be honest, among many cryptocurrencies, ADA is indeed relatively low-profile, but its capabilities should not be underestimated. It has long remained in the top ten by market cap, and there is definitely a reason behind that.

Let’s first talk about what ADA actually is. The Ada coin is the native token of the Cardano blockchain, and Cardano itself is a public chain platform—similar to Bitcoin and Ethereum. It was developed by IOHK, the company founded in 2015 by Charles Hoskinson and Jeremy Wood, the former co-founders of Ethereum, and the mainnet only officially went live in 2018. Interestingly, Cardano represents a third-generation public chain, created specifically to solve the problems of the first two generations.

Why create ADA and Cardano? Although Bitcoin had a clear first-mover advantage, network congestion and high Gas fees have always been major pain points. Ethereum made many improvements, but new issues also emerged, such as lack of interoperability between platforms and community forks. Cardano came about in this context. It introduced the Ouroboros algorithm, which is essentially a proof-of-stake mechanism—more energy-efficient and scalable than Bitcoin’s proof-of-work.

From a technical perspective, the PoS consensus mechanism that ADA uses truly has advantages. It adopts a design with 2 independent layers; while ensuring security, it also improves processing speed, enabling it to process 250 transactions per second—far more than Bitcoin’s 7 and Ethereum’s 30. In addition, ADA is driven by three teams with clear division of responsibilities: IOHK is responsible for technical development, EMURGO oversees project progress, and the Foundation handles external affairs.

But honestly, ADA also has clear shortcomings. Its ecosystem is still in its early stage, and DeFi applications are far less rich than Ethereum’s. In 2022, it even launched DeFi projects like Sundae Swap, but the results were fraught with issues. Moreover, ADA does not support the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which limits the speed of ecosystem expansion. According to data, Cardano’s total value locked is only around $165 million, ranking 18th among all public chains, with active users and the number of protocols far behind other major public chains.

Interestingly, even though the ecosystem data is not very impressive, ADA’s market cap still remains in the top ten. This suggests that the market still looks favorably on its long-term prospects. Cardano has a clear five-stage development plan, ranging from mainnet construction, to decentralization implementation, to smart contracts and performance improvements, and finally to the transfer of community governance—its roadmap is quite clear.

If you want to invest in ADA, there are mainly a few ways. The first is staking: delegate your ADA to a staking pool to participate in network consensus, which can generate passive income, with interest rates varying by platform. The second is spot trading, which is suitable for medium- to long-term holding—waiting for the price to rise so you can profit. The third is contract trading: if you want to do short-term trading, you can use leverage to amplify returns, up to 10x leverage, with two-way trading, available to trade 24 hours a day.

The latest data shows that ADA is currently priced at around $0.24. Its 24-hour increase is approximately 0.29%, and its circulating market cap is $892 million. Although the ecosystem is still under construction, as a representative of a third-generation public chain, ADA has a solid technical foundation, high community recognition, has gone through the test of bear markets, and still maintained its position—these are all factors worth paying attention to. Of course, for ADA to truly take off, it still needs to put more effort into ecosystem applications; technical advantages alone are far from enough.