What is Cardano? Ouroboros, ADA and a treasury holding 1.4 billion coins

Cardano is a proof-of-stake blockchain that runs smart contracts and whose native cryptocurrency is called ADA. The network launched in September 2017, needs no energy-hungry mining and, since 2025, lets its users vote on how it develops and what the money in its shared fund is spent on. Anyone holding ADA can delegate the coins to a stake pool, keeps full control over them at all times and earns a reward in ADA in return.

On November 13, 2026, one ADA cost about 0.15 euros. That values Cardano at just under 5.7 billion euros, roughly 95 percent below its all-time high of about $3.10 from September 2021. Our current view on the price outlook is in our Cardano price prediction. This profile explains how the network works technically, who runs it, what happens to ADA when you stake it, and what to look for when you buy and store the coin.

Cardano at a glance: the proof-of-stake blockchain behind ADA

A blockchain is a public ledger kept on many computers at once, to which new entries are added only under fixed rules. On Bitcoin, computing power decides who may write the next block. Cardano relies on proof of stake: the right to produce a block depends on how much ADA stands behind a participant. That saves electricity and lowers the barrier to entry, because nobody has to buy specialised hardware.

Cardano belongs to the group of layer-1 blockchains, the independent base networks such as Ethereum or Solana. It hosts smart contracts, custom tokens, decentralised exchanges and lending protocols. The name refers to the 16th-century Italian mathematician Gerolamo Cardano, while the currency ADA is named after Ada Lovelace, widely regarded as the first programmer in history. Both fit the project's self-image: Cardano sees itself as a research-driven blockchain whose core protocols first appear as academic papers and only then become code.

This approach cuts both ways. Supporters point to a network that has run without a prolonged outage since launch. Critics have argued for years that features arrive much later than announced and that the ecosystem of applications has stayed small. Both belong in an honest picture.

Who is behind Cardano: Hoskinson, Input Output, the Cardano Foundation and Emurgo

Cardano was founded by Charles Hoskinson, who had previously been one of the co-founders of Ethereum. He runs the development company Input Output, which wrote most of the code. Two further founding organisations sit alongside it: the Cardano Foundation, based in Zug, Switzerland, which handles standards, enterprise clients and regulation, and Emurgo, a Japanese company that backs applications in the ecosystem and publishes the Yoroi wallet.

Since 2023, a fourth organisation has joined them: Intersect. It is set up as a membership association, organises further development of the code and prepares votes. Formally, none of these organisations has the final say over the protocol any longer. Since the Plomin hard fork, that rests with ADA holders and their elected representatives, as the section on governance explains.

Ouroboros: how consensus works without mining

A consensus mechanism is the set of rules that lets thousands of computers agree on the same state of the ledger. On Cardano it is called Ouroboros. Time is divided into one-second slots and five-day epochs. For each slot, the protocol draws lots to decide which stake pool may produce a block. The more ADA delegated to a pool, the more often it is picked.

A stake pool is a server that an operator keeps online around the clock and that produces blocks. Anyone who does not want to run a server delegates their ADA to such a pool. A pool's rewards are distributed at the end of each epoch: the operator first takes fixed costs and a margin, and the rest goes to delegators in proportion to their stake. To stop a handful of large pools from dominating the network, a pool's rewards fall once it exceeds a saturation limit set in the protocol. Delegators then have a reason to move to smaller pools.

Ouroboros is being extended step by step. The Praos variant is live today, and two further stages, Leios and Peras, are in development. They are meant to raise throughput and make transactions final more quickly.

The eUTXO model and Plutus: smart contracts on Cardano

Ethereum keeps a balance for each address, much like a current account. Cardano uses the eUTXO model (extended unspent transaction output), a development of the Bitcoin principle. Every payment consumes certain inputs and creates new outputs, which sit in the wallet like individual banknotes. The extension allows data and conditions to be attached to these outputs. That makes it possible to build smart contracts whose outcome is known before the transaction is sent. On Cardano, a transaction either fails before it is submitted or not at all, so fees for failed executions are generally not charged.

The drawback shows up in applications that many users access at the same time, such as decentralised exchanges. Because each output can be spent only once, developers had to build their own solutions for concurrent access. That was one reason why the DeFi offering grew more slowly than on Ethereum.

Smart contracts have been available on Cardano since the Alonzo hard fork in September 2021. They are written in Plutus, a platform based on the Haskell programming language, or in newer languages such as Aiken. Projects have been able to issue their own tokens as native assets since March 2021. These tokens sit directly in the ledger and, unlike ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum, need no smart contract of their own.

The ADA token: a 45 billion cap, the reserve and circulating supply

The supply of ADA is capped at 45 billion. According to on-chain data, about 36.8 billion ADA were in circulation in epoch 667. Around 6.0 billion ADA were still held in the reserve, from which the protocol gradually releases staking rewards. A little over 1.4 billion ADA sat in the treasury, the network's shared fund.

New coins are issued according to a fixed formula: each epoch, a small percentage of the remaining reserve flows into the reward pot, together with transaction fees. One fifth of that pot goes to the treasury, the rest to pools and delegators. Because the reserve keeps shrinking, new issuance falls from year to year. ADA serves at once as the means of paying fees, as the collateral for staking and as voting weight in governance.

Staking on Cardano: delegating to stake pools without a lock-up

Staking means putting your coins to work securing the network and earning a reward for it. On Cardano this takes the form of delegation: your ADA never leave your wallet, they are not locked, and you can spend or sell them at any time. Registering the so-called stake key requires a one-off deposit of 2 ADA, which you get back when you deregister. The first rewards arrive after a run-in period of a few epochs and every five days after that.

The model is popular. In epoch 666, about 21.3 billion ADA were delegated, roughly 58 percent of all coins in circulation. The yield depends on the pool you choose, its fees and its luck in the block lottery. For October 7, 2026, cryptoticker calculated a range of 2.1 to 2.7 percent a year; our article How much does Cardano staking pay? explains why.

Besides delegating from your own wallet, many exchanges offer staking for ADA. There, the provider usually passes the coins on to pools itself and keeps part of the reward. Terms and conditions vary considerably, so it pays to look at the comparison of staking platforms before you choose. The key difference is custody: on an exchange, the coins legally form part of the provider's customer holdings, while in your own wallet you hold the keys yourself.

Cardano governance: DReps, a constitution and a treasury of 1.4 billion ADA

With two hard forks, Cardano moved its governance onto the blockchain. The Chang hard fork in September 2024 laid the technical foundations, and the Plomin hard fork on January 29, 2025 unlocked the remaining types of vote, including treasury withdrawals and changes to the constitution. The developers describe the stages in the official Cardano documentation.

Since then, three groups have decided together. DReps (delegated representatives) are elected representatives to whom ADA holders assign their voting weight, much like members of parliament. Anyone who wants to become a DRep posts a deposit of 500 ADA. Stake pool operators vote mainly on technical changes such as hard forks. The Constitutional Committee checks whether a proposal is compatible with the constitution. Depending on the type of proposal, two or all three groups must approve. Anyone can submit a proposal by posting a deposit of 100,000 ADA, which is returned after the vote.

The constitution itself took effect in February 2025. DReps and the committee ratified a revised version on January 19, 2026, with 79 percent of the DReps' active voting weight according to Intersect. Treasury votes have been held regularly since then, for example on budgets for developing the node software. Our report on the treasury vote in September shows how such a vote plays out.

For ADA holders, this means that when you delegate, you can also choose a DRep or opt for one of the default options, abstaining or a vote of no confidence on every proposal. Since Plomin, wallets require this choice before staking rewards can be withdrawn.

Leios and Dijkstra: Cardano's upgrade plans through 2027

Cardano can currently process far fewer transactions per second than younger blockchains. The most important project to change that is Ouroboros Leios. The idea: alongside regular blocks, pools produce additional, larger blocks of transactions that the network confirms in parallel. According to the developers, this should multiply throughput.

Leios is due to arrive with the Dijkstra hard fork. Intersect plans it in two phases. The first, with Leios, is targeted for the fourth quarter of 2026, although some reports cite a window running to March 2027. There is no fixed date, because the hard fork first needs the approval of DReps, pool operators and the committee. On November 13, 2026, cryptoticker reported that the test version of the Leios node 11.3 is now not expected until December. The second phase, with Ouroboros Peras, which is meant to make transactions final faster, is scheduled for 2027.

Hydra and Midnight: scaling and privacy alongside the main blockchain

Besides upgrading the blockchain itself, there are extensions that run outside it. Hydra is a layer-2 solution: a small group of participants opens a so-called Hydra head, settles many transactions inside it for almost no fee and writes only the result back to Cardano. That suits games, payments between fixed partners or votes, and is less suited to open markets with changing participants.

Midnight is a partner network developed by Input Output for applications handling confidential data. It works with zero-knowledge proofs, which let you prove a statement without revealing the underlying data. Its token, NIGHT, was first issued in December 2025 as a native asset on Cardano and was also airdropped to holders of other cryptocurrencies. Midnight changes nothing about the supply of ADA or about staking, but it widens the ecosystem around Cardano.

Buying and storing ADA: MiCA-licensed exchanges and wallets

ADA trades on almost every major crypto exchange that accepts customers in the EU. Providers offering crypto services in the EU need authorisation under the European MiCA regulation (Markets in Crypto-Assets). Before opening an account, check whether the provider appears in the register of the ESMA. For ADA itself, several trading venues have voluntarily published a MiCA white paper that brings together information on the technology, risks and energy consumption.

If you want to hold your ADA yourself, you need a wallet that supports Cardano. Widely used options are Lace from Input Output, Eternl and Yoroi. For larger amounts, a hardware wallet that keeps the private key offline is advisable; common devices support Cardano and can be paired with these wallets. Our comparison of software wallets gives an overview of apps for everyday use. You can delegate and take part in votes directly from these wallets.

How ADA sales and the many small staking payouts are taxed depends on the rules of your country of residence; software that reads Cardano wallets directly is listed in our comparison of crypto tax software.

Cardano risks: price losses, a small DeFi ecosystem and slipping timelines

The price of ADA is about 95 percent below its 2021 high. Anyone who bought back then is sitting on heavy losses, and sharp swings up to a total loss remain possible in future. On top of that comes a small DeFi ecosystem: in early November, cryptoticker reported a yearly low of $48.9 million for the value locked in Cardano protocols, a fraction of what sits on Ethereum or Solana.

A third risk is timelines. Many upgrades arrived later than announced, and Leios, too, depends on tests and votes. The new governance brings uncertainties of its own: treasury votes are publicly contested, turnout fluctuates, and rules can shift with a change to the constitution. Finally, the provider matters. If you hold or stake ADA on an exchange, you also carry its default risk.

Cardano at 95 percent below its peak: flexible staking, slow upgrades

Cardano is a research-driven proof-of-stake blockchain with a fixed supply cap, a well-stocked treasury and one of the most flexible staking models on the market. Set against that are a deeply depressed price, a small DeFi offering and upgrades that often arrive later than planned. If you want to buy ADA, it makes sense to proceed in three steps:

1. Choose an authorised provider: Buy ADA on an exchange that holds a MiCA licence and accepts euros via SEPA. A selection is in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Decide on custody: Transfer larger amounts to your own wallet and delegate them there to a pool that is not oversaturated. The hardware wallet comparison sets out devices for secure storage.
3. Keep tax records from the start: Record the purchase date, purchase price and every staking payout with its euro value. Suitable programs are listed in the comparison of crypto tax software.

(As of November 13, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)