Cardano is a blockchain platform for smart contracts, like Ethereum. Cardano's cryptocurrency is called Ada (ADA). The project aims to be the world’s financial operating system by establishing decentralized financial products similarly to Ethereum as well as providing solutions for chain interoperability, voter fraud, and legal contract tracing, among other things.

Cardano's development is overseen by three organizations:

• IOHK (Input Output Hong Kong), led by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson, is the company responsible for building Cardano.
• The Cardano Foundation is a not-for-profit regulated entity that is the custodial organization that oversees the advancement of Cardano and its ecosystem.
• EMURGO is a global blockchain technology company providing solutions for developers, startups, enterprises, and governments. EMURGO develops enterprise-grade applications, builds developer tools, invests in startups, and provides blockchain education.

Cardano aims to be the world's financial operating system by establishing decentralized financial products similarly to Ethereum and providing solutions for chain interoperability, among other ambitions.

The Cardano blockchain operates in layers. This separates the ledger of account values from the reason why values are moved from one account to the other. This separation is intended to make smart contracts safer.

• Cardano Settlement Layer (CSL): The CSL is the first layer and carries out transactions of ADA, Cardano's native cryptocurrency.
• Cardano Computation Layer (CCL): The second layer, CCL, is where the execution of smart contracts happens. This layer is designed to support a wide range of dApps, financial and business applications.

Cardano uses a unique consensus algorithm called Ouroboros, which is a proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol. In contrast to Bitcoin's energy-intensive proof-of-work system, PoS chooses validators of transactions based on the number of coins they're willing to "stake" as collateral. It's meant to be more energy-efficient and democratic than proof-of-work.

ADA is the native cryptocurrency of the Cardano platform, used for transactions and as a stake in the protocol. Stakeholders can participate in the operation of the network and earn rewards in ADA. ADA can also be used in decentralized applications on the network.