This document provides a concise introduction to Cardano for laypeople with no technical background. It outlines Cardano's key advantages over other blockchains, including its unique proof of stake mechanism, E-UTXO model, decentralization, Plutus smart contracts, and hard fork combinator. It also summarizes popular applications being built on Cardano, how to buy and store ADA tokens, upcoming upgrades, and institutional interest. Key terms are defined in a glossary. The overall document is intended to kickstart a person's journey in understanding Cardano.

1. CARDANO FOR
LAYMEN
By Kingsley Choo
5 Sept 2022

2. CONTENTS
1.Brief Introduction​ to Cardano
2. Five Advantages of Cardano vs Others
3. Top Applications on Cardano
4. How to Buy & Store ADA (the coin that
Cardano runs on & what wallets can be
used for storage)
5. Brief Outline on Future Upgrades
6. Institutional Interest/Branding
7. Glossary

3. INTRODUCTION
• Cardano is bloody hard to understand for laymen with
no tech background.
• Therefore to solve this issue, this presentation is easy to
understand and kickstarts a person’s journey into
Cardano.
• Cardano is a third-generation, open source, proof of
stake blockchain platform.
• Cardano provides top security and sustainability to
decentralized applications through regular scientific
reviews and research papers.
• The energy usage of the Whole Network TWh for
Cardano is 0.00277429; in contrast, Bitcoin uses 131.0
TWh per year more than entire countries like Ukraine
and Norway, according to the statistics released by
Cardano Blockchain Insights. A green blockchain is very
much desired by institutional investors and is one of the
ways to reach mass adoption globally.

4. WE ARE HERE

5. FIVE ADVANTAGES OF CARDANO VS OTHERS
1. Unique Proof of Stake Mechanism (Ouroboros)
• Fully liquid ADA with no lock in period or unbonding/cooldown period
after unlocking.
• Non-Custodial staking with full custody of ADA for the investor. Zero risk
of 3rd party stake pool operators losing their private keys and therefore
staked funds.
• No Slashing of stakes due to misbehaving stake pool operators.
Therefore no risk of staked funds/rewards being reduced.
• Average rate of returns of roughly 4-5% per year in terms of ADA
rewards every epoch (5 calendar days).
• Next slide shows visually how a stake pool looks like with different ADA
amounts being staked.

7. FIVE ADVANTAGES OF CARDANO VS OTHERS
2. E-UTXO Model
• Similar to a cash system vs accounts based model which is similar to
banking ledgers. Example of an accounts based model is the Ethereum
blockchain.
• Allows the ability to sent multiple tokens to multiple crypto wallets with
low transaction fees (less than $1 in most cases). There was an
instance where tokens were send to 99 different wallets as a stress test.
• The E-UTXO model combines the best of Bitcoin security using UTXO
as well as Ethereum’s expressiveness using smart contract scripts like
in its accounts based model.
• Also the E-UTXO model allows for Cardano native tokens and NFTs to
be created on the blockchain itself natively without the need for smart
contracts. Crucially this lowers the potential for NFT minting errors and
bugs.

8. 8

9. FIVE ADVANTAGES OF CARDANO VS OTHERS
3. One of the Most Decentralized
Blockchains
• Cardano is considered one of the most decentralized
blockchain to date.
• With 3186 stake pools/nodes & still growing,
Cardano aims to delegate power over crucial
decisions to the community instead of IOHK which is
Cardano’s blockchain infrastructure research and
engineering company.
• In fact for the latest Vasil Hardfork/upgrade on 22nd
September 2022, 75% of all stake pool operators
need to upgrade to version 1.35.3 of the Vasil node
for it to be implemented on mainnet (its been done as
of 5th Sept 2022). This shows that IOHK is taking
less of a role for Cardano’s development and pushing
the important decisions to the community and thus
decentralizing power.

12. FIVE ADVANTAGES OF CARDANO VS OTHERS
4. Plutus Smart Contracts
• Plutus smart contracts is based on the functional
programming language Haskell which is focused on
security. Cardano-based Plutus smart contracts
have set a record, surpassing the 3,000 mark for the
first time since their innovation at the time of writing.
• It delivers an easier, more robust way to show that
your smart contracts are correct and will not
encounter the problems found in previous smart
contract language design such as Solidity used by
Ethereum and other similar blockchains.
• Thus this reduces the likelihood of smart contract
exploits and hacks which will cause massive losses
for investors. In 2021 alone, over US$1.7B was
stolen from DeFi protocols, many of which used less
secure smart contracts written in other languages.

15. FIVE ADVANTAGES OF CARDANO VS OTHERS
5. Unique Hard Fork Combinator
• A combinator is a technical term used to indicate the
combination of certain processes or things. In the case of
Cardano, a hard fork combinator combines protocols,
thereby enabling the Byron-to-Shelley transition without
system interruption or restart.
• Likewise for the upcoming Vasil hard fork, the Hard Fork
Combinator will be used with no interruption to holders of
ADA while the upgrade is being implemented.
• The Cardano blockchain has maintained its stability
without experiencing any downtime for over 1,522 days
(more than 4 years), while other rival blockchains have
experienced downtime on a number of different
occasions.

17. TOP APPLICATIONS ON CARDANO
Top Metaverses:
1. Cornucopias. https://www.cornucopias.io/
2. Pavia. https://pavia.io/
3. Virtua Cardano Island. https://cardano.virtua.com/
Top NFT projects:
1. Spacebudz. https://spacebudz.io/
2. Clay Nation. https://www.claynation.io/
3. Chilled Kongs. https://chilledkongs.com/
Top Defi projects:
1. Minswap. https://minswap.org/
2. Ardana. https://ardana.org/#/
3. Meld. https://www.meld.com/
Top NFT Marketplaces:
1. JPG Store. https://www.jpg.store/
2. CNFT.IO. https://cnft.io/

19. HOW TO BUY & STORE ADA
• Set up an exchange account on popular exchanges like Binance, Coinbase,
Crypto.com, Kucoin or Kraken.
• Buy ADA from these exchanges and then withdraw it to a Cardano wallet.
• Once the ADA is in a Cardano wallet it can be delegated and staked in a stake
pool which is non-custodial and fully liquid with no lock in period.
• Popular top wallets include Eternl (formerly known as CC wallet), Nami and Yoroi
wallet.
• Eternl. https://eternl.io/app/mainnet/welcome
• Nami. https://namiwallet.io/
• Yoroi. https://yoroi-wallet.com/#/
• For top security do consider to protect your crypto with a hardware wallet like the
Ledger or Trezor wallets.
• Ledger. https://www.ledger.com/
• Trezor. https://trezor.io/

21. BRIEF OUTLINE OF FUTURE UPDATES
• HYDRA: Hydra is a layer 2 scalability solution that seeks to address all these
concerns and aims to maximize throughput, minimize latency, incurring low to no
costs, and greatly reducing storage requirements.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ySUbFpTrAk
• Mithril: With Mithril, Cardano (ADA) accounts can be integrated into the most
secure and decentralized multi-signature scheme. "Cryptographic magic" can
bring staking into multi-signature transactions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX8BZkI_kx8
• Input Endorsers: Input Endorsers improve block propagation times and
throughput by allowing transactions to be separated into pre-constructed blocks.
This improves the consistency of block propagation times and allows higher
transaction rates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u94zfRE6MY
• Do check out:
https://twitter.com/inputoutputhk/status/1483448610998083586?lang=en
for a more detailed write up on future upgrades and future scaling plans for
Cardano.

22. One of the largest crypto hedge funds
in the world, Grayscale has been most
bullish on the long term prospects of
Cardano.

23. According to the MBLM Top Brand Intimacy 2022 report, Cardano (ADA) emerged as the
top crypto and blockchain brand with a quotient score of 52.6. Bitcoin (BTC), the largest
cryptocurrency by market cap, is ranked second crypto brand and 30th overall, with a
quotient score of 51.7.

24. GLOSSARY
1. Third Generation: In essence, the third generation of crypto and blockchain
aims to solve the issues facing the first two generations, which are considered
to be Bitcoin, the original crypto, and Ethereum, the first crypto to offer smart
contracts and decentralized apps.
2. Open Source: Denoting software for which the original source code is made
freely available and may be redistributed and modified.
3. Proof of Stake: Proof-of-stake protocols are a class of consensus mechanisms
for blockchains that work by selecting validators in proportion to their quantity
of holdings in the associated cryptocurrency. This is done to avoid the
computational cost of proof-of-work schemes.
4. Smart Contract: Smart contracts are simply programs stored on a blockchain
that run when predetermined conditions are met. They typically are used to
automate the execution of an agreement so that all participants can be
immediately certain of the outcome, without any intermediary's involvement or
time loss.

25. GLOSSARY
5. NFT: NFT stands for "non-fungible token." At a basic level, an NFT is a digital
asset that links ownership to unique physical or digital items, such as works of
art, real estate, music, or videos. NFTs can be considered modern-day
collectibles and sold or traded.
6. Nodes: A device connected to a network. Every terminal, computer, hub, switch
and router is a node. In a blockchain network, every validating computer, miner
computer or specialized miner hardware is a node.
7. Vasil Hardfork: Put simply, the Vasil hardfork will increase throughput on the
Cardano blockchain and improve the development of smart contracts and
decentralised apps (dApps).
8. DeFi: Decentralized finance(DeFi) offers financial instruments without relying
on intermediaries such as brokerages, exchanges, or banks by using smart
contracts on a blockchain.
9. Metaverse: The metaverse is a digital reality that combines aspects of social
media, online gaming, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and
cryptocurrencies to allow users to interact virtually.

26. THANK YOU
Kingsley Choo​
king333@gmail.com
To make a kind donation to support my
efforts please send ADA to my ADA
handle:
$ogada