Cardano 

ADA Price

What is the Cardano cryptocurrency?

Cardano is a public proof-of-stake Layer 1 blockchain launched in September 2017 by IOHK, the company co-founded by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson. The Cardano Foundation and EMURGO co-founded the project. Development follows peer-reviewed academic research, and the roadmap passed through the Byron, Shelley, Goguen and Basho phases. ADA is the native coin of this chain: the asset pays transaction fees, carries staking delegation rights and grants governance votes in the Voltaire era.

Does Cardano use mining or staking?

Cardano uses proof-of-stake staking, not mining. ADA holders delegate their balance to stake pools, and the protocol pays rewards from its reserve. Delegation carries no lockup: delegated ADA stays spendable. Block production is assigned by stake, which makes Cardano an energy-efficient settlement layer for transactions and smart contracts.

What is ADA's maximum supply?

ADA has a fixed maximum supply of 45,000,000,000 tokens, per DropsTab data. About 57.6% of that supply was sold to public buyers in the ICO, and the remaining share forms the protocol reserve. The reserve emits staking rewards toward the cap. With the cap nearly reached, new-supply inflation is minimal.

How does Cardano staking work?

ADA holders delegate tokens to stake pools and earn rewards paid from the protocol reserve. Delegation involves no lockup, so delegated ADA remains spendable at any time. Reward emissions taper as total supply approaches the 45 billion cap, so staking returns decline over time. This continuous staking rewards distribution is ADA's main ongoing emission channel.

What did the Cardano ICO raise?

The Cardano ICO raised approximately $62.2 million across five tranches that ran from October 2015 to May 2017, per DropsTab fundraising records. Every tranche was priced at $0.0024 per ADA. The sale placed about 57.6% of total supply with public buyers, one of the broadest retail distributions among early Layer 1 projects.

Who invested in Cardano's ICO?

Cardano's public sale was open to retail buyers, and no venture-capital rounds are recorded in its funding history. Per DropsTab investor records, angel participants on the first tranche included Julian Sarokin and James Sowers. The three founding entities, IOHK, the Cardano Foundation and EMURGO, received a combined allocation of about 11.6% of supply, roughly 5.2 billion ADA. This distribution made Cardano a community-funded project from the start.

Does ADA have a vesting schedule or token unlocks?

ADA has no vesting schedule. The ICO allocations, the founding-entity allocations and the protocol reserve were all fixed at launch, so Cardano has no cliff periods and no scheduled unlock dates. Sell pressure therefore comes from continuous staking reward distribution, and no timed insider unlocks add to it. Investors monitoring supply risk track reserve emission instead of a unlock calendar.

Is ADA a coin or a token?

ADA is a coin: the native asset of the Cardano blockchain, which runs its own ledger and does not depend on another chain's infrastructure. A wrapped ADA representation exists on BNB Smart Chain under contract 0x3ee2200efb3400fabb9aacf31297cbdd1d435d47, verifiable on BscTrace; the wrapper is a bridged token and a separate instrument from native ADA. DropsTab classifies Cardano under Blockchain and also carries an SEC security token classification tag for ADA.

Where can you trade ADA crypto?

ADA trades on 100+ spot markets across major centralized exchanges, per DropsTab data. Spot venues include Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, Upbit, Bybit and KuCoin, with fiat pairs in USD, EUR, KRW, JPY, TRY and GBP, among others. DropsTab also tracks 20+ derivative markets, including perpetual futures on Binance Futures, OKX, Hyperliquid and Kraken Futures. No DEX markets are tracked, so ADA liquidity is CEX-centric and venue depth is high.