Two projects from Blockchain Infrastructure Index

Written by Vladislav Akelyev
Written by
Investing reporter
4   min.
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Blockchain Infrastructure Index

Blockchain infrastructure index consists of popular infrastructure projects, most of them creating their own blockchain ecosystem upon which decentralized applications are built

Which projects will we review? 

Today we take a look at two projects from this index, Solana and Cardano 

Solana 

Solana is a publicly available, base-level blockchain protocol optimized for scalability. Its goal is to provide a platform that allows developers to build decentralized applications (dApps) without having to design for performance bottlenecks. Solana features a new timestamp system called Proof-of-History (PoH), which allows transactions to be automatically sequenced. It also uses the Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm to protect the network.  Key benefits include less than a second settlement time, low transaction costs and support for all LLVM-compatible smart contract languages.

Who developed Solana and when?

Solana’s origins date back to late 2017, when founder Anatoly Yakovenko published a draft white paper detailing a new timing methodology for distributed systems called Proof of History (PoH)

Solana Labs began fundraising for its new network in the second quarter of 2018. Between April 2018 and July 2019, the team raised just over $20 million in various private token sales.

Solana launched a beta version of Mainnet in March 2020, shortly after raising $1.76 million in a public token auction hosted on CoinList.

Proof of History

The biggest problem in distributed networks is reconciling the time and sequence in which events occurred, as nodes in the network cannot trust the timestamps in messages received from other nodes. Solana tries to solve this problem with Proof of History (PoH) by creating a cryptographically secure time source in the network. Proof of History is a high-frequency verifiable delay function (VDF) that requires a certain number of sequential steps to evaluate, but produces a unique result that can be publicly verified. This means that nodes can create the next block without first coordinating with the entire network, because they can trust the timestamp and order of the messages they receive. The result is a reduction in consensus overhead.

The Solana ecosystem includes a huge list of projects for different user needs

Solana ecosystem

Solana Foundation, a Swiss non-profit organization, owns the intellectual property of Solana and will help set the overall direction of the network together with Solana Labs. The code is open-source, allowing community developers to contribute and contribute to proposed protocol updates. Solana Labs will remain a major player in the protocol and will offer and support network updates and new features.

Over the last year, Solana’s price has increased by 17 times, reaching a peak of $255 and is currently trading at $117

Solana's price

Cardano

Cardano is an open-source smart contract platform that aims to provide multiple features through a layered design. Its modularity will eventually allow the use of network delegation, side chains and light client data structures. Cardano uses a version of Proof-of-Stake (PoS) called Ouroboros to secure the network and manage the blockchain production process. The network has its own token called ADA, which entitles interested parties to a new issue in proportion to their assets and allows users to pay for transactions.

Cardano has no published official document; it is developed from a collection of academic articles. Cardano considers itself a “third-generation” protocol, improving on Bitcoin and Ethereum as first and second-generation respectively. Cardano is named after Italian Renaissance mathematician Gerolamo Cardano, while its own currency ADA is named after Ada Lovelace, a 19th-century mathematician who is sometimes called the first programmer.

Cardano is supported by three organizations: IOHK, The Cardano Foundation and Emurgo. IOHK is a blockchain research and development company founded by Charles Hoskinson and Jeremy Wood

Below is the Cardano ecosystem

Below is the Cardano ecosystem

Cardano’s blockchain has two layers: the settlement layer and the computer layer. The Cardano Settlement Layer (CSL) is used to settle transactions made by peer-to-peer nodes in the network, using ADA, Cardano’s own currency. The Cardano Computation Layer (CCL) is optimized to support smart contracts and decentralized applications.

Cardano’s developers chose a layered protocol to increase the network bandwidth for protocol changes and soft-fork implementations. Cardano is developed in Haskell, while Cardano smart contracts are created in Plutus, another programming language that allows for more stringent contracts.

Over the last year, Cardano’s price has risen 7.5 times, peaking at $3.1 and now trading at $1.16

Cardano's price

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