Woods and Hoskinson co-founded the business IOHK to develop blockchains for use by corporations, governments, and education institutions.

[12][13] The lab had six post-doctoral and professorial positions with up to 35 jobs created in total, and was led by Aggelos Kiayias, developer of the Ouroboros protocol.

Citing an MBLM partner, advertising industry magazine Ad Age said Cardano's high ranking "can likely be chalked up to the gambling element of crypto".

Instead, it uses design principles intended to overcome issues – such as scalability, interoperability, and a lack of regulatory compliance – faced by earlier cryptocurrencies.

[21] Cardano claims that it overcomes problems found in other cryptocurrencies, mainly that Bitcoin is too slow and inflexible and that Ethereum is not safe or scalable.

[22] Like Bitcoin, Cardano uses a UTXO ledger model, though it is an extended version (EUTXO)[23][24] to facilitate smart contracts and scripting languages.

Development phases of Cardano, or "eras", are named after notable figures in poetry and computer science: Byron, Shelley, Goguen, Basho, and Voltaire.

It intends to allow ADA token holders to create proposals that may be voted upon by the community and, if successful, implemented.

[25][49][better source needed] In November 2023 Cardano began introducing sidechains, referred to by the project as "partner chains".

Snoop Dogg released several thousand NFTs in a project named "Baked Nation" for the Cardano chain in April 2022.

[37] Without any admission of wrongdoing, Kraken agreed to pay a fine of $30 million and halt its staking program in response.

Both the Wall Street Journal and The Times linked a fall in the price of Cardano – 19 per cent in June – and a slide for other major coins to the SEC's actions.