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Will the Cardano Blockchain Overtake the Ethereum Blockchain?

Cardano has been in a sort of race with Ethereum to become the de facto smart contract blockchain. So far, things have not turned out well for Cardano because the developers have not actually released a public mannet. 

That issue has not stopped the hype machine surrounding the project from claiming that it will overtake Ethereum. In our opinion, the odds of Cardano overtaking Ethereum are very low. 

Ethereum simply has way too much of a lead on Cardano. The development team behind Cardano also appears to lack some level of direction with missed deadlines and other problems. 

Anyway, this article will explain why Cardano overtaking Ethereum just is not that likely. 

The Founding of Cardano

The founding of Cardano actually relates to Ethereum. For those that do not know, Ethereum had a total of eight co-founders. 

There were far too many co-founders for that to work. 

One of those co-founders was someone called Charles Hoskinson. Hoskinson actually served as the CEO of the Ethereum Foundation for a very brief amount of time. 

Hoskinson was eventually fired from his CEO position and kicked out of the project itself. The reasons for his departure were never aired publicly. But a lot of speculation and off the record sources have claimed that he caused problems within the organization. 

Basically, he caused problems and in-fighting. He was eventually voted off by the other co-founders. 

The rumors were unsubstantiated. However, Hoskinson’s general behavior after his departure from Ethereum and his current behavior as founder of Cardano supports this rumor. Hoskinson has a tendency to focus heavily on PR, defending Cardano, and defending himself. 

Cardano was launched in 2015 after Hoskinson was let go from Ethereum after getting in a dispute with Vitalik Buterin about whether or not Ethereum should accept venture capital. 

Hoskinson launched Cardano by founding a blockchain development company called IOHK and the Cardano Foundation. IOHK is responsible for developing Cardano and the Cardano Foundation is responsible for managing the blockchain. 

The cryptocurrency launched with an ICO that raised over $600 million. And the market cap surged to over $10 billion during the 2017 bull run. 

Cardano vs Ethereum Tech Specs

It is important to note that Cardano does not currently have a public mainnet. In other words, the blockchain has no actual use at the moment. That said, there is a testnet that we can compare to Ethereum for a good comparison. 

Cardano Quick Technical Details

Hashing Algorithm: Proof of Stake

Transactions Per Second: 250 TPS

Average Slot Time: 20 seconds

Staking Reward: 3.70%

Ethereum Quick Technical Details

Hashing Algorithm: Proof of Work

Transactions Per Second: 30 TPS

Average Block Time: 10-20 seconds

Block Reward: ~2 ETH

Final Verdict on Tech Specs

As you can see from the tech specs of both blockchains, Cardano is actually the superior blockchain. It has lower transaction fees, faster TPS, a more environmentally friendly hashing algorithm, and is an overall faster blockchain. 

The one problem that Cardano has?

It is all theoretical because the public mainnet has not yet been released. 

The Problems With Cardano

Cardano has a whole host of problems with it. We covered some of the problems in the beginning of the article that relate to the leadership of the project. A lot of the problems likely stem from poor leadership, but some of the problems are simply problems that Cardano cannot overcome. 

Here are some of those problems:

  • Public perception of Cardano is terrible. The cryptocurrency community as a whole views Cardano as a bit of a joke. This is because it has existed for years without any smart contracts. It has had nothing but talk of smart contracts for years. Everyone that has looked at the tech behind Cardano knows it can be good. It has just taken too long for anything to develop with the project. 
  • Ethereum is already there. The other problem with Cardano is that not many people actually know about it. Everyone in cryptocurrency understands Ethereum. Most understand Binance Smart Chain. Not many people understand Cardano because they do not have smart contracts, so there is nothing to understand. And we are reaching a point where Ethereum is starting to solidify into something while Cardano has not even launched. 
  • Issues will likely arise with the release of smart contracts. Cardano will release smart contracts in the near future. However, there will most likely be bugs and problems with it. These problems must be fixed, which takes time away from developers. Meanwhile, Ethereum already has an ecosystem and layer 2s on it. 
  • Cardano is difficult to program. Another issue is that Cardano is not a particularly easy blockchain to write dApps on. The Cardano Foudnation claims that this will ensure that only high quality projects are on Cardano. That is true to an extent, but it is still better when a programmer can spin up a dApp in a few weeks (ie. Yearn.Finance) rather than a few months. 
  • Cardano has leadership issues. Hoskinson was probably fired from Ethereum for more than a simple disagreement with fellow co-founder Buterin. The behavior of Hoskinson does not leave a good impression of him as a leader that can take Cardano to the next level. We will leave it at that.
  • Ethereum 2.0 will be released. The release of Ethereum 2.0 will occur in either late 2021 or early 2022. This will see Ethereum switch to proof of stake and transaction speeds greatly increase. It will be able to better compete with Cardano right at the time that Cardano is released. 

Closing Thoughts

That about sums it up for why the Cardano blockchain will probably not overtake Ethereum. It is not even a technical issue with Cardano. 

The issue is more of a timing issue. Cardano very well might be the right blockchain at the wrong time. To put it another way, this conversation could be very different if Cardano had smart contracts during the 2017 bull run. In that case, there is a very good chance that Cardano could have overtaken Ethereum because Ethereum was nowhere close to releasing Ethereum 2.0. 

However, the distance between Ethereum (2.0) and Cardano is too great for Cardano to overcome.

Will the Cardano Blockchain Overtake the Ethereum Blockchain?