Continuing the Blockchain Revolution with Ouroborus — Cardano’s Blockchain Architecture

It all started with bitcoin. A few years after, many other blockchains entered into space, all of them promising an essential factor in blockchain development — revolution.

Counting down the years after bitcoin, many of these newly emerged blockchains are running on similar technicalities initially developed by bitcoin and are thus affected by the same problems bitcoin faces. One may therefore ask, “where then lies the revolution?”

To answer this question, we introduced Ouroborus, a highly scalable and the first provably secure proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol. It is the first time that a blockchain protocol (Ouroborus) was based on peer-reviewed research. It’s indeed revolutionary.

This protocol is the foundation with which Cardano was built, and it is also a foundation that guarantees a blockchain-built future.

To even further the claims of a revolutionary blockchain protocol is the mechanism with which Ouroborus was built. The blockchain protocol combines unique technology and instruments which are mathematically verified, also combining economic philosophy and behavioural psychology to ensure that blockchains that depend on it are not only secure but also sustainable.

While utilizing a fraction of energy that would have been required by bitcoin’s blockchain, Ouroborus can guarantee the establishment of global, permissionless networks on its protocol.

Features of Ouroborus

A unique and probably one of the essential features that Ouroborus brings to any blockchain is its provable security against attackers.

In the case of Cardano, security is guaranteed when 51% of ADA holders are honest. To achieve this, Cardano makes use of a random leader selection model. Meanwhile, as a blockchain committed to improving security, Cardano continues to introduce new and more rigorous security upgrades.

Another unique feature of the blockchain run on Ouroborus is its methods of awarding incentives to participants on the network. Participants are rewarded in ADA after they operate a stake pool or after they delegate an ADA stake to a stake pool.

Additionally, because Ouroborus is a Proof-of-Stake protocol, it distributes the network across stake pools. These are node operators having the infrastructure to guarantee a consistently reliable connection on the blockchain network.

Therefore, a stake pool is made a slot leader for each slot. Whenever the leader adds a new block to the chain, the leader is rewarded, and ADA holders may consequently delegate their stake to a specific stake pool to increase its chance of being selected as the slot leader with hopes of earning in the rewards of the pool.

Surprisingly, Ouroborus can carry out its functions and scale on the blockchain without requiring the amount of energy that would have been needed from other blockchain protocols. When compared to bitcoin, Ouroborus can achieve scalability with a required energy four million times lesser than the requirements of bitcoin. This is not unconnected to the fact that the Ouroborus protocol runs on a peer-reviewed Proof-of-Stake protocol.

Proof-of-Stake

Proof-of-Stake is the preferred consensus algorithm utilized by the Cardano blockchain. Its use in Cardano builds upon the revolution, which bitcoin’s proof-of-work protocol started.

The Proof-of-Work protocol, as utilized by bitcoin ushered in a new era of possibilities. It brought about a revolution in the financing platform, a revolution that oversaw the creation of permissionless, secure and distributed networks.

However, this revolution was hindered by the amount of energy it required to run seamlessly: before consensus for a new block was achieved, an enormous amount of energy was needed. This made the first blockchains struggle in sustaining and successfully scaling to the performance levels required by global networks.

With proof-of-stake, the energy-use challenge of the network to reach a consensus is eliminated. While bitcoin proof-of-work required miners to create new blocks to the chain by working past complex computational equations, Ouroborus and its proof-of-stake protocol select stake pools to add new blocks to the chain according to their stake control on the network.

Cardano, therefore, can scale horizontally — in contrast to Bitcoin’s vertically — performance is enhanced due to integration of additional nodes, computational requirements are greatly reduced, and the need for more powerful hardware is thus eliminated.

With the use of proof-of-stake, the scalability challenges faced with global networks is addressed; thus, taking the blockchain revolution to the next level.

Final Thoughts

Extensive research by leading experts across various fields brought about the innovation of Ouroborus. Its use on the Cardano network ensures that the network scales above the limits of many existing blockchains guarantees the block security through its settlement delay feature and employs an efficient reward system where honest users are incentivized, and dishonest users are punished.

The research into Ouroborus created an understanding of how we behave as a society, and explored the ideal balance of our interests, both individually and collectively to create the foundation which permissioned networks can be built to last; thus revolutionizing decentralized finance and blockchains.