Despite being billed as a 2nd-generation blockchain, some experts believe that Cardano (ADA) is failing to live up to its potential. According to Justin Bons, a full-time cryptocurrency researcher and the founder of investment firm CyberCapital, Cardano is plagued by serious performance issues and lacks the sophisticated functionality of other leading blockchain networks.
In a 20-tweet-long thread , Bons argues that these problems stem from several misleading claims and unrealized promises made by the Cardano team. In particular, he points to instances where the network failed to achieve even basic milestones in a timely manner. For example, he notes the “lack of a fee market” system on the Cardano network.
When it comes to blockchain networks, there are a few key components that are essential for the success of the platform. One of these components is the fee market, which helps to ensure that the network can function properly and remain secure.
Unfortunately, the Cardano network does not currently have a fee market in place. This means that there is no incentive for users to help secure the network, as they are not being compensated for their efforts. As a result, the Cardano network is not as secure as it could be, and this could have serious implications for the future of the platform.
1/20) Cardano has been propped up by false promises & claims
Promising the moon while only delivering mediocrity
ADA is one of the oldest 2nd generation blockchains
Yet it is objectively the least capable compared to all of the competition
I will cover why in this thread:
— Justin Bons (@Justin_Bons) April 24, 2022
Bons also notes that Cardano’s smart contract platform Plutus is so inefficient that it cannot handle any more increases in capacity. Whether this is due to poor optimization, a lack of resources, or another underlying problem remains to be seen, but if Plutus is indeed as inefficient as Bons claims, Cardano may have a difficult time convincing users to use its platform over more established alternatives.
To make matters worse, according to the researcher, ADA network has an inherent mempool size limit, which is a data structure that stores unconfirmed transactions waiting to be included in the next block. This data collection allows users to keep track of which transactions they have broadcast to the network, and also aids in relay by other nodes.
In his analysis, Bons reveals that once the network’s 630 transactions limit is hit, ADA becomes “completely unusable at any significant scale”- which, needless to say, leads to serious reliability issues for the overall blockchain.
Bons also reveals that as a 2nd-generation blockchain ADA is supposed to perform far better than Bitcoin (BTC), yet, he says, “ADA is worse!”
Furthermore, Bons indicated that ADA’s smart contract functionality is severely limited.
One of the most touted features of Cardano is its support for smart contracts. However, due to the design of its blockchain, smart contracts on the Cardano network can only be processed one transaction at a time per block. This creates major scalability issues and significantly limits the potential use cases for smart contracts on the Cardano network- to which Bons tweeted:
“So even though ADA claims to have come through on its long-delayed promise of implementing smart contracts over ADA. In reality & in practice this is certainly not the case. The crypto researcher also noted that “[t]his is also far from the first time promises were made & not met by ADA.”
Bons believes that given ADA’s lackluster performance, it seems doubtful that the blockchain will ever achieve the transformative breakthroughs that it has promised. He concludes by saying that “considering the terrible track record of ADA. It is fair to evaluate the current track record as a predictor of future progress.
Clearly, if ADA hopes to remain competitive in today’s digital landscape, it must find a way to address these critical flaws and make improvements to its underlying architecture.
While some might see these setbacks as simply growing pains for a young network, Bons believes that they seriously undermine Cardano’s long-term viability. He argues that for any blockchain to succeed in the long run, it must be able to execute core functions with speed and efficiency. And based on current data, it seems that Cardano, at least for now, falls well short of this goal.
Whether or not these issues will be addressed over time remains an open question.
Price Action
As of press time, ADA is changing hands at $0.8392, down about 0.55% intraday. The $38 billion market cap altcoin, whose market dominance remains at 1.58%, traded in a range of $0.8210 – $0.8539, indicating volatility over the last 24 hours.
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