What is the future of Cardano?

High fees have been a limiting factor for the DeFi space.

What is DeFi?

Decentralized Finance or "DeFi" (deef-eye) is a novel financial system that operates independently and does not rely on centralized financial intermediaries like banks, credit unions, or insurance funds. Instead, users have the ability to transfer, trade, invest, and transact peer to peer using cryptocurrencies and digital assets via automated smart contracts, eliminating the need for these slow and costly intermediaries.

As the appeal for these projects increases with record values locked up, Ethereum's gas fees have made them an expensive endeavor. Cardano is aiming to fix this and more with its Mary upgrade.

So what is Mary upgrade?

The mainnet upgrade, which requires a hard fork of the blockchain, is a key milestone for Cardano. It introduces native tokens and multi-asset support, while making use of Cardano's increased transaction speeds, mission-critical security and lower fees.

Dispensing with the need for smart contracts "means that the accounting ledger will track the ownership and transfer of assets instead, removing extra complexity and potential for manual errors, while ensuring significant cost efficiency," said Tim Harrison, IOHK marketing and communications director.

Cardano developers can now create custom tokens or import projects from other blockchains into the Cardano network. This could be beneficial for new and interesting projects such in the DeFi and NFT ecosystem.

What is NFT?

1. NFTs are unique cryptographic tokens that exist on a blockchain and cannot be replicated.
2. NFTs can be used to represent real-world items like artwork and real-estate.
3. "Tokeninzing" these real-world tangible assets allows them to be bought, sold, and traded more efficiently while reducing the probability of fraud.
4. NFTs can also be used to represent peoples identities, property rights, and more.

Will Cardano's Mary upgrade finally position the one-time underdog as a serious challenger to Ethereum? While Cardano is innovating, other blockchain platforms - including Ethereum - are in a race to work out issues like scalability and sustainability as well.

But in the world of technology, it's not necessarily the best technology that wins, but the one with the better business strategy. Time will tell whether Cardano's Africa and Fortune 500 strategy will prevail. 

What is Fortune 500?

The Fortune 500 is an annual list compiled and published by Fortune magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States corporations by total revenue for their respective fiscal years.