About Cardano
Cardano is a proof-of-stake blockchain whose native token is ADA, named after the mathematician Ada Lovelace. The project develops its protocol through peer-reviewed research papers before implementation, and ADA holders stake to secure the network and take part in its on-chain governance.
Cardano’s reserve, and its two speeds
New ADA, the network’s own token, is released from a reserve set aside when the chain was founded. A fixed share of what remains in that reserve is paid out each epoch, the accounting period the chain runs on. From each release, 20 per cent is taken for the treasury before the rest is distributed as staking rewards. The founding parameters put the maximum that can ever exist at 45 billion ADA. Cardano’s documentation names financial inclusion as one of its primary goals: reliable, secure financial services for people who do not currently have access to them.
The release rate is not a law of the chain. It sits among the protocol parameters that Cardano’s on-chain governance can change, which since the Plomin hard fork of 29 January 2025 means a vote of delegated representatives alongside the constitutional committee. Stake pool operators vote separately, and only on parameters classed as security-relevant, which these are not. Monetary policy here is something governance decides.
The speed question has two answers and they point in different directions. A block is produced every 20 seconds on average, which the documentation derives from one-second slots and a block frequency of 0.05, a figure it describes as the optimum budget for the protocol’s safety. Full settlement takes far longer. The settlement window is given as a formula over the chain’s security parameter, and at the founding settings that works out at 36 hours.
One limit is acknowledged in Cardano’s improvement process rather than in its user documentation. The randomness deciding who produces the next block is unpredictable, but it can be biased. An attacker can try candidate values until a favourable one appears, and how far that goes is in proportion to the stake they control.
Longer read: How Cardano chooses who produces the next block. Cardano picks a block producer by weighted lottery, and the design problem it solves is that a predictable winner could be attacked before it acts.
See more prices on the crypto in AUD hub, and how this figure is struck on the methodology page.