Cardano was launched by Charles Hoskinson — a co-founder of Ethereum — after he left Ethereum in 2014 following a governance dispute with Vitalik Buterin (Hoskinson wanted a for-profit company, Buterin wanted a non-profit). In 2015, Hoskinson and Jeremy Wood founded IOHK (Input Output Hong Kong, today Input Output Global) to build a new blockchain with a more scientific, research-driven approach.
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2017 ICO: raised roughly $62–63 million, initially targeting mainly the Japanese market.
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September 2017: the Cardano mainnet launches (the “Byron” era); ADA lists on exchanges.
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The chain is named after 16th-century mathematician Gerolamo Cardano; the ADA token is named after Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer.
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Ouroboros — the world's first mathematically verified and peer-reviewed Proof-of-Stake protocol — was developed in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh.
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Development and governance are shared across three organizations: IOHK/IOG (technology), the Cardano Foundation (Zug, Switzerland — oversight), and EMURGO (commercial/business arm).
Cardano*'*s development deliberately proceeds in slow, staged eras: Byron (foundation) → Shelley (decentralization) → Goguen (smart contracts, the 2021 Alonzo upgrade) → Basho (scaling, Hydra) → Voltaire (governance) — this “slow but rigorously peer-reviewed” approach is the key differentiator from other smart-contract platforms.