Cardano and Chainlink are two of the top cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. While Cardano is the tenth largest, Chainlink is the fifteenth largest.
Like many in the crypto space, you may have heard of both Cardani and Chainlink but don’t know the difference between the two. They have some similarities such as staking as a way to support the network.
They are also quite scalable, making them faster than older networks such as Ethereum and Bitcoin. In this guide, we will highlight the differences between the two to help you differentiate them and help you decide on which to invest in if that is your goal.
What Is Cardano (ADA)?
Cardano is a proof-of-stake (PoS) network that provides a platform for building smart contracts and building of decentralized applications (dApps). The network was built as an alternative to slow networks that can not process transactions fast enough.
This makes it a good place to build decentralized applications fast and at a low cost since the network processes more transactions per second. Cardano’s uniqueness is in its approach towards implementing new upgrades to the network.
The founder Charles Hoskinson insists that every proposed improvement must go through thorough scientific scrutiny, including peer reviews. This approach makes the growth of Cardano slow, but Hoskinson believes it’s a sure way to build a reliable network for the future.
The native token for the network, ADA is used to power the network and run it. It is used to pay for transaction fees and is also used as the staking token to secure the network. You also need to own some ADA to participate in the governance of the network.
ADA has a maximum supply of 45 billion tokens and a circulating supply of roughly 36 billion tokens. ADA is a pre-mined token, which means all of them have been mined and are just being held and released systematically by the team.
What Is Chainlink (LINK)
Chainlink is a decentralized blockchain network that is focused on connecting smart contracts. This is in contrast to Cardano which supports the development of smart contracts and their subsequent use for building decentralized applications.
Known as a decentralized oracle network, the network allows blockchains to securely interact with external data feeds, events and payment methods, thus linking offline data with blockchains.
The network is supported by an open-source community of data providers, node operators, smart contract developers, researchers, security auditors and more.
Similar to PoS networks like Cardano, Chainlink rewards node operators for helping to run critical data infrastructure that keep it secure and ensure its success. The native token for the network is LINK, an ERC20 token that runs on Ethereum.
The token is used to pay for transaction fees for any service within the Chainlink ecosystem. LINK is used to practically power the ecosystem, and is used to incentivize node operators to continue to secure the network.
Also with the introduction of LINK staking, validators or node operators also stake their LINK to help in securing the network and also earn rewards for this. It also serves as a governance token that enables holders to vote for new changes to improve the network.
LINK has a total supply of 1 billion tokens, and a circulating supply of just over 600 million tokens. Although the tokens are all pre-mined, they are held by the team and issued gradually by the team.
Which Should You Buy?
Considering the differences between Cardano and Chainlink, there are obvious differences between the two that can affect the price. For example, the circulating supply is a major factor in determining price.
For ADA, it is 36 billion tokens as against LINK’s 600 million. The more the tokens, the less valuable they are generally, so this may explain why LINK is worth much more than ADA. Just on this basis, it is safe to expect that LINK will do better than ADA as an investment.
