The name of the cryptocurrency on the Cardano blockchain. Named after the English mathematician and writer, Ada Lovelace.

1 ADA = 1,000,000 Lovelaces

How much ADA was delegated to the pool at the start of the current epoch.

A type of network data structure that contains information about ADA ownership, transaction results, network type, and delegation preferences.

A collection of binary data that is self-contained, uniquely identifiable, and has value.

The fourth phase of Cardano development. This phase will introduce performance improvements. Named after Matsuo Basho, the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan.

The "Byzantine Fault Tolerance" or "(B) yzantine (F) ault (T) olerance" for its acronym in English. It is a property of network systems that allows certain elements of the network to fail or behave maliciously without doing damage to the network as a whole.

A block is a container for records related to recent transactions. Each block contains not only transaction records, but also information about the previous block and, as each new block is verified by the network, they are added to the blockchain.

The issuance of securities backed by liquid assets from a pool of illiquid assets.

The initial startup phase or first phase of the Cardano network. Named after the British poet, politician and peer, Lord Byron.

The process by which the nodes of the network agree on the state of the network and on which blocks should be produced. Cardano uses the Ouroboros protocol to reach consensus.

The total amount of stake delegated to a stake pool. This includes any guarantees or pledge that the operator has applied plus the stake of other delegates.

The fixed rate, denominated in ADA, that a pool charges its delegates. This fee is subtracted from the total rewards of the epoch before the profit margin is applied to you. Under no circumstances are funds deducted from the delegators' wallets.

Daedalus is a wallet for the ADA cryptocurrency that allows you to send, receive, store and delegate your funds. The Daedalus wallet is a full node, that manages a complete copy of the Cardano blockchain. Daedalus is ideal for more experienced users as it requires synchronization to the blockchain each time you open it.

A decentralized application, also known as a smart contract. DApps became popular with Ethereum and are currently present on a wide variety of blockchain platforms.

Delegation is the act of assigning the stake associated with your ADA holdings to a stake pool in order to obtain rewards for participating in the network.

A period of time defined by a certain number of slots. On the Cardano blockchain, an epoch consists of four hundred thirty-two thousand (432,000) slots, which are equivalent to around five (5) days.

The fee pool operators take from the blocks minted during an epoch. SPOs get a 340 ADA (₳) fee. That is the bare minimum allowed by the network but operators can increase it if it wanted.

Return on Staking % per  epoch.

Every transaction has a fee to be processed. Transaction fees are used to prevent network attacks by introducing a small cost that would become prohibitively high if abused on a large scale.

A digital asset that derives its value from an external good and that can be traded. They often represent stocks, bonds, or other income-generating assets. Security tokens are subject to federal regulations and must be issued accordingly.

A fungible token is a digital asset that is constructed in such a way that each individual token or fraction is equivalent to the next. For example, one (1) ADA that belongs to person “A” equals one (1) ADA that belongs to person “B”.

The third phase of Cardano development. Smart contracts will be introduced in this phase. Named after the American computer scientist and professor, Joseph Goguen.

A hard fork is a non-backward-compatible update that applies fundamental changes to the way a cryptocurrency works. Cardano had a hard fork transitioning from Byron to Shelley.

Think of it like floors in a building that's infinitely tall. Each floor is a block.

Block height refers to a specific location in a blockchain, measured by how many confirmed blocks precede it. The current block height of a blockchain is an indication of its current size or time in existence.

A way to encourage individuals to participate in the system by rewarding them with a proportional return on their investment.

The ability to access and share information through different blockchain networks without the need for intermediaries.

The ledger is a distributed database that operates in a decentralized manner through multiple nodes distributed in many locations.

How many blocks that pool has minted during its entire life as a pool.

Lifetime Return of stake that the pool has generated for its delegators. For large pools this can be 4-5% on avg. For smaller pools that arent minting blocks every epoch, it can be a lot higher sometimes.

How much ADA is actively irl (in real life) delegated to the pool the moment you are looking at it.

The smallest unit of the ADA cryptocurrency. Named after the English mathematician and writer, Ada Lovelace.

1 Lovelace = 0.000001 ADA

Also known as the "pool commissions". The profit margin is the percentage of the total rewards that the operator receives, it is applied after the fixed fee but before distributing the rewards to the delegates.

Marlowe is a domain-specific programming language developed for the purpose of designing and writing financial smart contracts.

A unique digital asset owned by the blockchain that represents certain objects such as a collector's card, digital art, event tickets, or records of physical assets. A non-fungible token cannot be divided into smaller parts.

Ouroboros Fault Tolerant Protocol or by its acronym in English “(O) uroboros (B) yzantine (F) ault (T) olerant protocol”. A version of the Ouroboros protocol that includes Byzantine fault tolerance.

A provably secure proof-of-stake consensus protocol. The Cardano blockchain uses it to provide the mechanics of delegations, stake pools, incentives and rewards.

The performance metric is oriented to the stake pools and shows what percentage of the slots assigned to a pool are created successfully. For example, if a stake pool is assigned four (4) slots, but it only creates two (2), the "performance" of that pool would be fifty percent (50%).

It is the amount of ADA committed by the operator of a stake pool. Operators do not need to include a guarantee to operate a pool, but if they do they must ensure that they keep their own delegation above this number so that their pool can produce blocks.

A "full Turing" programming platform designed to write smart contracts using functional programming methods. Plutus is based on the Haskell programming language.

The number of blocks that a stake pool has successfully produced in the current epoch.

It is the set of methods implemented in a blockchain network that are used to reach consensus and validate transactions. Cardano uses the Ouroboros protocol and variants on its blockchain network.

It is a type of consensus mechanism used to reach an agreement on which records should be added to the blockchain. Proof-Of-Stake reaches consensus based on the delegations or stake of the network participants.

The amount of ADA contained in each new block that is paid to stake pools and delegators for participating in the network.

The point from which a stake pool has more than the ideal number of delegations and the rewards to its delegates will begin to decrease.

The second phase of Cardano development. In this phase Cardano becomes a decentralized network. Named after Percy Bysshe Shelley, who is widely recognized as one of the greatest philosophical poets of the English language.

A period of time within an epoch. There are four hundred thirty-two thousand (432,000) slots in an epoch.

It is the stake pool that has been chosen to create a block in a given slot. At the beginning of each epoch, the leader is chosen for all the slots of the epoch.

It is a backward compatible update that applies changes to the way a cryptocurrency works in such a way that it does not conflict with the existing rules of the blockchain.

A trusted network node and block producer that represents the combined delegation or stake of multiple delegators or stake holders as a single entity.

An expendable or non-expendable tradable good that can also be used as a unit of payment, reward or information store.

The representation of real world assets as tokens.

Transactions Per Second or "(T) ransactions §er (S) econd", is the amount of transactions that the blockchain can process per second.

Also known as "Tx". A transaction represents the action of sending or receiving funds on the network. All transactions are visible in the network explorer of the blockchain.

A portion of the rewards earned in each epoch is reserved for the treasury. Treasury reserves will be used to fund future network and ecosystem developments and improvements. Current treasury collection is twenty percent (20%) per epoch.

A token that is issued to finance the development of a project and that is then used to buy goods or services from that project once it has been completed.

“Unspent transaction balance” or “(U) nspent (Tx) ransaction (O) utput”, is the amount of cryptocurrencies left in your wallet after a transaction.

It is also known as margin fee. This is one of the two fees pools charge their delegates.  Each pool operator is free to set it up to whatever they like, hence its name variable. It goes from 0% to 100%. Most pool operators charge between 1% to 5%. This fee is calculated after the fixed fee (minimum of 340 per epoch) is deducted. If you delegate to a pool with 100% margin fee, you will not get any rewards per epoch. As long as you are delegating to a well maintained pool charging normal fees (340 fixed + 1% to 5% variable fee) you should receive an annual reward of around 5%.   

The fifth phase of Cardano development. In this, Cardano will incorporate treasury and governance in the network. Also known as François-Marie Arouet, Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher, and historian.

A lightweight web wallet or wallet for Cardano that runs as a Chrome and Firefox extension and supports hardware wallets. There is also a mobile app version of the wallet. Yoroi is ideal for those who are starting with Cardano as it is quite intuitive and easy to use.