What is Cardano (newcomers)

Cardano is a decentralized, open-source blockchain platform that was developed and launched in 2017 by Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), a blockchain research and development company. 

The platform was created to address some of the scalability, security, and interoperability issues that plague many other blockchain networks, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. 

One of the key features of Cardano is its use of a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm, which is designed to be more energy-efficient and secure than the proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm used by Bitcoin and Ethereum. 

With PoS, the chance of a node being selected to validate a block is proportional to the amount of Cardano tokens (ADA) that the node holds.