Back to blog

Cardano Vs. Ethereum: A Comparison

Mar 23, 2022

Why is a comparison between these two cryptos needed?

The reason is straightforward: they share the same “battle” ground.

If you’re a crypto enthusiast or simply curious about this innovative system and you follow crypto news, Cardano was defined as the Ethereum killer countless times.

Go on reading: you will find that we used many parameters to compare these two valuable crypto projects that focus on decentralized applications and – of course – smart contracts.

But we did that under an objective perspective: we don’t want to assess which crypto is better, it’s just a way to give you as many tools as possible to evaluate both Cardano and Ethereum, taking into account both positive and negative aspects.

What is Ethereum?

The first thing to highlight is that many times the terminology related to Ethereum is used incorrectly: you found Ethereum in headlines, blogs, social media, often used as a synonym for the cryptocurrency ETH.

In reality, Ethereum is the name of the project and blockchain behind the popular crypto – and second crypto by market capitalization – Ether (ETH). The project was born with a different coin – today known as Ethereum Classic (ETC) and kept after the popular fork that followed The DAO attack.

It is important to note that Ethereum is a pioneer in the crypto space: after Bitcoin, it became the most important cryptocurrency because it brought digital currencies to the real world. Thanks to its founders – among which we find Vitalik Buterin – the project set its goal very soon: giving cryptocurrencies a wider range of use cases. Not just cryptos as an alternative payment system, but an ecosystem capable of supporting applications and entire businesses while keeping an open-source nature – along with hundreds of other crypto projects, including Binance in its earlier phase.

Ethereum inherited a lot from the Bitcoin project – one of the most important elements is the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm, later changed after the migration to Proof-of-Stake (PoS).

Ether (ETH) price chart. Source: CoinMarketCap

What is Cardano?

Cardano focuses it all on a scientific approach: as reported on the project homepage, Cardano is fully developed by engineers who aim for using evidence-based methods and who want to provide leading technologies to create a decentralized environment.

Its Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism perfectly fits the scope: differently from Ethereum, which moved to this algorithm only in a second moment, Cardano adopted this consensus type very soon to allow faster transactions without giving up on security – a kind of system hard to be adopted by Proof-of-Work (PoW) cryptos unless second layer solutions are in place.

It is safe to say that the team behind Cardano wants to make the crypto space more serious: it may seem a strange sentence, but it’s appropriate when it comes to Cardano. From their website to the structure of their project, the Cardano team wants to cut out the noise and make it clear that the world of cryptocurrencies is a system as serious as the traditional one – it just disrupted the old space to make it more inclusive.

It is also true that it takes many of its features from Ethereum, but wants to improve them: as you will see in this article, there is a ground where the two can compete.

Cardano (ADA) price chart. Source: CoinMarketCap

Ethereum vs. Cardano: Some parameters

To better compare these two crypto projects, it is useful to analyze some common parameters:

ADA vs. ETH	Cardano (ADA)	Ether (ETH)
When was the project launched?	2015 – but it was launched in 2017	2015 – but the project was under development since 2013
Who are its founders?	Charles Hoskinson	Vitalik Buterin, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio, Gavin Wood, Joseph Lubin
What about the supply?	Limited. Max supply: 45,000,000,000 ADA	Not Limited. Total supply: 119,970,802 ETH
What is the consensus algorithm?	PoS	PoW – in the process of switching to PoS
What is the blockchain of the project?	Cardano	Ethereum
What is the main function of the project?	Decentralized apps	Decentralized apps
Smart contracts	Yes	Yes
What is the latency?	20 seconds	It depends on the congestion of the network – from a few seconds to 10 minutes on average
What is the cost of transactions?	Around 0.16 ADA	$1.511 at the time of writing (March 15th, 2022)
Can you stake the crypto?	Yes	Yes – for ETH 2.0

The first thing that catches the eye is that the two projects have a founder in common: Charles Hoskinson left Ethereum after some disagreements on the management of the blockchain, but never abandoned the crypto space – becoming one of the most prominent personalities in the industry.

The common founder is maybe one of the reasons why the two projects have so many similarities.

If you’re wondering whether it’s better to buy Ethereum vs. Cardano, the answer can’t be definite. Both projects founded their success on the creation of a decentralized, democratic and inclusive financial system.

They still have differences: as you can see from our Cardano vs. ETH comparative table, Cardano was able to include some key features from the very beginning: PoS is one of them, making the blockchain faster and transactions less expensive.

Ethereum has already announced its transition to Proof-of-Stake, and traders and investors have been waiting for it to understand what will happen to Ether after the process is complete. The project is currently running on two different blockchains – the Mainnet PoW and the Beacon chain PoS – and the merge should occur in the next few months.

The limited supply is another important feature, but it’s worth noting that Ethereum, with its EIP-1559, developed a fee-burning mechanism that will allow users to better predict fees and appreciate the benefits of controlled inflation.

How do Ethereum and Cardano deal with smart contracts?

This is a pivotal question. In today’s world, smart contracts are always more important since they really exploit blockchain technology and its advantages.

Cardano is structured to allow less expensive fees: this has always been something that affected the Ethereum project negatively because the price of transactions reached even some hundreds of dollars in times of heavy congestion. It’s also true that Ethereum is fixing this thanks to its improvements: this project has the advantage of having a strong community of developers who make Ethereum an ever-evolving and adaptable project – these are some of the reasons why it’s still considered one of the best cryptos to stake.

How to buy ETH on Freewallet

For those who are interested in trading ETH, Freewallet – which supported the London Upgrade – provides many solutions to make your experience smooth and frictionless.

You can easily buy this crypto both via the app and web wallet.

The very first and easier option you have is to buy ETH with your card thanks to the exchange on the homepage of the website: just select the amount and insert your wallet address.

You can also use the web wallet: after signing up, you will find this option in your dashboard. Just select “Buy with a card”, locate “ETH”, choose between Moonpay and Simplex to complete your purchase.

The same procedure can be followed on Freewallet’s official mobile application – you can download both the multi-currency and the Ethereum wallet.

Final thoughts

As usual in the crypto space, it’s not possible to say what is the best cryptocurrency – provided that the project behind it is reliable and secure.

The same works with ETH and ADA: the goal of this comparison was to give you some useful information about these two popular and trustworthy crypto projects. Both were able to conquer the crypto market thanks to their focus on usefulness and wider adoption of cryptos at a global scale, to create an inclusive decentralized system. So, even if ADA is often defined as the Ethereum killer, crypto traders and investors don’t perceive a real competition, but two valuable assets.

If you’re interested in ETH, you may like our other articles: