Cardano, the eighth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has reached a historic milestone, with its total blocks reaching 10 million.
In a Feb. 29 tweet, X user Stakewithpride highlighted that the 10th million block for Cardano would soon be reached. This was expected to occur today, March 1.
The 10th million Cardano block will be in 16 hours. 🔥 #Cardano $ADA https://t.co/As0W605zUC
— St₳kΣ with Pride 🌈 (@StakeWithPride) February 29, 2024
This milestone has now been reached, as the total number of blocks on the Cardano network is at 10,000,224, according to data from Cardano explorer Adastat. Blocks are batches of transactions that have been confirmed and stored on a blockchain.
Cardano, like Bitcoin, is an unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) blockchain that uses a different accounting model for its ledger, as opposed to account-based blockchains like Ethereum.
Cardano uses an Extended Unspent Transaction Output (EUTXO) mechanism, introduced with the Alonzo upgrade, to handle multi-assets and smart contracts.
Ouroboros is the consensus protocol for Cardano, a proof-of-stake protocol and the first blockchain protocol based on peer-reviewed research. Ouroboros selects participants – stake pools, in this case – to create new blocks based on the stake they control on the network.
Cardano’s 10-million-blocks milestone comes amid bullish sentiment on the crypto market, as Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies have reached new highs. ADA, Cardano’s native cryptocurrency, has also performed well, soaring to highs of $0.70 last seen in May 2022 before retreating.
At the time of writing, ADA was trading down 1.11% at around $0.68, according to CoinMarketCap.
Cardano has seen a surge of activity and innovation on its platform, contributing to the 10 million block milestone being reached. In a recent tweet, Ergo stated that 624,000 ERG have been moved to Cardano, accounting for 0.85% of the circulating supply.
