The Cryptocurrency Industry has an image problem.

Scams.  Rug-pulls.  Bait and Switch.  Pump and dump.  Manipulation.  DogeCoin, SafeMoon, PornRocket ... shall I go on?

Fortunately, there is one person that pushes strongly against that image and whose voice is reasoned, articulate, sincere, and delivering on his promises:  Charles Hoskinson, the creator of Cardano.  I have watched many of his videos, dug into his website, and began exploring the Cardano ecosystem from a technical perspective.  His video against DogeCoin was particularly good for expressing both his disappointment in the current state of the Crypto space (especially its "stupidity and avarice")  and for laying out a vision of the true potential of Crypto-currency (especially for the developing world).  

Dogecoin is a mere bitcoin copycat without any technical value.  Now, while that may change, that is its current state and thus, from a technical perspective, it is essentially worthless.  This is why I do not invest in Dogecoin.  I also would not invest any of my time or talent in any coin that is just a gimmick.

So, let's briefly consider the technology of Cardano.  I am not done evaluating it but I can give you my first impressions.

1. Haskell is a difficult language to learn.  In my day job, I program in Java (an imperative language) so I am unfamiliar with Haskell (a functional language).  Now, Haskell's difficulty could hurt its adoption; however, Charles's reasoning for choosing the language (mathematical proof of correctness) is a good one.  Thus, because the security, accuracy, and reliability of the blockchain are so critical, it is worth choosing a language that can be validated as correct.  I will be digging into this a lot deeper and have a lot more to say about comparing smart contract languages and smart contract platforms.

2. Cardano's "go slow" approach clearly is prioritizing quality over quantity.  In other words, build a quality product and market share (quantity) will come as a byproduct.  This is both smart and warranted if you are serious about cryptocurrencies fulfilling their potential of truly disrupting the well-establish, highly influential, and highly regulated traditional financial system.  This attention to detail is very evident in the cardano.org website, the rich set of development tools (the simulator is pretty slick), and the large quantity of documentation.  Charles et. al are clearly trying to do this "right".  Bravo!

3. The Marlowe playground is a "low-code" environment for Cardano that could significantly speed up the adoption and development of the Cardano ecosystem.  Clearly, Mr. Hoskinson knows that creating a thriving developer community is key to their success (which is the same thing necessary for every other platform - Ethereum, Polkadot, Algorand, etc.).  I will be examining all of these platforms in detail, in order to compare and contrast their technical merits.

We should see Cardano smart contracts by September ... at that time, a serious, well-thought-out milestone will be reached.  It may even herald in the maturation of the entire crypto-industry.  We shall see.