To avoid having to connect funds and decentralized applications, Cardano separates payment and dApps into two separate layers, unlike Ethereum. The idea is that a smart-contract distributing pay to employees of a company every month, for example, will never be able to know the amount of pay each of these employees.

Cardano will use a new protocol developed in research involving proof of proof of work: sidechains KMZ. This will allow the payment layer and the development layer to communicate while limiting their fields of action. These sidechains could actually be used to communicate with any other blockchain and provide evidence that would allow the exchange of value with these other blockchains. These sidechains increase security by monitoring how smart-contracts can interact with the payment layer and enable interoperability with other blockchains.