How does Cardano work?

Cardano is a fully decentralized blockchain platform. This means that thousands of people’s computers (nodes) cooperate to agree if a transaction is valid. This process is enabled by the proof-of-stake consensus protocol Ouroboros. On Cardano, people can send and receive ada (Cardano’s native currency), participate in staking and delegation to earn rewards, create multi-purposed assets (native tokens) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Cardano also has different smart contract languages and ensures increased security guarantees using the first provably secure proof-of-stake protocol Ouroboros.