Hot wallets on a phone or computer are connected to the internet. Cold hardware or paper wallets are not online, so are even more secure, though prone to physical damage.
A cold wallet is one that is not online. It can be in the form of a hardware device, similar to a USB stick, or a printed paper wallet. It is harder to hack (but may be easier to lose).
A light wallet does not download the full blockchain when a transaction is made. Instead, it relies on a website host, but is faster and needs less computing power. Light wallets are better suited for smartphones.
Daedalus is a full-node wallet for desktop or laptop computers. It downloads and synchronizes the entire Cardano blockchain, which takes more time and requires significant storage space. Yoroi is a light-node wallet, which means that it gets data from the source with full blockchain access. This eliminates the need to download the full blockchain history, wh...
Daedalus is one of Cardano's official wallets, along with Yoroi. Developed by IOG, Daedalus is the open-source desktop software wallet of choice for storing ada. It's a full-node wallet, which means the full Cardano blockchain needs to be downloaded, and each transaction is verified for maximum user security.
It is highly not recommended to store ada or any cryptocurrency on exchanges, as this increases the risk of funds loss. Daedalus and Yoroi are official Cardano wallets that are safe and secure for storing ada. They also provide users with a possibility to delegate ada to stake pools and earn passive rewards. Many other wallets also support ada.
A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique token on a blockchain. It might be a digital work of art, or an object bought in an online game. NFTs confer proof of ownership and are bought and sold online.
A fungible item is identical to many others. Shares in a company, gold, and currencies are all fungible. Cryptos are usually fungible, but there are also unique, non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Unlike Ethereum-based tokens created using smart contracts, Cardano native tokens run on the same blockchain layer as the ada cryptocurrency. Cardano’s architecture makes native tokens more secure and reduces the fees associated with transactions. Go to developers.cardano.org to find out how to create tokens on Cardano.
Ada is Cardano’s native currency. It is named after Ada Lovelace, the English mathematician and programmer. Ada became the first cryptocurrency to run on Cardano, in 2017. One ada equals 1,000,000 lovelaces. Lovelace is the smallest unit of ada. A lovelace is to ada what a satoshi is to bitcoin.
Mining is the process of creating coins in proof-of-work blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Mining rigs (dedicated computers) consume huge amounts of energy to solve mathematical puzzles.
In proof-of-work (PoW) blockchains, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, coins are created by miners who use huge amounts of energy doing ‘work’ – in this case, solving worthless mathematical problems. Later blockchains, such as Cardano, use proof of stake.
A fee is the amount of ada charged for processing a transaction on Cardano. Fees contribute to the network's financial health and development, and prevent economic attacks. Cardano’s deterministic nature ensures that fees are stable, predictable, and low in comparison to such proof-of-work blockchains like Ethereum, for example.
A hard fork is a radical change to a blockchain protocol, which commonly results in one or more new protocols. The history of previous transactions is then lost and a new ‘forked’ protocol becomes the main one. Cardano’s unique hard fork combinator technology enables smooth protocol upgrades without disruption for users and saves the chain history of all ope...