Decentralized finance or DeFi is a blockchain-based form of finance that addresses the same needs as traditional finance. You can send and receive payments, pay for products or services, or invest in cryptocurrency projects instead of bonds or stocks. DeFi uses smart contracts to settle deals fairly and does not depend on any intermediary.
An oracle is a way to communicate with real-world data. Oracles connect with trusted external data sources that enable smart contracts to execute by referencing datasets such as exact timing, the weather, election results, sports statistics, and cryptocurrency prices. Oracles ensure confidence in timely, accurate, and untampered data.
Smart contracts are usually written by developers using a dedicated language. In Cardano, there is Plutus, and Marlowe for non-programmers. Haskell can also be used. Visit developers.cardano.org to find out more about writing smart contracts.
Smart contracts are automated digital agreements, written in code, that track, verify, and execute the binding parts of a deal between various parties. The contract executes automatically once pre-determined conditions are met.
Account-based accounting models use an account (which can be controlled by a private key or a smart contract) to hold a coin balance. In this model, assets are represented as balances within users’ accounts, and the balances are stored as a global state of accounts, kept by each node, and updated with every transaction.
In many respects, account-based chain...
UTXO stands for unspent transaction output. This model allows keeping track of users’ balances after sending or receiving funds on the blockchain. In the UTXO model, a transaction has inputs and outputs, where the inputs are unspent outputs from previous transactions. As soon as an output is used as input in a transaction, it becomes spent and can never be u...
Blockchain is an accounting technology, and accounting models are crucial to keep track of funds' movements, asset ownership, and balance accuracy. Two major accounting models exist in the blockchain space: UTXO-based blockchains (Bitcoin or Cardano, for instance), and account-based chains (Ethereum, and others).
Haskell is vital to Cardano because its language tools allow extremely thorough testing of program logic and then the actual code. Such extensive testing tools are not available in languages such as C++ or Java.
Haskell is the programming language that lies at the core of Cardano development. It is a 'functional' programming language, which means that all computations are treated as mathematical functions. The logic of a program is first described as an equation for testing using mathematical tools. Once correct, coding can begin.