Member-only story
Cardano can give crypto a cash-like experience
IOHK donated $500,000 in ADA coins to the University of Wyoming to work on blockchain innovations. A part of the work will be research dedicated to design an ultra-low power crypto-authentication chip. The chip can enable a cash-like experience for cryptocurrency users. As a side effect, it can resolve problems with privacy and scalability.
Why it is necessary to create a new chip
Cryptocurrencies are natively open-source projects. You can find the source code of Cardano on GitHub. The same is true for Bitcoin or Ethereum. Thousands of independent researchers and experts can check the source code and verify that there is no vulnerability or back-doors. However, not everything around cryptocurrencies is open and publicly available. The safest way to keep cryptocurrencies and other digital assets is definitely a hardware wallet. Every hardware wallet contains a chip. Chip manufacturers keep chip designs closed and secret often just to maintain a competitive advantage. Manufacturers must keep innovative ideas secret otherwise they could fall into the hands of a competitor. There is one big disadvantage of that approach. It cannot be verified that the chip is really secure and does only what is expected and not something else. In a chip, there can be an unintentional vulnerability caused by a wrong design decision…
