EARN ADA

Welcome, new delegators!

This site has moved to alphablock.net.

We are a Single Pool Operation to help maintain maximum decentralization and security of the Cardano network. Pool is now Alpha Block.

Infrastructure

Highly secure and redundant stake pool infrastructure operating with 4 geographically separate nodes with redundant pathways, battery backup, generators and A+B circuits.

Meritus Stake Pool ranks much higher on being censorship resistant by not using popular big tech services.

Who Has Custody?

Simply put, you do. There is no comparison when it comes to the Cardano protocol's ability to remain flexible and fully noncustodial when staking to yield more $ADA.

Meritus Stake Pool operates with privacy, decentralization and anti-censorship principles.

Privacy and Security

"We uphold that privacy is not just an inherent right but is the law when it is expressed. The organizational structure of Meritus Stake Pool is private and protected.

Your delegation activity is safeguarded from regulations.

Cardano is built by a decentralized community of scientists, engineers, and thought leaders united in a common purpose: to create a technology platform that will ignite the positive change the world needs. We believe the future should not be defined by the past, and that more is possible - and, through technology, can be made possible for all. We measure the worth of a task not by its challenge, but by its results.

Every ada holder also holds a stake in the Cardano network. Ada stored in a wallet can be delegated to a stake pool to earn rewards – to participate in the successful running of the network – or pledged to a stake pool to increase the pool’s likelihood of receiving rewards. In time, ada will also be usable for a variety of applications and services on the Cardano platform.

The following message is for people who are new to cryptocurrency and Cardano.

Did you know that everything that happened to get you to this website was done on what is considered "Internet/Web 2.0"?

Are you aware that there is a parallel Internet/Web 3.0 being developed that will be very different than what you are used to and should you care? Here is why we think you should take notice as it will potentially benefit you much more than what exists today.

There is a technology race happening now over who and what is going to control Web 3.0. Will it be the existing conglomerate of tech companies or will it be you?

When was the last time you were the customer, the banker and the bank all at the same time? When was the last time you could actually help determine the outcome of fiscal and monetary policy of something as a true stakeholder?

The answers to these questions and more are being built as solutions in the form of what are called decentralized applications or dApps. But before you jump into dApps, not all web 3.0 decentralized networks are the same that these dApps need to operate on. Meet Cardano and its native currency ADA, the layer 1 network that your future dApp solutions will operate with.

An introduction to Cardano

Cardano is a proof of stake blockchain based on peer-reviewed research and evidence-based models. The launch of Cardano is taking place in five phases, with the eventual support for smart contracts, sidechains, scalability, governance, and a voted-upon treasury system.

Cardano takes its name from the Italian Renaissance mathematician Gerolamo Cardano, and its native currency, ADA, which you can delegate to the Meritus Stake Pool directly from your private wallet (your funds are never locked and always in your control) on the network, is named after 19th-century mathematician and early programmer Ada Lovelace.

Cardano is being launched in five phases: Byron (core of the protocol), Shelley (progressive decentralization), Goguen (multi-asset and smart-contract development), Basho (scalability and side-chain enablement — where we are today), and Voltaire (governance and voting).

While the protocol is currently operating in a functional live mainnet within the Basho phase, at its full launch its core features will include:

Plutus, a purpose-built smart contract development language, which will improve the coherency and usability of the development experience as compared to existing smart contract implementations. This is achieved by the use of the functional programming language Haskell, as Haskell allows one codebase to support both on- and off-chain components.
Marlow, a high-level domain-specific language for financial contracts built on Plutus, will allow financial and business experts with no previous technical knowledge to create smart contracts.
More than 3,000 Stake Pools for a deep level of engagement and decentralization.
Sidechains will greatly expand the throughput, capacity, and capabilities of the network for a variety of diverse use cases.
Decentralized governance is funded by a treasury of pooled transaction fees and rewards to support development activities, allowing anyone to make a proposal that can be voted on through governance and funded by the community.

Founded with the mission of overseeing and supervising the advancement of Cardano, The Cardano Foundation is focused on core development and ecosystem growth for the protocol. Cardano is backed by Emurgo, a Japanese blockchain technology and venture capital firm, and was launched by IOHK, a blockchain research and development company focused on utilizing peer-to-peer innovations to help increase global access to financial services. IOHK, founded by Charles Hoskinson and Jeremey Wood, will continue to spearhead the development of Cardano through 2020.

History and Influencers

Gerolamo Cardano Italian Renaissance mathematician, physician, astrologer (1501-1576)

Cardano was the first mathematician to make systematic use of numbers less than zero. Cardano's work with hypocycloids led him to the "Cardan gear mechanism," in which a pair of gears with the smaller being one-half the size of the larger gear is used converting rotational motion to linear motion, with greater efficiency.

Ada Lovelace December 10 1815 – November 27 1852

British mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer.

Cardano's innovation

Cardano’s primary innovation is its mission to be the first blockchain network developed via evidence-based methods and founded on the pillars of peer-reviewed research. Sometimes referred to as a “professor-coin,” it is regarded as being the most research and theory-focused blockchain in today’s ecosystem.

There are currently 90 white papers supporting the development of Cardano, as compared to the fewer than five developed for the majority of blockchain protocols. A foundation built on scientific methods and research are crucial in supporting Cardano’s focus on providing security and sustainability via mathematically proven consensus mechanisms.

Using Cardano Blockchain

mathematical backing for its security. Ouroboros is considered secure as long as 51% of the stake is controlled by entities who are not misbehaving, as opposed to the 67% control required by the majority of proof of stake protocols. Block validation within Ouroboros is more akin to that of proof of work blockchains than that of the most common proof of stake protocols. Ouroboros uses probabilistic finality, making reorganization possible due to the blocks being added canonically as opposed to validators finalizing the blocks as they are produced. In its final implementation Ouroboros is expected to enable near-instant finality via an improvement called Hydra.

The state of Cardano now utilizes Extended UTXO (eUTXO) to simplify smart contract use by splitting smart contract execution into multiple transactions. It doesn't only utilize the UTXO (unspent transaction output) model, a Bitcoin innovation, that is used by all but a handful of blockchains, to maintain the blockchain’s state. This is unique from other smart contract blockchains, such as Ethereum, which generally tend to utilize account-based models.

Cardano’s plan to utilize eUTXO, in addition to those aspects of its block validation that resemble the functionality of proof of work protocols, are two aspects of Cardano that were specifically developed to mirror the simplicity of proof of work protocols while capturing the incentivized participation, scalability, and resource usage benefits of proof of stake models.

The main participants in the Cardano network are core nodes and relay nodes, which together comprise a stake pool.

Core nodes function as protocol validators, connecting only to their relay nodes and holding the certifications needed for block generation.
Relay nodes act as the interface between validator nodes and the public network, enhancing security for validators.

To be continued...

Charles Hoskinson Alive and well in warm sunny Colorado.

Charles Hoskinson is a Colorado-based technology entrepreneur and mathematician. He attended Metropolitan State University of Denver and University of Colorado Boulder to study analytic number theory before moving into cryptography through industry exposure.

His professional experience includes founding three cryptocurrency-related start-ups – Invictus Innovations, Ethereum and IOHK – and he has held a variety of posts in both the public and private sectors. He was the founding chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation’s education committee and established the Cryptocurrency Research Group in 2013.

His current projects focus on educating people about cryptocurrency, being an evangelist for decentralization and making cryptographic tools easier to use for the mainstream. This includes leading the research, design and development of Cardano, a third-generation cryptocurrency that launched in September 2017.

Governance

There is no on-chain governance in the current phase of Cardano (Shelley). The Voltaire phase of Cardano’s launch will focus on proposing, experimenting with, and implementing a decentralized governance model for the protocol to set a voting and treasury system.

Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIPs) are one of the first implementations of off-chain governance for Cardano. CIPs are led by the Cardano Foundation, which was founded with the mission of overseeing and supervising the advancement of Cardano and is focused on core development and ecosystem growth for the protocol. To be continued...