Cardano expirience, thx to Ethereum and Solana Part 1

Since some people have posted misleading Cardano experiences, I would like to share my experience with the Cardano blockchain here.

I am a Cardano investor since day one! To be more precise, I started my crypto journey in 2017 when Ada was launched.

Some of you may remember that EOS was launched almost at the same time. It was a kind of battle between Ada and Eos. For me, it wasn't a real battle as Eos was just a typical VC project... anyway, I did thorough research and was confident about Cardano!

At the beginning, Cardano only got the Daedalus wallet and only the ability to send and receive Ada. After a few years of real pain, Cardano started to perform pretty well! In the meantime, I also tried some investments in Ethereum and Solana. During the painful period on Cardano, I crashed the first Daedalus wallet many times. I also wrote many reports about the issues and also participated in the Cardano incentive staking testnet. (Although I didn't even know how the tax rules should work here). This very first staking experience was a great feeling. Because it worked very differently than native staking with some Ethereum tokens or my later experience with Solana.

While in account-based models your tokens leave your wallet and are locked for staking for at least a few days, in the Cardano eutxo model your coins are 100% in your wallet and you can trade them at any time (this type of staking works thanks to a snapshot system).

Many people say it doesn't matter if the coins leave your wallet and it also doesn't matter if you need time to un-staking. But if you go big in this game, liquidity is EVERYTHING. Also, you don't have to worry about your coins because they are still 100% in your hands. On the other hand, I also have to say that while Ethereum already has a lot of smart contracts running on Cardano, I had to wait at least another 2 years for the first NFTs like Spacebuds. While waiting for that, I had a really good time on Ethereum. I discovered so many new things. Thanks to projects like Uniswap, Sushiswap and TheSandBoxGame, I got addicted to yield farming! I was so happy with the ETH/SAND pool and the rewards that I started looking for more and more pools with great yields. Since I started pretty early, the prices of $150 for a transaction were OK for me. The yields of over 500% paid for that pretty well.

In the meantime, Cardano just launched the first NFT projects and dexes. Even the developers of Cardano warned that the blockchain was not ready. Sundaeswap launched the first dex. It was awesome and sad at the same time. My first yield farming and swapping on Cardano. But it took me 60 minutes to 10 hours for one swap. To be fair (This was the very first steps, currently swappings need just 30 seconds). The developers of Cardano warned and everyone wanted to make the first swaps on Cardano. Imagine there is only one dex that just launched and the scaling era has not even started on Cardano. In the end, I was able to make my swaps and also provide liquidity. Anyway, after a few weeks (like 4 or 6) everything was fine.

For me, in the first few days, it was like, hmm, either I pay $150 for a swap on Ethereum or I have to wait 5 hours for a swap on Cardano. Anyway, I saw more developments on Cardano and felt great because everything that was promised came true. Even with some delays (as always with Cardano)

But after the launch of the first Cardano projects, I noticed one thing about my behavior. I was getting more and more drawn into the Cardano ecosystem. I loved the Ethereum blockchain at my first steps. But there were so many projects that I couldn't follow all of them. In the meantime, projects like World Mobile Token, Cornucopias, Liqwid Finance, SingularityNet or NMKR were launched on Cardano and I was happy to be a part of them from the beginning. And liquidity mining also started to become great on Cardano, while on Ethereum most of the return had already dropped to less than 10%, on Cardano I was able to provide liquidity for over 100%.

Although I am a Cardano enthusiast, I didn't just sleep on it. While I was trying Ethereum, I also used BNB Chain and liquidity mining on it. The experience was good, but for me it wasn't a truly decentralized blockchain. That's why I dont spent too much time on it. But one project started to catch my interest.

It was Solana. In the beginning I ignored it because like many projects it was a blockchain founded by promising TPs and VCs. In my opinion it was like EOS. But it wasn't! After it became more popular, I started using it too. I felt great about my first experience! It was fast and cheap. I thought to myself "Hell yeah, even if it's not as decentralized as Ethereum and Cardano, the speed and user experience are incredible" (notice also one of the most promising projects in my opinion runs on Solana: „Hivemapper“ you have to know it!).

But then it started, one downtime after another followed on Solana. I had 10 downtimes within ONE year! After spending a ton of money, I was really tired of those downtimes. From the beginning I was worried about Solana, then I was hyped (although I also knew about many other red flags on Solana) and after my really bad feelings while not knowing what would happen with my money, I started avoiding and hating this project. The 3 days of staking unlock made this project even worse for me. I want to say here. It's just my experience and also just my opinion. In the end, only the results matter. And we see, Solana is doing great now. Even though we still see some network issues, the performance is great at the moment. I also made a lot of money on Solana (although as I said, I started to hate it), but I am an investor. And from the investors' point of view, it was a great opportunity to make money on Solana (and it still is!).

After this rollercoaster ride with Solana, I started focusing more on Cardano again.

To sum up, from my point of view I have used the most popular and successful blockchains:

1 : BTC, everyone knows it, we all love it. But for yield farmers like me it is simply a “safe haven”

2 : ETH Most of us learned how to use smart contracts here. But I am sure most of us also started using Polygon, OP, Arbitrum and other L2s on Eth

3 : SOL Some love it, some hate it. But we all have to respect, this project is special and found its way to success!

4 : And ADA is perhaps one of the projects that people either love or hate, along with SOL. From my side, I really love it. Because my Cardano conclusion on the current situation is simply positive.

Edit: To be continue on "Expirience Part 2"