Cardano vs Solana

Cardano uses the Ouroboros Proof‑of‑Stake protocol and an Extended‑UTxO ledger that enables deterministic smart contracts in Plutus and Aiken. Its ‘Basho’ scaling era introduced Hydra Head sidechains capable of 1000 TPS per head, and Mithril light‑client proofs for mobile wallets. Over 1 500 stake pools secure the network and participate in on‑chain treasury governance.

Solana combines Proof‑of‑History, Turbine block propagation and Gulf Stream forwarding to achieve throughput exceeding 50 000 TPS with 400 ms block times. The 2024 Firedancer client written in C++ reduced validator CPU requirements and added parallel pipeline execution. Solana Pay and the Saga phone SDK illustrate the project’s push toward consumer‑grade web3 applications.