Cardano is a proof-of-stake blockchain where holders stake, vote and build on the same network. Its next upgrade, Ouroboros Leios, is now running on a public testnet. Trade and stake ADA on NBX.
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Live market data from CoinGecko. Prices are indicative and may differ from prices on NBX. Click a point to use that price in the profit or loss calculator.
Cardano launched in 2017 with a research-first approach: its protocols are published as peer-reviewed papers before they are built. Today ADA pays for transactions, secures the network through staking and gives holders a say in how the chain changes.
ADA holders delegate to a stake pool and keep their ADA spendable, and rewards are paid out every epoch of about five days. Cardano staking has no slashing, so you do not lose ADA through staking penalties. Market price movements still affect the value of your ADA. If you stake through the NBX platform, NBX charges a cost on staking transactions and takes 10% of the rewards yield to shoulder costs as a custodian.
Cardano extends Bitcoin's UTXO model so outputs can carry contract logic. Whether a transaction will succeed can be checked before it is submitted, and the fee is known up front.
A community-ratified constitution guides how Cardano changes. Delegated representatives, stake pool operators and a Constitutional Committee vote on upgrades and treasury spending. The van Rossem upgrade in July 2026 was the first approved entirely through on-chain governance.
Cardano runs on Ouroboros Praos today. Leios is the next step, and it is already being tested in public. No upgrade has a fixed date: every hard fork needs approval from DReps, stake pool operators and the Constitutional Committee before it goes live.
Praos produces blocks one after another, so most of the network's capacity sits idle between blocks. Leios lets stake pools publish additional endorser blocks next to the main chain, which a committee certifies before their transactions settle. Input Output expects an initial 5 to 20 times increase in throughput capacity at launch. How Leios works
On the Musashi Dojo testnet, Input Output runs the network while independent stake pool operators run Leios block producers. Each phase tests new node releases and settings, on the way to a mainnet release candidate. Wallets, indexers and apps can test against it with free test ADA. Visit Musashi Dojo
Hydra heads let a group of participants transact off the main chain at high speed and settle the result back on Cardano. The protocol is available to developers, but how widely apps will rely on it is still an open question. About Hydra
Peras adds stake pool voting to Praos so transactions can be considered settled in roughly two minutes. It is planned as a later phase after Leios, and its timing depends on development and governance.
Trade ADA, stake it, trade Cardano native tokens and mint the USDM stablecoin, all from one NBX account.
Buy and sell ADA with NOK, EUR, SEK, DKK or USDM. ADA/NOK is the main ADA market on NBX.
Go to the ADA marketStake ADA from your NBX account without running a node. NBX operates Ada North Pool, which has run on the Cardano testnet since 2019 and on mainnet since 2020, and handles the technical work. Rewards are estimated, vary over time and are not guaranteed. You can also delegate directly to Ada North Pool (ticker ANP) from your own Cardano wallet.
Start stakingTokens issued on Cardano run natively on the ledger, without a separate smart contract for each transfer. NBX lists a selection of Cardano native tokens next to ADA.
See all marketsUSDM is a US dollar e-money token on Cardano, issued in the EEA by NBX. Mint and redeem USDM under Tokenization in the NBX app. USDM is a native token on the Cardano blockchain, with low transaction fees.
Holders of USDM issued by NBX have the right to redeem at any time, at par value, from NBX, subject to the applicable terms and white paper. E-money tokens involve issuer, operational, regulatory and blockchain-related risks. An e-money token is not a bank deposit and is not covered by a deposit guarantee scheme. Redemption rights, fees, conditions and risks are described in the relevant white paper and terms.
A crypto-asset white paper for USDM has been published by Norwegian Block Exchange AS and is available at nbx.com/en/usdm. Issuer contact: nbx.com, +47 91 92 17 81, notifications@nbx.com.
Mint USDMSee what an earlier ADA purchase would be worth at today's price. Enter the price you paid, or click a point on the price chart at the top of the page to use that price. Prices are live market data from CoinGecko, are indicative and may differ from prices on NBX.
For illustration only. Does not include fees, staking rewards or tax. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. Crypto is high risk. Prices can swing hard in a single day, and you can lose some or all of what you put in. Only put in what you could afford to lose.
Independent wallets, documentation and governance resources from across the Cardano ecosystem. These are external sites not operated by NBX.
Trade ADA with NOK, EUR, SEK, DKK or USDM through NBX. Create an account within minutes and start trading ADA.
Crypto is high risk. Prices can swing hard in a single day, and you can lose some or all of what you put in. Only put in what you could afford to lose.
Cardano is a proof-of-stake blockchain launched in 2017. ADA, its native token, is used to pay transaction fees, to stake and help secure the network, and to take part in on-chain governance.
Leios is an upgrade to Cardano's consensus protocol that raises how many transactions the network can process. It has been running on a public testnet, the Musashi Dojo, since late June 2026. The plan is to bring it to mainnet with the Dijkstra hard fork. The hard fork only happens once it is approved on-chain, so there is no fixed launch date.
Leios raises the capacity of Cardano's main chain. Hydra is a layer-2 protocol where a group of participants transacts off the main chain and settles the result back on Cardano. Peras shortens the time until a transaction can be considered final, and is planned for a later phase than Leios.
Go to Staking in the NBX app and choose how much ADA to stake. NBX operates the staking pool and the technical setup. Rewards build up in a separate rewards account, and you can claim them to your NBX balance in our Cardano staking app. Claiming rewards incurs a transaction fee. NBX takes 10% of the rewards yield to shoulder costs as a custodian. Rewards are estimated, change over time and are not guaranteed. Read our terms of service, found in the footer of nbx.com, before you start.
USDM is a US dollar e-money token on Cardano. NBX is its issuer in the EEA. You can mint and redeem USDM under Tokenization in the NBX app, and trade it on NBX. Read the USDM white paper.
Holders of USDM issued by NBX have the right to redeem at any time, at par value, from NBX, subject to the applicable terms and white paper. E-money tokens involve issuer, operational, regulatory and blockchain-related risks. An e-money token is not a bank deposit and is not covered by a deposit guarantee scheme. Redemption rights, fees, conditions and risks are described in the relevant white paper and terms.
A crypto-asset white paper for USDM has been published by Norwegian Block Exchange AS and is available at nbx.com/en/usdm. Issuer contact: nbx.com, +47 91 92 17 81, notifications@nbx.com.
Yes. NBX lists a selection of Cardano native tokens. See all markets for the current list. Each listed token has its own white paper, linked from its market page.
Smart contracts on Cardano run on Plutus and can be written in languages such as Aiken, Plutus or Plu-ts, then deployed to mainnet or a testnet. The official documentation is at docs.cardano.org.
Leios changes how much Cardano can carry, not how existing contracts work. Even so, Input Output encourages teams behind wallets, indexers and apps to test on the Musashi Dojo testnet before the mainnet hard fork. Test ADA is available from a faucet, and operator documentation is on the Leios docs site.
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This is a marketing communication from Norwegian Block Exchange AS. It does not constitute investment advice or a personal recommendation to buy, sell, hold, convert or transfer any crypto-asset. NBX does not provide investment advice on crypto-assets. Crypto-assets involve significant risk. Their value can go down as well as up, and you may lose all or part of the money you invest. Crypto-assets may not be suitable for all clients and are not covered by investor compensation or deposit guarantee schemes. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. Make sure you understand the risks before trading. Norwegian Block Exchange AS, org.nr 920 245 676.
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