A recently released book (titled: \u201cCardano for the M\u20b3sses: A Financial Operating System for People Who Don\u2019t Have One\u201d) by John Greene tries to provide \u201ca broad overview of Cardano.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Input Output Global\u00a0(aka \u201cIOG\u201d, formerly known as \u201cIOHK\u201d), the company responsible for Cardano\u2019s research and development, tweeted about the book on Thursday (July 7):<\/p>\n
One of the most interesting sections of the book is when Greene quotes IOG Co-Founder and CEO Charles Hoskinson\u2019s explanation for the name Cardano and other names used IOG uses when talking about Cardano:<\/p>\n
\u201cGirolamo Cardano was the ultimate Renaissance guy, he was a doctor, a lawyer, he was a mathematician, he was a gambler, a complete scoundrel. He was the personal physician of the Pope but then excommunicated but still hung out with the Pope even after being excommunicated, because the Pope liked him. He nearly killed one of his sons in a sword duel because they were sleeping with the same woman. <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThen he was also a gambler, and he invented a lot of probability theory just so he could be a better gambler. So he created all this advanced mathematics just so he could count cards and roll dice properly and so forth. And he had a habit of getting kicked out of cities\u2026 And he also was a cryptographer because in Renaissance Italy, they had a lot of intrigue between the banking families. So he invented this wheel device to encrypt messages, so they kept secret communication between the families. So I just read about him years ago and thought he\u2019s one of the most interesting people I\u2019ve ever read about in my life. <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cHe was just one of those guys that lived a life that was unbelievably rich, wasn\u2019t nice, wasn\u2019t evil, he was somewhere in between. He basically built out modern probability theory because he wanted to be a befter gambler. He also inadvertently created the Italian peer review process because, at the time, he was around most of the scientists in Italy who would guard their knowledge and not publish anything because it was a way to maintain employment. <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cSo how you would get a professorship in an Italian university is, you would go and present to the students and if they felt you were knowledgeable, they\u2019d say yes, this person should be part of our system, so people didn\u2019t want to publish anything because it would ruin their brand, they kept things secret. <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cSo what Cardano would do, he would get people very drunk and learn all of their secrets and he wrote them all down and then he eventually published books about this, which was super taboo and included how to factor quartic polynomial\u2026 he got that from Tartagli\u2026 which means the stutterer. <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cSo he was a legendary guy and I think he was even a contemporary of DaVinci and I figured it\u2019d be the perfect name for a cryptocurrency because the cryptocurrency is not good or bad, it\u2019s a neutral thing, it\u2019s brilliant and inspired, it\u2019s a bit of a polymath and everybody has an opinion about it and you\u2019ll never get a clear and concise way, but it certainly has a huge impact and it\u2019s a man of its time.<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n The book goes to provide explanations for \u201cAda\u201d, release names of Cardano (such as \u201cByron\u201d), the \u201cDaedalus\u201d and \u201cYoroi\u201d wallets, consensus protocol \u201cOuroboros\u201d, smart contract platform \u201cPlutus\u201d, and so on.<\/p>\n Greene\u2019s book has nine chapters: \u201cIn the beginning\u201d, \u201cWhat is Cardano?\u201d, \u201cProof of Stake\u201d, \u201cConsensus (Shelley)\u201d, \u201cSmart Contracts (Goguen)\u201d, \u201cPlutus\u201d, \u201cMarlow\u201d, \u201cVoltaire\u201d, and \u201cBasho (Scalability\u201d).<\/p>\n Overall, for newcomers to Cardano, this book seems like an excellent starting point for their journey.<\/p>\nImage Credit<\/h2>\n