How can a public blockchain's consensus protocol be written up in a paper before any code is written?
More papers don't mean more thriving applications; when evaluating a public blockchain, you also need to look at actual on-chain data.
In other words, Cardano's key protocols are often first written up in papers and subjected to peer review, and only then turned into code.
Holders of $ADA can delegate their coins to a stake pool and share in the staking rewards.

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