Ada is Cardano’s native currency, named after Ada Lovelace, the English mathematician and programmer. ada has six decimal places and these fractions of ada are called lovelaces. They can be thought of as cents to a dollar.
ada can be used to pay transaction fees on the Cardano network and can also be delegated as stake to a stake pool, helping to secure the Cardano blockchain. Delegating ada allows the user to receive rewards for doing so. All rewards are distributed in ada every 5 days, i.e. every epoch. As a community member, your ada stake also gives you the right to participate in on-chain voting.\
As described in CIP-1694, ada holders can:
- Delegate their voting power to DReps
- Become a DRep (to represent themselves or others)
- Submit on-chain governance actions
- Review on-chain governance actions