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Wolfram Alpha has partnered with IOHK (Input Output Hong Kong), a company that Charles Hoskinson founded in 2015. The goal is to integrate data directly from Cardano's blockchain into Wolfram Alpha which will serve many functions. This collaboration is bound to add value to both parties, and their project will be rolled out in the second half of 2021. Before talking more about this collaboration, it may be helpful to understand what Wolfram and Cardano are.

What is Wolfram? 

Wolfram Alpha and Wolfram Blockchain Labs are Wolfram Research subsidiaries. Wolfram Research is a world-renown web, computer, and cloud software company founded in 1987. They are also known for leading scientific and technical innovation. Wolfram Alpha is a computational knowledge engine that uses natural language, and that outputs answers to factual questions directly after computing. Wolfram Blockchain Labs (WLB) is designed to develop design ecosystem tools for Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs). 

Using Wolfram's language, Mathematica, WLB provides solutions and services for DLT's. There are four primary services offered by WBL and which may explain why Wolfram Alpha is teaming up with Cardano:

1. Computational facts

2. Crypto Asset Analytics

3. Blockchain Education 

4. Blockchain Integration

What is Cardano?

Cardano was developed alongside the Cardano Foundation and Emurgo by IOHK. IOHK is a blockchain engineering company. Cardano is a cryptocurrency platform, and just like Ethereum, it can also be used as a platform for smart contracts. A smart contract allows parties to make trusted transactions and agreements without the need for any intermediary. Cardano's cryptocurrency is called ADA. If Cardano and Ethereum sound similar, it's because they have the same co-founder, Charles Hoskinson. 

The difference between Cardano and other cryptocurrencies and blockchain networks is that it uses the Proof of Stake system to verify transactions rather than proof of work. The main benefit to this is that it uses a lot less energy making it more useful and scalable long-term. Ethereum is currently in the process of shifting from the proof of work system to the proof of stake system.

Benefits when Wolfram Alpha Teams up With Cardano

The collaboration between Wolfram Alpha will no doubt benefit both parties. Here are four ways that they will benefit from this agreement:

1. Blockchain integration will benefit Cardano users and developers alike by giving them direct access to the blockchain's data. This is because they will ask questions directly to the system or solve computational problems quickly. Thanks to Wolfram Natural Language Processing, they will use natural language to ask questions just as they would to a voice assistant. 

2. Wolfram's and IOHK's educational teams will work together to make Cardano-specific course material available. This means that it will be able to draw users and developers alike to the Cardano ecosystem. These courses will provide information on how best to utilize Wolfram's tools and oracles for Cardano. 

3. Both companies are interested in building advanced smart contracts. In blockchain, a blockchain oracle is any third-party service that allows data from the outside world to be provided in the smart contract. This collaboration will enable Cardano to expand its offering to developers looking to integrate advanced information currently not possible into smart contracts. Examples of data that can be integrated into smart contracts include sports scores, currency exchange rates, and even election results. 

4. Additionally, WLB and Cardano want to work together to develop smart contract-based applications. This is part of a broader mission to transform the business model by enabling blockchain-based commerce. 

Is this collaboration unique? 

Wolfram Alpha teaming up with Cardano is not unexpected as there have been similar collaborations in the past. In the past, Wolfram has also teamed up with Bitcoin and Ethereum so they too can benefit from Wolfram's technological and knowledge base.  However, this collaboration may be different from others as Cardano also aims to team up with other global giants in several sectors like finance and business. This is in line with their aim of making Cardano an industrial blockchain project leader. 

Further information on Smart Contracts

Both Ethereum and Cardano are blockchain projects that run smart contracts. And by now, you know that a smart contract is a transaction or agreement between parties that do not need a third party outside of the deal. If you are still not sure how smart contracts work, here is an example;

Let's say that Sam wants to buy an electric cooker from an online company but is unsure if he will get the pot once he pays. He, therefore, decides to get into a smart contract with the company. He will pay the money for the cooker, but it will not be given to the company. In the smart contract, they could agree that the company will only get the money once Sam confirms receipt of the pot. 

Once Sam confirms receipt of the cooker, the money is automatically released to the company. If, on the other hand, the cooker never arrives to Sam, the contract will revert the funds to Sam. In this case, the smart contract programming takes the place of an intermediary that would have had to oversee that both parties keep their ends of the agreements. 

As you can imagine, there will be numerous use cases for smart contracts. This explains why smart contracts were a big reason why Wolfram teamed up with Cardano. Together, they will work on avant-garde oracles, which means that they will introduce and test new ideas in blockchain oracles to help build more advanced smart contracts than those available today. 

Conclusion

Wolfram Research provides the tech for some big-name services such as Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri. They also integrate data from blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum. The news that Wolfram Alpha is teaming up with Cardano could therefore lead to significant advancement for both companies but most especially for Cardano. Cardano, which ranks 4rth in the Cryptocurrency market cap, has already made great strides despite its young age in the cryptocurrency game. If it continues creating calculated collaborations like these, they are bound to bode well for this cryptocurrency in the future. 

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