---
title: "Essential Cardano: Guide To The Ecosystem"
image: https://landing.essentialcardano.io/hubfs/Essential%20Cardano%20Guide%20to%20the%20Ecosystem%20-%20DRAFT%20(3).png
---

![essential-cardano-logo-1](https://landing.essentialcardano.io/hs-fs/hubfs/EssentialCardano/Logo/essential-cardano-logo-1.png?width=400&height=102&name=essential-cardano-logo-1.png "essential-cardano-logo-1")

# The Essential Cardano Guide to the Ecosystem

### Your overview of the people and projects building on Cardano

![Essential Cardano Guide to the Ecosystem](https://landing.essentialcardano.io/hubfs/EssentialCardano/Images/essential-cardano-ft-img-1.jpg)

In 2015, Charles Hoskinson and Jeremy Wood had an idea: to change how the world works by creating a transformative blockchain ecosystem. They founded Input Output, a company that, along with a passionate community of developers and users, would lay the foundations for the Cardano blockchain.

Today, Input Output Global (IOG) views the world as a series of giant networks built on hundreds of complex systems. IOG’s mission is to collectively evolve social, financial, and governance systems towards a world that puts people in full control of their lives.

This brand new guide from IOG’s Community & Ecosystem Team seeks to offer a foundation of understanding, a compendium of the theoretical concepts, technological components, and achievements that underpin and define Cardano. 

This guide doesn't claim to be comprehensive – the Cardano ecosystem continues to grow, and we can’t hope to capture every worthwhile project. Instead, we hope it provides a valuable snapshot of where we are today. And, above all else, chart how the whole Cardano community is working together to build a future that is more empowering, more secure, and just, well, better.

Tim Harrison,   
*VP Community & Ecosystem, Input Output*

**Disclaimer:** Inclusion of a project in this report does not constitute endorsement or recommendation of such project by IOG.

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