Glossary · Ledger

Lovelace.

The smallest unit of ada. 1 ada = 1,000,000 lovelace.

In depth

The ledger stores all amounts in lovelace integers, never in fractional ada. Wallets convert to ada for display; protocol parameters like the minimum-fee constants and the per-byte UTxO cost are expressed in lovelace.

Example

The minUTxO rule is encoded as the protocol parameter coinsPerUtxoByte (currently 4,310 lovelace per byte), so a plain-ada UTxO typically needs around 1,000,000 lovelace (~1 ada) and a UTxO carrying tokens needs proportionally more.

Next on this path

  1. Ada The native currency of Cardano, named after Ada Lovelace.
  2. Transaction fee The ada paid to the network for including a transaction. Deterministic on Cardano.