I am new to cardano. I was wondering about is there any other units of ada other than lovelace?
Hi,
Nope, there is no orher sub-unit
Cheers,
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Thanks mate for clearing out my doubts.
Hey @floki ,
I am a Crypto follower and would like to answer this question.
There is only one unit for ADA as cardano uses unique denomination system. As you mentioned Cardano has base unit called Lovelace and it is the only unit to prevent confusion and ambiguity when discussing values in ADA.
This base unit is named after Ada Lovelace, the world’s first computer programmer.
1 ADA = 1,000,000 Lovelaces.
1 K ADA = 1,000,000 Lovelaces.
Hope this clears your doubt.
Thanks.
I would like you to recommend https://docs.cardano.org/ for all the Cardano related queries.
Juliam, I am working on a project where I am clarifying what the different denominations for some of the crypto projects are and what they represent. And I am struggling to understand the denominations in Cardano. And even your explanation given in this thread makes absolutely no sense to me. Here is why.
Oops. Accidentally hit the return. You state:
1 ADA = 1,000,000 Lovelaces.
1 K ADA = 1,000,000 Lovelaces.
Hope this clears your doubt.
Well it does not clear things up.
1 ADA = 1,000,000 Lovelaces. (This makes sense. This is a true statement)
1 K ADA = 1,000,000 Lovelaces. (This does not make sense. 1 K implies 1,000 ADA which would be equal to 1,000,000,000 Lovelaces… Wouldn’t it?)
So I would like to get this cleared up. Which is it? Both “1 ADA” and “1 K ADA” can’t be equal to the same number of Lovelaces.
I am also trying to understand the “uLOV” and “nLOV” denominations. The “uLOV” appears to equal 0.000001 ADA. So what is that? 1/10th of a Lovelace?
And the “nLOV” equals 0.000000001 ADA. So is that 1/10000th of a Lovelace?
So I think the “uLOV” and “nLOV” units could be referenced in “Attos” rather than fractions of a Lovelace. So there are 1 Trillion Attos in one Lovelace. So the “uLOV” would be equal to 1 Billion Attos. And the “nLOV” would be equal to 1 Million Attos? I would like someone to confirm these numbers for me. I believe I properly understand and have the correct numbers for the uLOV and nLOV denominations. It’s the “K ADA” and “M ADA” denominations that I don’t fully understand and the answers I have found to date match the one in this thread which makes absolutely no sense!
Thanks in advance for any light anyone can shed on this for me. Kresp Rowland.
Hello @Kresp
1 â‚ł (Ada) = 1,000,000 Lovelace
That’s it. No other denominations.
Also notice that you were necro posting in 2 year old topic. Back then there was a lot of misinformation. There were many useless crypto news platforms that would allow Ai articles with out fact checking (like Coinspeaker) so I would not trust any info that comes from such sources. I’m assuming that’s where above post got some wrong info about ₳.
Hope this helps 
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Well it does help. But it is true that the Lovelace can be subdivided into fractions as small as 1 trillioneth of a Lovelace. The protocol does allow for that. And the term for those fractions is “Atto”. But just like a “Quarter” in our USD terminology refers to a coin that has the value of 25 pennies in it or is equal to one quarter of a USD (“Dollar”). So I guess I was wondering if the “K ADA” and “M ADA” terms had ever taken off? I’m assuming they haven’t. But I do still wonder about the “uLOV” and “nLOV” terms. Maybe they were made up by someone and never took off either? The “K ADA” and “M ADA” terms seemed to be in line with terms like a “Dime”, 1000 Lovelaces perhaps or 100,000 Lovelaces (Which 100,000 Lovelaces would be to ADA as a Dime is to a Dollar) 1000 Lovelaces would be to ADA as 1/10th of a Penny would be to a Dollar. Actually it would be 10,000 Lovelaces that would be to ADA as 1 Penny is to a Dollar. So I would feel comfortable coining the term “ADAcent” as being equal to 10,000 Lovelaces. I feel all coins need to have a “cent” term just like Bitcoin has the “bitcent” which is equal to 1,000,000 Satoshis.
I do think it’s important for anyone that is digging deep into these crypto systems to understand that the ADA token can be subdivided into fractions of 10^18 just like Ethereum. It’s just that the “smallest” unit of account on Cardano is the Lovelace which is 10^6 but because unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum the Lovelace can be represented by the protocol as a fractional amount down to 10^12 or one trillionth. Ethereum just has the Wei which is the smallest unit of account but there are 10^18 of them. And of course while the Satoshi is the smallest unit of account on Bitcoin the Lightening network does recognize the “msat” or “milliesatoshi” which is 1/1000th of a Satoshi. It aggregates these together and settles on the Bitcoin blockchain in whole Satoshi’s. But anyone owning and wanting to fully understand Bitcoin should be aware of the msat metric and that it is a fabricated unit of account used exclusively by the Lightening network.
Anyway, unless anyone else can shed more light on this I am going to go with the “Lovelace” and the “Atto” as valid units on the Cardano blockchain. The “Atto” not really being a unit of account but rather a function of the fractional representation of the Lovelace. And for me I also have coined the “cent” as a valid unit of measurement for any blockchain. “bitcent” being 0.01 of BTC. The “ETHcent” being 0.01 of ETH. And so I personally consider the “ADAcent” to be 0.01 of ADA or 10,000 Lovelaces. Whether anyone else recognizes the “cent” metric doesn’t matter to me. It’s a thing in my opinion and is simply 0.01 of whatever crypto coin you are talking about. And for me I always want to know how many of the smallest unit of account on a given blockchain is it to represent a “cent” on that chain. So for Cardano that is 10K of Lovelaces.
Thanks again for taking the time to reply. It is appreciated. Kresp Rowland.
That is just plain wrong! End of story.
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I hate to argue with you but Cardano is the one protocol that recognizes and is able to write into it’s ledger fractional amounts of the Lovelace. Down to one trillionth of a Lovelace or 10^12. However, I’m not always right so I am open to being proved wrong. I found it odd that Cardano had less granular detail in it’s smallest unit of account then Bitcoin even and far less than Ethereum. For someone who left the Ethereum project and founded a new and better protocol I found it odd that they would only allow for one million units as the smallest unit of account. So upon studying it further I discovered that Cardano had the same functionality in terms of granular accounting that Ethereum had. It just accomplished it by allowing the smallest unit of account to be subdivided into fractional amounts up to 10^12. I’ll dig up my references if I need to.
Can you speak to the existence of a “fractional unit of the smallest unit of account, the Lovelace”? A Lovelace can be fractionally divided into 1 trillion separate pieces… correct? It’s still a Lovelace but you can spend 1/100th of a Lovelace on Cardano. At least that is my understanding. If this is wrong I would like to know for certain. Kresp.
This is incorrect. Lovelace is atomic unit of Cardano. 
Source: What is a cryptocurrency? | Cardano Docs
If you have official Cardano org source that contradicts this, please share.
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So I went back and checked my sources. The statement discussing the divisibility of the Lovelace was made by coin360.com. And I’m not suggesting that they are necessarily correct. Obviously their content is not from the horses mouth. So I’m O.K. letting this reference go as an unofficial source that cannot be considered truth.
For what it’s worth we both agree that the Lovelace is the smallest unit of account on Cardano. I’m not arguing against that. And honestly I just want to know the real truth. Because I am writing a publication and I want the information to be accurate. Fortunately I don’t have a deadline so I am going to research this further. I’m just not convinced that Charles Hoskinson would design a blockchain with less granular control for micro payments than Ethereum. I mean he left Ethereum to build a superior project. So when I ran across the article that states each Lovelace can be subdivided into fractional amounts of up to 10^12 it made sense to me. Since that would actually match the granular control of Ethereum. I would like to find definitive proof in the Cardano docs that explicity state whether the Lovelace can be represented on the blockchain as a fraction or not. If anyone has access to IOHK directly I would love a definitive answer.
I don’t know what to think at this moment. But I do want my publication to be correct. It shouldn’t be difficult to confirm. But I guess if it were easy I wouldn’t be asking for help. LOL. Kresp.
Why would you need access to IOG for that? It’s open source.
What is a bit difficult, though, is that it is hard to find one specific sentence: “This is the smallest unit. It is indivisible.”
People working with these documents just “know” that the Coin type in the specifications are Lovelace, are 1 millionth of ADA, and there is no smaller unit.
What goes into the blockchain is specified in the CDDL files. The latest one, just like any previous one, just says that coins are unsigned integers, but that that smallest, indivisible unit with which we calculate is 1 Lovelace, 1 millionth ADA is not mentioned explicitly there:
This part of the Byron specification (https://github.com/intersectmbo/cardano-ledger/releases/latest/download/byron-ledger.pdf) might come close to stating the obvious:
Transaction outputs contain Lovelace (which are integers) and nothing smaller. Period.
Later, the ShelleyMA specification (https://github.com/intersectmbo/cardano-ledger/releases/latest/download/mary-ledger.pdf) at least implicitly mentions it in:
This is more to highlight the new feature of multi-assets than to give information about Lovelace because, again, everybody working with Cardano knows that Lovelace is the smallest unit, nobody ever thought about something else, so it’s not worth explicitly mentioning.
Hoskinson did not design the details, the people written on those documents did based on his broad sketches.
Being more granular is not really a clear advantage. It might waste a lot of storage space in a lot of different places if it is too granular, accounts every single value to something that is worth a billionth of a Euro which nobody effing cares about.
And you also have to take into account the value of the main token. With the values of today:
1 BTC = 97 461.82 USD ⇒ 1 Satoshi = 0.000 9 USD = 0.09 Cent
1 ETH = 3 329.00 USD ⇒ 1 Wei = 3.3×10^-15 USD = 3.3×10^-13 Cent
1 ADA = 1.00 USD ⇒ 1 Lovelace = 0.000 001 USD = 0.000 1 Cent
So, Lovelaces at current prices are still a thousand times more precise than Satoshis and both are more than precise enough for another ×10 or ×100 in value. Ethereum’s Wei are ridiculously precise which does not seem to be needed anytime soon and just waste storage.
Interesting. So I may need to revise my thoughts on the world being flat. 
I appreciate the time that you put into your response and the detail included. It is appreciated. Kresp.
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In general, to get the most definitive sources, the https://github.com/IntersectMBO/cardano-ledger repository is usually the place to go.
It is a bit hard to navigate because it is broken up into so many different documents for the different eras and for the mathematical/logical specification vs. the bit exact information what goes where on the ledger. There is not one big consolidated specification of the whole history (would love to have that, would be very handy for alternative node implementations, explorers, other tools).
But depending on how precise you want your paper to be, those would be the sources.
Thank you. It is appreciated. I will read through some of that. I appreciate the link. My paper doesn’t have all the technical detail in it. But what I do include needs to be accurate! I don’t want to be spreading misinformation. Good grief we had enough of that going on during the pandemic. But I digress. Thanks again. Kresp.
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