There are many benefits when it comes to using your own Cardano wallet to hold ADA and other Cardano native tokens compared to on an exchange wallet.
These include:
- Being able to participate in airdrops
- Being able to participate in Initial Stake Pool Offerings
- Staking and supporting community-driven stake pools
- Being able to participate in decentralised finance and use decentralised exchanges
- Buy, sell and trade non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on various NFT marketplaces
- Obtain new tokens from projects building on the Cardano ecosystem which are not supported by many popular exchanges.
Another great benefit in staking on a Cardano stake pool natively is that staking is not locked. You fully control your ADA assets in regards to which stake pool your wallet is delegated to and when can access your assets, move your assets and sell when needed.
This non-custodial and non-locked approach is highly appealing to users that want full control and full access to the crypto assets and Cardano makes this all possible with its protocol.
The major downside to holding ADA and other Cardano Native Tokens in your own wallet is the technical knowledge required to onboard users to set up a new wallet, store your seed phrase securely and avoid scams.
As you progress through this short course, you’ll learn more about how to interact with the Cardano blockchain, projects that are building on Cardano and how to best store your seed phrase and avoid scams to protect your Cardano Native Tokens.
