Cardano is approaching its ninth anniversary on September 23, 2026, marking the date its genesis block launched in 2017. The Cardano Foundation revisited the origins of the names ADA and Cardano, linking them to mathematician Ada Lovelace and Italian polymath Gerolamo Cardano. ADA's smallest unit is a lovelace, equal to one millionth of an ADA. The naming reflects Cardano's emphasis on peer-reviewed research, formal mathematical verification and scientific methodology. The platform's development roadmap has passed through the Byron, Shelley, Goguen, Basho and Voltaire eras, covering foundation, decentralization, smart contracts, scaling and decentralized on-chain governance. With governance in place, the community is to drive the roadmap's next priorities: scalability, usability and utility, and interoperability and extensibility. Separately, Cardano x402 integration is available on npm, enabling applications and AI agents to send and receive ADA or Cardano native tokens over HTTP through the official x402 SDK.