Plutus: Ada

💸 Plutus Tutorial: Working with Ada in Smart Contracts

🗂️ Table of Contents

  1. 🔍 Introduction

  2. 💰 What is Ada and Lovelace

  3. 🪙 Currency Symbol and Token Name

  4. 🏗️ Creating and Extracting Ada

  5. 📦 Working with Value

  6. ➗ Arithmetic Operations on Ada

  7. 🧪 Utility Functions

  8. 📚 Glossary

  9. 🔗 References

1. 🔍 Introduction

Plutus contracts often need to handle ADA — the native currency of Cardano. This module simplifies how you represent, create, and manipulate Ada values and convert them to/from Value.

The module gives you:

  • Strong type safety via the Ada newtype

  • Easy constructors and extractors

  • Helpers for conversion and arithmetic

2. 💰 What is Ada and Lovelace

newtype Ada = Lovelace { getLovelace :: Integer }

  • Ada is just a wrapped integer called Lovelace

  • 1 Ada = 1,000,000 Lovelace

✅ Ada derives:

  • Eq, Ord, Show

  • Num, Real, Integral

  • FromData, ToData, etc.

🧠 Example:

Lovelace 1000000  -- 1 Ada

3. 🪙 Currency Symbol and Token Name

These two identify Ada in a Value:

adaSymbol :: CurrencySymbol  -- ""
adaToken  :: TokenName       -- ""

They're both empty, because Ada is the default native currency.

🔗 See in Haddock

4. 🏗️ Creating and Extracting Ada

🧱 Construct Ada values

lovelaceOf :: Integer -> Ada
adaOf      :: Micro   -> Ada
Function
Meaning

lovelaceOf 1000000

→ 1 Ada (raw integer)

adaOf (MkFixed 1)

→ 1 Ada (fixed-point)

🔍 Extract amount

getAda :: Ada -> Micro

5. 📦 Working with Value

Plutus transactions use the Value type to represent tokens and Ada.

📤 To convert Ada → Value:

toValue :: Ada -> Value

📥 To extract Ada ← Value:

fromValue :: Value -> Ada

🧪 Value constructors

lovelaceValueOf :: Integer -> Value
adaValueOf      :: Micro   -> Value

💡 Tip:

lovelaceValueOf == toValue . lovelaceOf
adaValueOf      == toValue . adaOf

6. ➗ Arithmetic Operations on Ada

Since Ada derives Num, Semigroup, Monoid, etc., you can:

a + b
a - b
a * 2

🔸 Divide two Ada values

divide :: Ada -> Ada -> Ada
divide (Lovelace a) (Lovelace b) = Lovelace (P.divide a b)

🔎 Example:

divide (Lovelace 5000000) (Lovelace 1000000) == Lovelace 5

7. 🧪 Utility Functions

❓ Is Ada value zero?

isZero :: Ada -> Bool

Examples:

isZero (Lovelace 0)      -- ✅ True
isZero (Lovelace 100000) -- ❌ False

8. 📚 Glossary

Term
Definition

Ada

Native Cardano currency type

Lovelace

Smallest unit of Ada (1 Ada = 1,000,000 Lovelace)

CurrencySymbol

Empty for Ada, identifies custom currencies

TokenName

Empty for Ada, identifies specific tokens

Value

Multi-asset value container in Plutus

Micro

Fixed-point decimal used for precise Ada amounts

MkFixed

Constructor for Micro, wraps an Integer

getLovelace

Access raw integer from Ada

9. 🔗 References

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