Plutus: Ada
💸 Plutus Tutorial: Working with Ada in Smart Contracts
Ada in Smart Contracts🗂️ Table of Contents
🔍 Introduction
💰 What is
AdaandLovelace🪙 Currency Symbol and Token Name
🏗️ Creating and Extracting
Ada📦 Working with
Value➗ Arithmetic Operations on
Ada🧪 Utility Functions
📚 Glossary
🔗 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
AdanewtypeEasy constructors and extractors
Helpers for conversion and arithmetic
2. 💰 What is Ada and Lovelace
Ada and LovelaceAdais just a wrapped integer calledLovelace1 Ada = 1,000,000 Lovelace
✅ Ada derives:
Eq,Ord,ShowNum,Real,IntegralFromData,ToData, etc.
🧠 Example:
3. 🪙 Currency Symbol and Token Name
These two identify Ada in a Value:
They're both empty, because Ada is the default native currency.
4. 🏗️ Creating and Extracting Ada
Ada🧱 Construct Ada values
Ada valueslovelaceOf 1000000
→ 1 Ada (raw integer)
adaOf (MkFixed 1)
→ 1 Ada (fixed-point)
🔍 Extract amount
5. 📦 Working with Value
ValuePlutus transactions use the Value type to represent tokens and Ada.
📤 To convert Ada → Value:
Ada → Value:📥 To extract Ada ← Value:
Ada ← Value:🧪 Value constructors
💡 Tip:
6. ➗ Arithmetic Operations on Ada
AdaSince Ada derives Num, Semigroup, Monoid, etc., you can:
🔸 Divide two Ada values
Ada values🔎 Example:
7. 🧪 Utility Functions
❓ Is Ada value zero?
Examples:
8. 📚 Glossary
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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