How to develop a smart contract on Cardano?

To develop a smart contract on Cardano:

1. Learn Haskell, the base language for Plutus smart contracts.
2. Study the Plutus programming model and Cardano's extended UTXO model.
3. Set up a development environment, including the Plutus Playground for testing.
4. Design your smart contract, considering on-chain and off-chain components.
5. Implement your contract using Plutus, ensuring it's optimized for Cardano's execution model.
6. Test thoroughly using the Plutus Playground and local testnet.
7. Deploy your contract to the Cardano testnet for further testing.
8. Once confident, deploy to the Cardano mainnet.

Continually monitor and maintain your contract after deployment.

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