Cardano’s native crypto ADA has risen in value over the last week, despite the fact that Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) have remained flat, owing to some hopeful advancements on its network. As per CoinGecko’s price, ADA has increased by 40% in the last seven trading sessions, whereas Bitcoin, Ether, XRP and Solana have all increased by less than 5%. Cardano’s daily trading volume, according to Messari, is about $5.31 billion, compared to Ethereum’s roughly $5.59 billion.
However, Cardano’s gas fees – expenses incurred by users to cover for the computational energy necessary to validate trades – were about $75,400 during the same period, versus $4 million of the latter. “One might reasonably claim that the NFT sector has discovered a means to operate in a gas-light manner, using the Cardano blockchain network.” Hayden Hughes, CEO of Alpha Impact, a social networking site for cryptocurrency traders, opined.
“Several have mentioned that it is just a matter of how long before gas taxes and congestion fill the Cardano blockchain, resulting in excessive gas fees, yet notwithstanding the $5.31 billion in everyday transactions, this has not yet occurred.”
Cardano has had its share of ups and downs over the last several months. For a while, it was the third-largest cryptocurrency, after only Bitcoin and Ether, and approached $100 billion in market capitalization on the back of anticipation around the inclusion of smart contract features.
It then fell and is now approximately 50% less than its early-September high, despite the current comeback. Though Cardano has a sizable fan following, it does have skeptics. Mike Novogratz, the CEO of Galaxy Digital, said on Twitter in August that “I talked to twenty of the brightest minds in the sector, and none of them saw Cardano gaining momentum with developers.”
“ADA skeptics assert that there is too much discussion and little action” Nexo’s managing partner, Antoni Trenchev, claimed. “Cardano’s status as Ethereum’s arch-enemy was partially stolen in 2021 by the advent of competitor blockchains Solana and Avalanche,” he added, but “obviously, there is a dedicated Cardano community rooting for it to thrive; or else, it would not be a top-five cryptocurrency.”
Latest Cardano advances, such as decentralized finance, non-fungible tokens, and the metaverse, and also scaling improvements, are likely adding to the blockchain industry’s excitement, as per Vijay Ayyar, chief of Asia-Pacific at Luno Pte.
Trenchev concurred, attributing his excitement to the metaverse and decentralized exchanges.
“The anticipated debut of the Cardano blockchain’s maiden DEX — decentralized exchange — comes soon after the Cardano network has already setup a footprint in NFTs” as Trenchev remarked.
“Topping it off, Cardano is grabbing some of Decentraland’s and The Sandbox’s limelight with the announcement of the initial Cardano metaverse (Pavia.io).”
