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Cardano Defies Bear Market As Smart Contracts Count Sees 10,000 Explosion

The Cardano network continues to defy expectations and prove its doubters wrong. This time, the network has hit a new milestone, which suggests that users are indeed taking advantage of its smart contract functionality. 

Cardano Sees Significant Increase In Smart Contract Usage

Data from Cardano Blockchain Insights has revealed an increase in the usage of Cardano’s Plutus V1 and V2 scripts. As of January 22, 24,050 smart contracts had been executed using these Plutus scripts. This is impressive, considering that this figure stood at 14,379 at the beginning of this year.

This recent increase can be traced back to January 9, when smart contract usage on the network really began to pick up. Specifically, the number of smart contracts executed on Cardano using the Plutus V2 scripts rose from 8,270 to 12,890 on that day. Since then, that figure has skyrocketed to 17,718. 

As expected, the Plutus v2 script is more widely used than its V1 counterpart, considering that the former is a newer generation of Cardano’s smart contract scripting language. Cardano introduced Plutus V2 to reduce user costs and enhance script throughput effectively. Meanwhile, this development no doubt further proves naysayers wrong. 

A recent report by crypto research firm K33 boldly asserted that there was no “proof of Cardano being used for anything.” K33 further suggested that a “group of bagholders” were the ones simply fabricating a majority of transactions on the network, and nothing meaningful was going on Cardano.

ADA price chart from Tradingview.com (Cardano smart contracts)

Cardano’s Utility Good For ADA’s Price

Dan Gambardello, the founder of Crypto Capital Venture, once highlighted how the Cardano network had improved since the last bull run. The network’s smart contract functionality was among the features he alluded to as undergoing a significant upgrade since then. Notably, these improvements form part of why he believes that ADA could rise to $11 in the next bull run.  

These improvements have indeed contributed to the ecosystem’s resurgence. Last year, the network saw a significant rise in its DeFi activity, and although there has been a decline recently, things are expected to pick back up soon enough. The network’s development activity also looks to be paying off, as Gambardello recently revealed that there is now Social Finance (SocialFI) on Cardano.

Members of the Cardano community will hope that a fiat-backed stablecoin can finally be introduced on the network. The introduction of a stablecoin is believed to be another factor that could help increase Cardano’s utility. This could also cause an inflow of new money into the ecosystem, something which could positively impact ADA’s price. 

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Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson Says The Term Smart Contracts Needs To Be Changed

Smart contracts have been in the crypto space for quite a while now, most recently debuting on Cardano. With the rise of decentralized finance (DeFi), smart contracts have become even more important to the entire industry. This is because they are required to build the protocols on which these decentralized applications (DApps) run on. As they have grown in popularity, smart contracts platforms like Ethereum and Solana have recorded great success with them.

Cardano has been working on bringing smart contracts to its network for a while and on September 12th, that dream became a reality with the final launch of the Alonzo Hard Fork Combinator (HFC). The arrival of smart contracts capability on the network was widely celebrated in the industry. But now, Founder Charles Hoskinson does not believe the term does justice to what Cardano actually does.

Related Reading | Why The Hydra Layer 2 Solution Is Important To The Cardano Network

The disagreement with the term smart contracts comes after a user pointed out that what Cardano does is actually very different from smart contracts. The user, @_KtorZ_, pointed out that the network deviates from what established smart contracts platforms do, referring to the network as “atypical.”

Compared to most existing smart-contract platforms, Cardano takes a much different road. Recently, we've seen a lot of discussions going on about "concurrency issues" and "EUTXO vs accounts". While equally expressive, Cardano programmability is different and atypical.

— KtorZ (@_KtorZ_) September 18, 2021

Cardano Does Not Have Smart Contracts

Hoskinson posted a tweet wherein he agreed with the user pointing out that the term smart contracts do not do justice to what the platform does. Instead agreeing that a new term is needed instead of smart contracts to describe the network’s capabilities. This new term which the founder had agreed with is programmable validators. Agreeing with the user who pointed it out, this term better describes Cardano’s programmability.

Related Reading | Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson Says He Wants To Eliminate The Need For CEOs And Presidents

Matthias gets it absolutely right. Programmable validators instead of smart contracts https://t.co/8VVESJ8MYU

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) September 19, 2021

ADA price falls to $2.1 range | Source: ADUSD on TradingView.com

Explaining further, the user pointed out that unlike existing platforms like Ethereum and Solana, one could not just deploy a smart contract on Cardano. “Instead, validators are implicitly referred to by hashes prior to their use, and they are disclosed upon activation,” the user said. Meaning that the validators do not produce anything on the network. All they actually do is “just validate.”

In closing, KtorZ explained that the term “smart contracts” felt like an imprecise term. “I’d prefer more specific terms such as ‘on-chain validators’ and ‘off-chain code.’ If anything, ‘smart-validators’ sounds already much better to me,” they added.

Featured image from Coingape, chart from TradingView.com

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Cardano Sees Over 40,000 Smart Contracts Deployed 4 Days After Alonzo HFC, How This Affects The Price

Smart contracts have become a reality on the Cardano network after September 12th. After the Alonzo Hard Fork Combinator launch, developers could now go ahead and start creating smart contracts on the ecosystem. This would aid in developers creating decentralized applications (DApps) to provide decentralized finance (DeFi) services to the users of the blockchain.

With the number of smart contracts that have been created on the network, it is no doubt that we are about to witness an influx of new decentralized apps on the network. The project has said that they are supporting developers in bringing their projects to life on the platform. By making the Cardano ecosystem as safe and developer-friendly as it possibly could. The developers, in turn, have shown their confidence in the network with the number of smart contracts already live on the ecosystem.

Related Reading | Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson Says He Wants To Eliminate The Need For CEOs And Presidents

Cardano Sees Over 40K Smart Contracts In Four Days

The first day after the launch was completed saw over 100 smart contracts created in the first 24 hours. This number in itself was impressive. But the subsequent days have shown an even accelerated timeline for the creation of these smart contracts. Thursday 16th September marks the fourth day after the Alonzo HFC and the current count for the smart contracts on the network now sits at almost 41K.

While most of these smart contracts are not going into effect now, developers are creating them in a bid to lock their tokens ahead of the release of their decentralized applications. It evidences the number of projects developers are already working on to bring to the Cardano ecosystem. With the rise of decentralized finance still continuing, and as more people move away from other leading smart contracts platforms in favor of a cheaper and faster alternative like Cardano, more protocols are expected to launch their smart contracts on the network.

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Currently, these smart contracts are in a timelock contract, effectively locking them up for a specific period of time until the developers are ready to make use of them. This will provide the developers the time they need to develop their protocols while having secured their smart contracts for their uses ahead of time.

How This Affects This Price

The effect of this many smart contracts being created on the Cardano blockchain may not be apparent immediately. But there is no doubt that the rate at which the smart contracts are being created will have long-term positive effects on the price of its native asset ADA.

ADA price trending around $2.4 | Source: ADAUSD on TradingView.com

The rise of decentralized finance has been one of the major driving forces behind Ethereum’s success, and most recently, Solana’s success. In the same way, DeFi protocols on the Cardano blockchain will also effectively increase the value of its token. This is because once these decentralized applications are up and running, users will need to use ADA to carry out transactions on the blockchain.

Whereas users do not necessarily need to hold ADA coins, they will need to be purchased to trade and pay for transaction fees. This will create demand for the coin, in the long run, leading to a higher value of the digital asset.

Featured image from Decrypt, chart from TradingView.com

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Cardano Successfully Deploys Alonzo HFC, But Why Is Price Down?

On September 12th, 2021, Cardano successfully completed the final stage of its move to make the network compatible with smart contracts. The long-awaited Alonzo Hard Fork Combinator launch marked the beginning of a new era for Cardano. The developer behind the project, IOHK, took to Twitter to announce the successful upgrade.

The new upgrade has been successful so far, with over 50 smart contracts already deployed on the network, and counting. Alonzo’s Hard Fork Combinator (HFC) marks the end of the road for smart contracts capability. But also marks the beginning of a lot of work yet to be done. The community has so far welcomed the upgrade with open arms. Although one thing remains a problem, the price has not gone up in value. Why is this?

Related Reading | Cardano Network Upgrade And Hard Fork Gets Support From Binance

Why ADA Price Is Down

Last week, NewsBTC reported on the possibility of the Cardano smart contracts deployment triggering a “sell the news” event. So far, this seems to have been the case, or what this Twitter user aptly describes as “buy the testnet, sell the mainnet.”  This does not mean that most users dumped their bags. In fact, a report from Cardano shows that at least 71% of ADA’s entire coin supply remains locked up in staking contracts, with the current total of staking wallets at approximately 825,755.

ADA price down following smart contracts launch | Source: ADAUSD on TradingView.com

A major reason that the price has not recorded any significant upward movement has to do with the fact that it will take a while before decentralized applications (DApps) are live on the network, as developers will need time to properly test and deploy their apps on Cardano. This means that it will take a while for traffic to pick up on the network. Triggering an increase in the price of the token as more users buy Cardano in order to carry out transactions on the network.

ADA price will most likely trend around its current price point for the foreseeable future while developers work to launch their apps on the network. With the number of smart contracts being deployed on the network, there will be a large influx of DApps coming to the network, leading to a rise in decentralized exchanges and finance on the network.

Only The Beginning Of The Road For Cardano

While the upgrade is a big leap for Cardano, it is no doubt that there is still a lot of work left to be done. To truly be able to compete with already established networks like Solana and Ethereum, Cardano will have some bumps in the road. These will include some good and not-so-good DApps on the ecosystem, and great development teams and terrible ones alike.

Cardano has its work cut out for it given that the ecosystem is a permissionless, decentralized blockchain so it will have to deal with the good, the bad, and the ugly that comes with this.

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Security is also a big issue that the network will have to deal with as decentralized applications debut on the network. Already, Cardano has issued a bug bounty in conjunction with HackerOne to find vulnerabilities in its network, offering up to $10,000 in bounty to hackers who report bugs. With all of the hacks recorded in the decentralized finance space recently, it is important that the network is as secure as can be for users to start trading on the network.

Currently, the price of ADA is trading below $2.5. The asset has recorded a price dip of 6.50% in the past 24 hours, leading to a $0.20 loss.

Featured image from Blockchain News, chart from TradingView.com

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Cardano Network Upgrade And Hard Fork Gets Support From Binance

Cardano has placed the launch of smart contracts capability on September 12th. This gives us only two days until the launch. Ahead of this, crypto exchange giant Binance has made moves to make sure that their platform is compatible with it. The announcement was posted by Binance on its official website. The network upgrade and hard fork have been scheduled to take place during epoch 290 or at approximately 12:44 UTC on September 12th, 2021.

The announcement noted that the Cardano upgrade and hard fork will not result in the creation of new tokens, neither will it affect the trading of ADA tokens on the platform. Although deposits and withdrawals for ADA will be closed until the upgrade and hard fork have been confirmed to be working properly. Users holding ADA tokens on Binance are also advised to allow sufficient time for their deposits before the cut-off time. While the cryptocurrency exchange will take care of all of the technical requirements associated with the upgrade.

Related Reading | Will The Cardano Smart Contracts Upgrade Trigger A “Sell The News” Event?

Deposits and withdrawals of ADA tokens will be suspended on 21:14 UTC on September 12th, 30 minutes before the upgrade and hard fork are scheduled to occur. Deposits and withdrawals will remain unavailable for however long it takes the exchange to confirm that the upgrade is implemented properly and safe to carry out transactions on.

How Cardano Upgrade Will Affect The Network

There are a lot of good things to be said about smart contracts capability coming to the Cardano network. One of these is the ability for developers to build decentralized applications (DApps) on the network, thereby enabling things like decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and decentralized exchanges.

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With the leading smart contracts platform, Ethereum, getting overwhelmed with usage, it is imperative for other competitors to step up to the plate. The Alonzo Purple upgrade and hark fork puts Cardano in a position to compete with Ethereum when it comes to DeFi services like lending, staking, and yield farming. Also the creation of tokens on the platform and the minting of NFTs.

ADA Still Struggling

ADA price is still in a downward trend after the crash that rocked the market on September 7th. The token has not seen much recovery in the past three days despite the long-awaited smart contracts upgrade coming up in two days.

ADA price in the red | Source: ADAUSD on TradingView.com

Currently, the price of ADA is trading in the $2.3 range, after spending the majority of yesterday trying to hold the $2.5 which it had balanced at after an upward correction from the crash.

Featured image from Nairametrics, chart from TradingView.com

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Will The Cardano Smart Contracts Upgrade Trigger A “Sell The News” Event?

Cardano smart contracts upgrade is almost upon us. With just three days left, there is a lot of speculation as to what the price of the digital asset will do until then. The weeks leading up to the launch have seen the asset hit multiple new all-time highs. That is until the crash that rocked the market on September 7th. Cardano suffered an 18% flash crash that saw it lose most of its gains for the previous weeks.

Now, with the market still reeling from the crash, the digital asset has begun to regain some of the lost value. But at a much slower pace. One news that has helped to hold the price up has been the confirmation of the Alonzo Hard Fork that had been scheduled for September 12th. Developer IOHK posted on their Twitter that the project was all set for the mainnet upgrade.

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But as the date draws closer, the reality of what the upgrade might do for the price of ADA looms over the community. Most maintain a positive outlook for the coming upgrade. Others, on the other hand, believe that this will trigger a “sell the news” event.

Are Investors Planning To Dump Their Cardano Bags?

Historically, with important upgrades like these, there have been instances where investors piled up their bags in anticipation of a big reveal and then promptly dumping their holdings with the release. This happens not only in the crypto market. Financial markets are notorious for events like these. Hence the existence of the phrase “sell the news”.

A good indicator of investors’ attitude towards dumping is market sentiment. Currently, the overall market sentiment has moved into the negative. The Fear & Greed Index shows that the market came out of “Extreme Greed” at the start of the week and lost over 30 points to move into the “Fear” territory. This indicates that investors are more likely to sell their holdings than buy.

Market sentiment falls into fear | Source: Fear & Greed Index on Alternative.me

Related Reading | Cardano Confirms Launch Date For Smart Contracts Mainnet Upgrade

All of the hype leading up to the launch of the upgrade had fueled the rally that led to the new all-time highs. But with current sentiment and market correction only just beginning, a more conservative approach from investors can be expected on September 12th. Although, an uptick in the price can be expected once traffic picks up on the network, which would require ADA tokens to carry out activities like interacting with decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and minting NFTs.

As of the time of writing, ADA price has seen some recovery that moved it out of the $2.4 territory to its current trading price of $2.59, with a 24-hour price change of 8.52%. Cardano still maintains its number 3 position on the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap with a current market cap of $82 billion.

ADA trading above $2.5 | Source: ADAUSD on TradingView.com
Featured image from Cardano Feed, charts from Alternative.me and TradingView.com

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Cardano Confirms Launch Date For Smart Contracts Mainnet Upgrade

Cardano’s developer IOHK has now confirmed smart contracts capability is set to launch on the network on September 12th. The long-awaited upgrade to the Cardano Mainnet will see the addition of smart contracts capability to the network, which would open the door to both developers and investors alike on the network. The launch is scheduled for Sunday, only four days away.

LAUNCH CONFIRMED: Today, around 17:26 UTC we successfully submitted an update proposal to the #Cardano mainnet, to trigger a hard fork combinator event on Sunday 💪🙌 #Cardano $ADA 1/6 pic.twitter.com/rEtjrdGiBV

— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) September 7, 2021

Related Reading | Analyst Lays Out Theory That Suggests A 290% Move In Cardano (ADA) Before Rally Is Over

Taking to Twitter, the developer shared with the wider community that they had successfully submitted an upgrade proposal to the Cardano Mainnet. This would trigger the hard fork combinator (HFC) event that would take place on Sunday. “The Alonzo HFC event will be the most significant upgrade yet, laying the firmest of foundations for an exciting new era of smart contracts on Cardano,” said the developer.

Using the HFC technology will enable the deployment of smart contracts capability with the core Plutus, which will come will all compatibility upgrades across the entire software stack. Testing has already been underway for the smart contracts capability with trusted testers from previous upgrade iterations. So far, the smart contracts are processing transactions accordingly and developers have taken to building their DApps on the platform.

Gearing Up To Compete

The final deployment will see Cardano competing with other networks successfully operating in the space. Going up against well-known smart contracts platforms like Ethereum, and a new contender that has taken the market by storm, Solana.

Alonzo Hard Fork will bring decentralized finance (DeFi) and decentralized exchanges (DEX) to the ecosystem, as well as capabilities like being able to mint NFTs on the Cardano blockchain. Effectively expanding the scope of use cases of the network.

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The network ran into some problems earlier when rumors started making the rounds on social media that the smart contracts could only handle one transaction at a time. But this was soon after cleared up by the developers, who showed that the problem was not with the network, but rather with the DApp Minswap. IOHK further encouraged developers to keep testing on the network, adding that “this is what a testnet is for.”

Cardano (ADA) Price Reaction

Cardano, like the rest of the market, is still reeling from the flash crash which it experienced yesterday. Although it has recovered from the lows of the flash crash, the digital asset continues to struggle to find footing back to positions before the crash. The announcement from Cardano’s developer did not do much to push the price upwards, which has left the asset trading around the $2.3 range. Putting it back down below highs from May.

ADA price struggles as market reels from crash | Source: ADAUSD on TradingView.com

At the time of writing, the asset is trading at $2.38, down more than 9% in the last 24 hours. The crash in its value has brought the total market cap of the asset down to $76 billion. Although remaining the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

Featured image from Ethereum World News, chart from TradingView.com

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Cardano (ADA) Steadies Above $2 As Bulls Continue To Aim For $2.5

Cardano (ADA) has shown no signs of slowing down as the asset’s price continues to rally. The aim remains to hit a new all-time high before the year runs out. The previous all-time high for the asset is recorded at $2.45 and a price crashing saw the asset losing more than half of that value in the months following it. Then a bull rally had been triggered again in the market, which had set cryptocurrencies all across the market recording massive gains daily.

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Cardano (ADA) was not left out of this rally. The price had fallen down to the low $1 before the rally began. But as at the time of this writing, the asset had successfully gained back over 100% of its low price back in July. Its price climb has not come as much of a surprise to its community though. Work is currently ongoing on bringing smart contracts capability to the Cardano network. This would help position the project as a rival for the leading smart contracts platform, Ethereum.

Related Reading | Cardano (ADA) Breaks $2 For The First Time Since May, Why New All-Time High Is Imminent

Hitting the $2 had been more of the hurdle for the asset. Proving to be a resistance point in the run-up. But ADA had crossed that hurdle and now the price looks to have found its footing above $2, and now, the ever-moving target that is the price of digital assets has now been set for a new run-up towards $2.5 for the asset. Breaking the previous record all-time and setting a new one.

Smart Contracts Set To Be Released

A possible push to get Cardano (ADA) towards the point bulls are aiming for will be the release of the smart contracts capability. It was announced last Friday that the launch will take place on September 12, a month from the date of the announcement. This might be a short time frame but the project had been underway for a long time.

Related Reading | Cardano (ADA) Receives Approval To Be Listed In Japan

The announcement for the date of the mainnet launch pushed the price over $2. Since this provides a definite date for what the community had been waiting for – a way for Cardano to get into the DeFi space. With smart contracts, developers will be able to build decentralized apps (DApps) on the Cardano network to provide decentralized finance (DeFi) services to their users. And the DApp connector released last month will act as a bridge between Cardano users and decentralized applications.

As the date of the launch draws closer, investors are taking interest in the asset. Its relatively cheap price, despite being the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, makes it an interesting investment for investors who are looking for big returns.

Road To Cardano (ADA) At $2.5

Price movements in cryptocurrencies have always been tricky. But they work like any other market, maintaining the laws of economics. Higher demand than supply will lead to a higher price. Cardano is poised to witness this in the price when the mainnet launch for smart contracts finally happens.

ADA prices finds a landing point above $2 | Source: ADAUSD on TradingView.com

ADA has a total supply that is capped at 45,000,000,000. Of that number, over 71% is already in circulation. The dwindling supply and rising demand put ADA on a path to another rally.

The price of ADA is currently holding steady above $2 with a price of $2.073. Signals show positive sentiment in the community as investors continue to hold on to their coins in wait for September 12th. With most of the circulating supply of ADA already staked ahead of the launch of the Alonzo Purple means to bring smart contracts capability to the network.

Featured image from CryptoSlate, chart from TradingView.com