Discover the Catalysts Behind Cardano’s Impressive 46% Monthly Surge

For the first three quarters of 2023, Cardano (ADA) owners were likely a little frustrated with the token’s performance. At its worst, the popular DeFi coin dropped as low as US$ 0.24 (AU$ 0.37), less than a tenth of its peak price in 2021. However, the project put all of that behind it after recording a stellar four weeks, posting impressive gains of 46% and hitting its highest price since April this year. But what exactly is spurring Cardano’s excellent performance over the past month and a half?

Strong Ecosystem Leads the Way

The crypto market doesn’t always reflect what’s really going on behind the scenes of a project, and this has proven true for Cardano. The developers – headed by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson – have been hard at work adding extra utility to the network throughout 2023.

As a result, according to a report from Messari.io, the ecosystem has thrived over the past year. The network’s total value locked (TVL), a common measure of a blockchain’s health, increased by nearly 200% year-to-date amid the funding of 192 impressive projects.

What the data suggests is that while staking and transactions on the Cardano blockchain have fallen this year, decentralised applications (dApps) hosted on the network have significantly improved their active user bases. If developers continue to view Cardano as the ecosystem they wish to build applications in, this trend will only strengthen over the next 12 months.

Stablecoin Sector Showing Signs of Growth

Perhaps the biggest reason for TVL growth in Cardano’s ecosystem has been the introduction of native stablecoins. There are quite a few pegged tokens on the network, but the main players are Djed and Indigo Protocol (iUSD). 

However, the biggest coup for Cardano’s blockchain was the bridging of USDT and USDC – by far the two biggest stablecoins – onto the network. Thanks to Wanchain, Cardano users can now trade, sell and stake the two stablecoins natively.

Put it all together, and the value of stablecoins on Cardano’s platform was up 16% in the past quarter, and a whopping 461% since January 2023. Whether this momentum will continue remains to be seen, but if the altcoin market continues its rally it’s hard to imagine Cardano being left too far behind.