Cardano (ADA): is the big departure imminent?

Cardano turns up a lot. The staking of the platform’s own ADA token is enjoying rapidly increasing popularity, while the first decentralized trading platform on the Cardano blockchain is entering the test stage.

Another milestone. Just a few days ago, Cardano (ADA) recorded its 20 millionth transaction. Now the in-house cryptocurrency of the decentralized blockchain platform has cracked the next benchmark. Because on December 5th, the network recorded its millionth staking account. The Cardano community is getting ready for the upcoming leap into the DeFi era.

On Twitter, a crypto investor congratulated Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson on this success. Hoskinson answer with a brief “We did it!”. According to the overview portal pool.pm At the time of going to press, 1,005,696 ADA delegators were in 3095 staking pools.

With a market capitalization of around $ 47.5 billion, Cardano ranks second among the largest proof-of-stake blockchains. Solana is the only one that is more popular on the market. Proof of Stake is also a new type of consensus mechanism that was developed as an energy-saving alternative to BTC’s proof-of-work mechanism. In order to create a new block, Proof of Stake no longer needs expensive hardware mining. Instead, users make crypto wagers that determine the likelihood that a staker is allowed to create the next block.

72 percent of ADA’s reserves in staking

A look at pool.pm also reveals that a total of 72 percent of the ADA reserves are included in Cardano’s staking cycle. That’s the equivalent of just over $ 34 billion. But why is ADA staking so popular?

Cardano’s popularity got a huge boost when the platform introduced smart contracts in September. With the ability to create dApps for the blockchain, the number of stakers also increased steadily. Cardano also benefits from the high transaction prices on the ETH blockchain.

In addition, Cardano offers the option of conveniently handling staking from your own wallet. The assets set aside for staking can still be withdrawn at any time. This shows another difference to ETH. Because here the validators have to freeze their funds until the rollout of ETH 2.0.

SundaeSwap: Cardano’s first DeFi app is in the starting blocks

The increased interest in Cardano, however, has another reason. Because the blockchain platform will soon receive its first decentralized trading mechanism. The AMM protocol SundaeSwap went on December 5th with a testnet live. Such protocols are based on smart contracts, they are crucial for the establishment of DeFi transactions and, to a certain extent, take on the mediating role.

The testnet allows transactions with test tokens. The developers announced that bug reports for the test are now possible. The Cardano team added that the SundaeSwap launch will also test the load limits of the entire network.

All of this speaks in favor of keeping a close eye on the ADA course. The currency lost a good 30 percent of its value in the last percent, but a reaction to the upcoming SundaeSwap launch is still pending.