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- Cardano has been a member of the top 10 by market cap for most of its existence<\/li>\n
- ADA is down 86% from its all-time high, the second-biggest decliner among the top 10 next to DOGE<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n
Cardano, the so-called \u201cthird-generation blockchain,\u201d has been a first-class loser when it comes to price this far into the 2022 bear market.<\/p>\n
The perennial top-10 crypto, which briefly reached as high as the number 3 spot<\/a> behind ether and bitcoin for a few months in 2021, has fallen about 86% from its September 2021 peak<\/a> of just over $3 per coin.<\/p>\n
The chain\u2019s total value locked (TVL) has similarly slid 77% from a March 2022 peak, according to DefiLlama<\/a> \u2014 and now stands at roughly $76 million, good for the 27th by that metric.<\/p>\n
Among the project\u2019s latest highlights<\/a>: an effort to authenticate wine<\/a> from the nation of Georgia, and \u201ccrypto-backed algorithmic stablecoin that acts as an autonomous bank,\u201d dubbed Djed \u2014 a tough sell in a post-Terra environment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Its decentralized applications (dapps) have also struggled to compete with other layer-1s. The so-called Plutus smart contracts underlying dapps are unique to Cardano and written in a relatively uncommon<\/a> coding language, Haskell. That means dapps cannot be easily ported over from Ethereum, the way they can be deployed to an Ethereum virtual machine (EVM)-compatible layer-1 blockchain.<\/p>\n
Cardano has taken steps to attract developers and has ranked well in developer activity metrics, according to<\/a> analytics firm Santiment. But a year on from the Alonzo hard fork<\/a>, which first added smart contract functionality, its largest DeFi decentralized exchange, Minswap<\/a>, is recording less than $1 million in volume on a typical day.<\/p>\n
From Byron to Voltaire<\/h3>\n
The ethos of Cardano has been slow, meticulous progress along a roadmap of five eras named for famous writers: Byron, Shelley, Goguen, Basho and Voltaire.<\/p>\n
Now, in the Basho era, the most recent upgrade, Vasil, was, in terms of complexity, on par with the Ethereum Merge, according to<\/a> Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson.<\/p>\n
The upgrade brings with it a version 2 of Plutus, expected to increase<\/a> dapps\u2019 throughput from about 1.5 transactions per second (TPS) to as much as nine. That may not sound like a lot compared to Ethereum layer-2s<\/a> or Solana<\/a>, but proponents point out that comparing Cardano\u2019s Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO)-based model<\/a> to an account model such as Ethereum\u2019s<\/a> is not exactly apples to apples.<\/p>\n
Even so, according to Starbloom Ventures\u2019 Evan van Ness, the bulk of Cardano\u2019s transaction activity is simple cardano (ADA) transfers, not smart contract activity<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Like the historic Ethereum switch<\/a> to proof-of-stake, Vasil provided no immediate boost to the ADA price.<\/p>\n
Both its price and its market cap remain stuck in the Byron era, finding support at around $0.42, since the May crypto market crash, but setting progressively lower highs.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s not clear whether Basho\u2019s focus on scaling will be enough of a catalyst to turn that around.<\/p>\n
Cardano\u2019s original roadmap is set to come to a close in 2023, Hoskinson said, calling it<\/a> \u201cthe strongest, most resilient self-governing organism ever conceived, with a population in the millions and much utility for all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Added Hoskinson: \u201cThere are many challenges to come; there\u2019s many upgrades to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
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