The Cardano (ADA<\/a>) network received a significant update in September 2021, which included the addition of smart contract functionality, allowing the blockchain to scale and perform more quickly. Despite a price drop in 2022, Cardano\u2019s<\/a> network development has expanded.<\/p>\n Following the Vasil hard fork<\/a> in September, Plutus Scripts (a Cardano-based smart contracts platform) has rapidly hit over 4,000 smart contacts. According to data acquired by Finbold<\/a>, the number of smart contracts on Cardano reached the 4,027 mark on December 3, per statistics<\/a> from Cardano Blockchain Insights.<\/p>\n The graph depicts smart contracts built using Plutus that are now being executed on the Cardano blockchain; as of December 4, the total number of smart contracts has reached 4,050. The value represents a growth of 316% growth in 2022<\/a> after recording 947 smart contracts on January 1,<\/p>\n Cardano was able to give the developer community programmability and decentralized finance\u00a0(DeFi<\/a>)\u00a0application development platform once the Alonso hard fork was completed.<\/p>\n According to Cardano, the team has been hard at work lately on boosting script capacity<\/a>, the Plutus Debugger MVP, and finishing the spread of implementation of full Babbage support in the Plutus tools before its release.\u00a0<\/p>\n In November, the Cardano builder Input Output Global (IOG) announced<\/a> the launch of the world\u2019s first blockchain<\/a> decentralization index, followed by the establishment<\/a> of a new resource section for Plutus DApp developers on the Cardano Docs website.<\/p>\n Notably, Cardano beat all crypto platforms in monthly development activity<\/a>, with activity rates of the Cardano team in its public GitHub repositories in November being 18% higher than the next highest-ranked asset, Polkadot (DOT<\/a>), recording 572.67 generated events.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also worth mentioning that, earlier this year, Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, responded to claims that the planned deployment of the Vasil hard fork might potentially damage the smart contract functioning of the network.\u00a0<\/p>\n Hoskinson said in July that the network had taken the required protections to ensure that smart contracts are compatible with the revisions, reducing the need for re-writing.\u00a0<\/p>\n He said that the claims were made by so-called \u201ctrolls<\/a>,\u201d whom he termed \u201cstupid\u201d and accused of spreading \u201cFUD,\u201d while at the same time emphasizing that the smart contract would continue to function as it was designed.<\/p>\n Finally, according to an artificial intelligence-based price prediction model, Cardano\u2019s native token ADA is predicted to trade at $0.42<\/a> by the end of this year; at the time of publication, ADA was trading at $0.32.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/finbold.com\/app\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Screenshot-2022-12-05-at-10.26.03.jpg\")
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nCardano network growth<\/h2>\n
Charles Hoskinson hits back at trolls<\/h2>\n