Photo Credit: Cardano.org
Cardano (ADA) price has jumped more than 50 percent over the last 10 days to occupy the third spot among the world's top cryptocurrencies with an $80 billion (Rs. 5,94,400 crores) market cap, ahead of the popular Binance Coin. During the wild ride, it touched its lifetime high of $2.58 (Rs. 191.70) but the gains had tapered off a bit by Saturday morning. The rally is being attributed to a coming “Alonzo” upgrade that will allow smart-contract functionality and a range of decentralised finance (DeFi) applications to run on the Cardano network. The proposed technological enhancement is likely to land as soon as next month.
Co-founded by Charles Hoskinson, a mathematician and former CEO of Ethereum, the Cardano network is being touted as a serious rival to the Ethereum blockchain, which currently dominates the DeFi services market. The ADA coin has jumped from $1.70 (Rs 126) on August 10 to $2.58 on August 20, according to CoinMarketCap. At the time of writing this report, the Cardano (ADA) price in India was around Rs. 190.
The lack of smart-contract functions has been widely seen as Cardano's biggest drawback and their availability is Ethereum's biggest strength. These contracts are a way to ensure agreements can be validated securely.
Earlier this month, the development team behind the Alonzo upgrade announced the launch of the public test net, saying it was an “exciting and important next step” in the Cardano journey.
This is an exciting and important next step in the #Alonzo journey. In fact, the #Cardano journey. With the support of our OG community testers on the Blue & White phases, #AlonzoPurple will be the first fully public Cardano testnet to support #smartcontracts ????
— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) August 6, 2021
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Despite the rally and even before it over the possibility of the coming upgrade, some people have shown skepticism about the success of the Cardano coin. This had prompted Hoskinson to respond to the naysayers in a tweet earlier this month, promising to start a fund to pay for the therapy of the critics.
It's extraordinary to me the level of skepticism about our upcoming smart contract launch. It's not something like SCs will be underwhelming, but rather it simply won't happen. The critics say it with biblical level certainty. We should start a fund to pay for their therapy
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) August 4, 2021
Meanwhile, the recent rallies in Bitcoin, Ether, Cardano (ADA), and others have helped the cryptocurrency market to surpass the $2 trillion (roughly Rs. 1,48,50,910 crores) market-cap milestone for the first time since May, when a market crash had routed the volatile trade.
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