Cardano has seen impressive growth across multiple ecosystem metrics in 2022-2023 according to Messari’s latest report, yet ADA prices continue to languish.
In Q2 2023 alone, Cardano’s total value locked (TVL) increased nearly 10% to $151.7 million as its DeFi ecosystem expanded. Stablecoin value rose 34.9% quarter-over-quarter and an astounding 382.1% year-to-date.
Cardano now ranks 21st in terms of TVL, up from 34th at the start of 2022. Its average daily decentralized app (dapp) transactions climbed 49% in Q2, reaching nearly 58,000. The network processed over 1 million transactions on Minswap, its top automated market maker, in both May and June.
Beyond DeFi, Cardano’s NFT sector saw growing real-world use cases, and its sidechain and scaling protocols made significant strides. Milkomeda C1 became the first EVM-compatible sidechain on Cardano.
Yet despite these metrics pointing to an increasingly diverse and active ecosystem, ADA prices paint a different picture. The token has plunged nearly 48% in the last 12 months, including a 26.9% drop since the 2023 ATH amidst broad market declines.
Some supporters are growing impatient given the disparity between Cardano’s development activity and its price trajectory. The network’s rapid growth has yet to manifest in any sustained positive price action.
As Cardano moves closer to Vasil, its next major network upgrade, the community hopes wider utilization will finally ignite a rally. But faith in development translating to gains is undeniably waning. For now, Cardano’s solid ecosystem expansion remains divorced from its lagging token performance.
The price of Cardano (ADA) is $0.290308 today with a 24-hour trading volume of $103,474,656.40. This represents a -1.28% price decline in the last 24 hours and a -1.36% price decline in the past 7 days. With a circulating supply of 35 Billion ADA, Cardano is valued at a market cap of $10,174,301,529.