• Since mid-May 2023, Cardano whale addresses holding 100K-10M ADA have accumulated $116 million worth of coins.
• During the second quarter, the DeFi activity on Cardano picked up significantly along with higher transaction volume.

While the broader cryptocurrency market has been consolidating, crypto investors and traders have set their eyes on Cardano (ADA). As of press time, ADA is trading at a price of $0.29 with a market cap of $10.19 billion.

On-chain data shows that whales have begun a strong accumulation of Cardano’s ADA cryptocurrency. With Cardano’s price slightly above $0.29, large holders of 100K-10M $ADA, known as whales and sharks, have increased their holdings to the highest level since September 2022. Furthermore, the volume of transactions happening directly on the blockchain, indicated by #onchain transaction volume, has been consistently increasing for the past six months, reports Santiment.

A recent report from blockchain analytics firm Messari reveals that Cardano’s blockchain got busier in the second quarter. This happened due to some strong technical developments on Cardano during the first quarter. Thus, it helped to boost the overall developer interest in the Cardano ecosystem. The report from Messari notes:

The ratio of transactions to active addresses has been growing steadily over the past five quarters, suggesting that the average user is more active now than they previously were. In Q2, the Transaction / Active Address ratio of 1.19 was up 6.1% QoQ and 13.2% YoY.

The amount of data stored in blocks, called blockchain load, increased from under 40% to 50% in the past few months. It reached its highest point at 81% in May.

Cardano ADA Price to Rally 10,000%

A well-known expert has made a bold guess that Cardano (ADA), a popular cryptocurrency, could jump a huge amount, about 10,689%, to reach $31 in the future. This prediction, which came from the YouTube channel Cheeky Crypto, has caught people’s interest, but the expert also mentioned that there might be times when the price goes down in the short term.

The reason for the hopeful outlook comes from how much money is being used in the Cardano system, measured in dollars. As per the popular DeFi tracking tool DeFiLlama, this amount of money has grown a lot this year. This is a big deal and makes the expert feel really good about Cardano’s future.

Recently, there were almost 600 million ADA being used in Cardano, which makes the expert think the price will go up a lot soon. The big prediction is that ADA could reach $31, which is impressive. But the expert also said a more reasonable guess is between $3.48 and $10.50.

Even though the long-term guess is positive, the expert also said ADA’s price might go down in the short term. They mentioned it could go as low as $0.151 or $0.1817.

DeFi Development on Cardano

DefiLlama data reveals that as of Monday, $175 million worth of tokens are locked on Cardano, marking the highest level this year. However, this is still around 50% lower than the all-time peak of $340 million reached in May 2022.

This surge in activity follows significant upgrades to Cardano since the beginning of this year. One of these upgrades, implemented in June, aimed to reduce “epoch” transitions, enhancing the blockchain’s efficiency for network users. In the context of Cardano, epochs are time periods lasting 432,000 slots, where each slot represents a second.

During these epochs, ADA tokens are staked, and new blocks are produced on the Cardano network. This process potentially boosts demand for ADA tokens as block rewards become more attractive due to increased activity.