For blockchain alternatives to Ethereum, such as Cardano, Avalanche and Solana, 2021 was certainly a year full of satisfaction and there is a lot of anticipation among experts to see if 2022 will be a year as rich in achievements.
Cardano’s performance in 2021
Both Avalanche and Solana had some of the highest returns in the entire crypto market for 2021, while Cardano certainly had a more up-and-down performance, also considering the fact that it was starting from a much higher capitalization than other competing currencies.
In December, Cardano celebrated a historic milestone, surpassing 20 million transactions on its blockchain.
Ranked as the sixth most capitalized digital currency, with more than $40 billion in value, its prices hover around $1.4.
Just this year, it was overtaken by its fierce competitor, Solana, which seems to have been duelling to become Ethereum’s best blockchain competitor.
Cardano’s price has had an up-and-down year. From January to August, ADA rose sharply, reaching an all-time high of more than $3.
Since September, its price has fallen 57% to the current $1.3080. Its market capitalization has fallen from an all-time high of over $90 billion to the current $43 billion.
This has undoubtedly created a negative climate on what seemed to be one of the most interesting projects until a few months ago.
Cardano in 2022
But according to many experts, the development of DeFi and NFTs could lead ADA to regain some of the ground lost in these last four months of 2021.
According to the most optimistic, Cardano could try to regain the third position in the ranking of the most capitalized cryptocurrencies by touching $2 again within the first six months of 2022.
Cardano’s main problem may be its rivals Solana, Avalanche and Polkadot, which seem to have had a greater hold on investors in this period.
Cardano in the latter part of the year announced a number of partnerships, the unveiling of new stablecoins, a new dApp store and some successfully closed funding rounds, but all of this so far does not seem to have fully convinced most investors.
Cardano network developments
At the beginning of 2021, February saw the implementation of the “Allegra” hard fork, followed by the “Mary” hard fork, which was greeted with great enthusiasm by the large community that follows Cardano and beyond.
The Allegra hard fork which happened in Dec 2020 was named after Allegra Byron, Lord Byron’s daughter and sister to Ada Lovelace. |#WomenOfCardano #IWD2021 #ChooseToChallenge pic.twitter.com/5V9Gl6jQLf
— Cardano Community (@Cardano) March 8, 2021
These updates brought new functionality to the Cardano mainnet which was completed with “Alonzo” that introduced smart contract functionality to the blockchain.
These new features are likely to make their full effects felt in the new year, making Cardano much more attractive to developers and startups.
Cardano continues to be one of the most sustainable and scalable blockchains and has already been adopted by many companies in the industry.
There is now great excitement about Cardano’s next development step, Basho, which introduces sidechains to improve scalability and, according to the company’s own website:
“It will see Cardano become one of the highest performing, resilient and flexible blockchain platforms in the industry”.
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