Cardano's native coin ADA has undoubtedly seen a poor run in Q4, but the tides appear to be changing as the year draws to an end. The token bled and continued losing ground throughout October, dropping below $2.00 and later below $1.50 in November. However, ADA appears to have found some spark in the latest turn of events.

Elsewhere this week, Cardano Foundation's top executive Frederik Gregaard shared his reflection on the year the network and the token have had. Gregaard's remarks on both were positive, notwithstanding the latter's slump over the last two months.

Here are more details on the same and other major events around Cardano from the past week.

Cardano Foundation's review of 2021

2021 has been a great year for Cardano: Cardano Foundation Exec

Despite its native token suffering heavy losses in recent weeks, Cardano Foundation chief executive Frederik Gregaard believes the year has generally been good for the protocol. In a blog post shared on December 22^nd, Gregaard noted that Cardano had seen ‘incredible growth' with ADA recording a year-to-date upsurge of over 700%.

The recent dip doesn't appear to be cause for alarm for Gregaard, who contends that the blockchain has made significant progress, which is the take to focus on. In the post, the Cardano Foundation head explained that the protocol is making headway, with the main takeaways being “sustained growth, technical innovation, community expansion, and [major] partnerships.

ADA started the year trading below $0.20 before a couple of rallies propelled its price to a record high of $3.10 in September. Unable to hold onto the momentum at this peak, the coin retracted erasing most of its gain. The token continued plunging in the coming weeks, eventually shrinking by over 50%. Despite this huge sell-off, current market data show that the token is up about 750%.

High adoption rate and the Alonzo upgrade represent growth

Further, in the blog post, Gregaard defined growth as the increased adoption of Cardano coin (ADA) and the introduction of smart contract capability. He went on to list some of the other key achievements outside the market, including efforts to enable decentralized finance and exchanges on the network.

“It has been an incredible year of growth, achievements and major milestones reached for both the Cardano Foundation and the #Cardano protocol! We are happy to share some of the biggest highlights from 2021 with you! Check it out👇,” the Cardano Foundation team wrote on Twitter.

Cardano's year in a nutshell

Over the last nine months (since the multi-asset ledger feature was introduced), more than 2.5 million native assets have been minted on the network. 80% of these assets have been non-fungible tokens which have, on their end, gained hyped lately.

The Cardano blog post indicated that there have been more than 23.8 million on-chain transactions recorded and almost 2.6 million wallets created. This assertion is backed by a report from CryptoCompare, which found out that the number of active addresses on the network quadrupled last month (from October), indicating positive traction in on-chain activity.

Gregaard also observed that the growth wasn't over yet since the launch of the Alonzo hard fork late in September opened the door for extended utility as well as on-chain adoption. Gregaard highlighted ‘programmability' as the biggest upside of the upgrade. He stated that programmability enabled the platform to support smart contracts and decentralized applications.

Partnerships have played a crucial role

Partnerships with different institutions around the world have come in handy in creating value and utility for Cardano, according to Gregaard. The Cardano Foundation executive cited several key partnerships that the blockchain firm has made throughout the year.

He highlighted the collaborations with e-sports firm Rival, Philippine-based FinTech firm UBX, and Save the Children. Other major collaborations the network has sealed this year are with Veritree and HackerOne. The former is involved in international land restoration and tree planting verification. HackerOne, on the other hand, is a loophole and bug bounty platform whose resources Cardano leveraged for its vulnerability coordination.

Market performance

The positive trading activity over the last few days is raising the hopes of Cardano token holders. Crypto analysts, too, are becoming increasingly bullish on the ADA's price. A fraction of them contends that the downtrend which dominated the token in November and partly December has finally come to an end. They believe that ADA is now gearing up to overcome resistance at $2.50. 

ADA's trading activity over the last 7 days

The ‘Ethereum-killer' is as of writing exchanging hands at $1.42 to the dollar according to coinmarketcap data. The current ADA/USD value represents a 14.45% gain over the last seven days. This is a significant climb considering the token lost nearly 20% in November alone. There is some optimism among ADA traders, but chances of a rally happening are slim if the token fails to turn the $1.50 resistance level into support.