Cardano News
Roundup: Post Vasil Cardano Assessment, ADA Sees Lackluster Start in October and Hoskinson To Debate Iota Co-Founder
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The last cryptoweek presented significant developments around Cardano, particularly the Vasil hard fork, whose upgrade features became available. Cardano creator Charles Hoskinson got involved in several debates on Twitter and, in one post, appeared to mock the Solana network, which suffered another outage heading into the weekend via a GIF attachment responding to an update from Solana’s alert team, Solana Status.
In a separate post, Hoskinson accepted a challenge of a debate with IOTA co-founder Dominik Schiener in response to a request from the latter Reddit community. Schiener agreed to participate while extending an invitation to Iota developer Hans Moog. The two blockchain enthusiasts have a good standing relationship, having positively engaged in a public conversation on the platform. Last January, Hoskinson wrote to Schiener seeking more information on a project that would provide a bridging service between Iota and Cardano.
Looking forward to the Voltaire age
The Vasil upgrade went live last month with the hard fork deployed on Sept 22 and new features for developer use becoming available on the mainnet on Sept 27. On the latter date, Cardano performed an upgrade on its smart contract enabling platform Plutus. The introduction of the Plutus V2 cost model enables the scripting of contracts with significantly less code, reducing script execution costs and enhancing throughput.
“We’re pleased to announce that […] new capabilities (including node & CLI support for reference inputs, inline datums, reference scripts), along with a new #Plutus cost model, are now available on the Cardano mainnet!” IOHK wrote.
In the weekly development report for the week ending on Sept 30, IOHK highlighted the availability of Vasil functionality as one of the key achievements. The report further showcased Cardano’s five-year journey since its launch, specifically around its core technology and DeFi space. Thus far, more than 1,113 projects are building on the network and over 3,307 Plutus scripts have been deployed.
Other featured developments included compatibility testing for the Daedalus wallet, several improvements on Marlowe semantics, and notable progress regarding certification of the stake operators registering in the Mithril network and assessing its test environment. On governance, the Cardano development company confirmed the launch of Fund10 of the Cardano Treasury funds following the successful conclusion of Fund 9, whose results were earlier published by Project Catalyst.
Next in Cardano’s roadmap is Voltaire – the fifth phase – which Hoskinson notes will “unlock the power of the millions of Cardano users and builders” and provide a paradigm for decentralized governance.
Cardano (ADA) displays lackluster performance in October
Cardano’s native token has traded downwards in the past seven days, upsetting expectations of upward traction around Vasil hype. The 1-month ADA/USD trading chart shows a steady decline since Sept 10, from $0.52 to $0.42 at the time of writing. The pair registered a brief minor spike on Sept 23 when Vasil went live before retreating almost immediately on the back of heavy macroeconomic pressure.
The ADA/USD 1-month trading chart
Throughout the last week of September, the ADA token stagnated between $0.43 and $0.44, but the new week has posted brief dips to $0.41. Losing support around this level which has not been revisited since July 13, could be ugly for bulls as it would ultimately exert even more downward pressure on the market. The potential outcome in this scenario would be a retest of long-term support zones below $0.40, opening doors for potential buyers looking to stack up.
Popular crypto trader Michaël van de Poppe recently observed that Cardano (ADA) is in an accumulation phase adding that buyers should watch out for a slip under this mark. There are neither clear nor convincing signs of an uptrend in the near term at present, which explains the recent withdrawal of traders to the sidelines.
“The ultimate area to buy from is the region at $0.30-$0.375. However, will we see it front-ran and people are already stacking? In that case, [the] break of downtrend is your long trigger,” Poppe theorized.
To learn more, visit our Investing in Cardano guide.
