For Cardano’s ADA, ninety cents isn’t just a number; it’s a warzone. This specific price has consistently been a psychological line in the sand where bulls and bears clash, defining the direction of the market’s biggest moves.
If you dig into ADA’s price chart from the beginning, you’ll see that the struggle around this level tells a story about market confidence and what’s likely coming next.
You can tell how important this level is by looking at the trading volume and open interest in futures—both have spiked. It feels like the market is coiling for a big move, and both sides are placing their bets.
The history of ADA’s dance with $0.90 has burned its importance into the market’s memory for a few reasons –
- Memory of past cycles – Traders who’ve been around remember the drama at this level. That memory becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as people place buy and sell orders expecting something to happen right there.
- Key pivot point – Time and again, what ADA does at $0.90 has predicted the market’s next big swing. Breaking through has meant good times ahead; getting rejected has meant more downside.
- Round number psychology – It’s not a dollar, but it’s close. Holding strong above $0.90 feels like the final step before making a serious run at the big $1.00 milestone.
So, ninety cents is much more than a random price for Cardano. It’s a battle-scarred landmark that measures investor guts and points to where the price is headed. As this cycle continues, the fight for control of the $0.90 level will be a key chapter in ADA’s story.
On-chain metrics – A year of fluctuating growth, a resilient DeFi ecosystem
A look at Cardano’s on-chain vital signs over the last year revealed a mixed bag – Daily users and transactions ebbed and flowed, but the money locked in its DeFi world proved surprisingly tough. Even when the market cooled off, network upgrades and new projects kept building a stronger foundation for the future.
Daily active users – A shifting landscape of engagement
The number of people using Cardano each day has bounced around, mirroring what’s happening in the wider market. After hitting a high of over 50,800 active addresses daily in January 2025, things quieted down. By the middle of the year, however, activity was picking back up, climbing towards 30,900 daily users.
What’s really interesting is the jump in dApp usage, which hit a peak in April 2025 with an average of over 150,000 people interacting with apps on the network each day. This signals that more people are actually doing things on Cardano, not just holding the coin.
Transaction volume – A tale of two metrics
The story of Cardano’s transaction volume is complicated, but encouraging. By mid-2025, the network was humming along, handling about 2.6 million transactions a day. This is a big leap, showing more people are using the chain, and they’re doing it cheaply—the average fee has stayed under a quarter.
It’s important to separate these on-chain transactions, which show actual use, from the trading volume on exchanges, which is all about speculation and market mood.
Total Value Locked (TVL) – A resilient and growing DeFi ecosystem
Cardano’s DeFi scene has shown real grit. After the market took a dive early in 2025, it bounced back fast.
In June, the total value locked (TVL) shot up to $431 million after an integration with Base. By mid-August, the DeFi TVL stood at a healthy $349 million, with protocols like Liqwid Finance leading the charge. This kind of growth shows that real money and confidence are flowing into Cardano’s financial apps.
Evolution of Cardano’s on-chain metrics
The previous year was a time for Cardano to mature. While daily user counts and transactions went on a rollercoaster ride, the overall picture is one of a growing ecosystem. The surge in dApp usage and the strong comeback of its DeFi TVL are especially good signs for the future.
Big software updates and new integrations were key to keeping the network busy. The fact that there were over 1,300 projects actively building on Cardano in mid-2025 speaks volumes about its expanding utility.
As the blockchain continues to get better at handling more users and connecting with other chains, these on-chain numbers will tell us if it’s succeeding. The toughness it has shown over the past year suggests it’s built on solid ground.
Network upgrades shake up blockchain landscape
When Cardano and Ethereum rolled out major upgrades, they took wildly different routes to solve their problems. Cardano’s Vasil hard fork gave users an immediate boost in speed and a drop in costs, while Ethereum’s famous Merge was more about playing the long game, setting up future fee reductions that arrived much later with the Dencun upgrade.
Efficiency and cost reduction
The Cardano Vasil hard fork, which went live in September 2022, was all about making the network faster and cheaper. It introduced clever changes like diffusion pipelining to speed up blocks and Plutus v2 scripts to make smart contracts run leaner. The result was an instant and noticeable improvement: more data could fit into each block, which shrank the size and cost of transactions.
Ethereum’s Merge, also in September 2022, had a different main goal – To switch from the energy-guzzling Proof-of-Work to the much greener Proof-of-Stake. It was a massive win for the environment, cutting energy use by a stunning 99.95%. However, the Merge itself didn’t do anything to fix the network’s infamous traffic jams or high gas fees.
The real relief for Ethereum users came later, in March 2024, with the Dencun upgrade. This update brought in something called proto-danksharding, which gave Layer 2 networks a much cheaper way to store data on the main chain, causing their transaction fees to plummet.
Assessing developer activity
How these upgrades affected developers is a more complicated story. After its Vasil hard fork, Cardano saw a real spike in core development. Reports in 2024 and 2025 showed that at times, Cardano’s developers were more active on GitHub than Ethereum’s – A key sign of programmer engagement.
Ethereum, however, is still the 800-pound gorilla in the room, with a huge and well-established community of developers. While its core development activity might fluctuate, the sheer number of people and projects building on Ethereum is enormous, with over 1,500 developers working on projects in a single week in June 2025.
Cardano and Ethereum have shown there’s more than one way to build a better blockchain. Cardano’s Vasil upgrade delivered instant gratification with better performance and lower costs. Ethereum’s path has been more step-by-step – The Merge built a sustainable foundation, and the later Dencun upgrade finally tackled the fee problem for its ever-growing collection of Layer 2s.
Both strategies are working in their own ways, creating stronger and more usable networks. The constant race to innovate between these giants is ultimately a win for the people who use and build on them.
Cardano’s dApp ecosystem – A flourishing landscape with fierce competition
Cardano’s world of decentralized apps is buzzing with activity through 2024 and into 2025. More money, users, and projects are pouring in. While it’s still playing catch-up to the giant that is Ethereum, Cardano is building a reputation for being carefully built and secure, even as it fights for attention against super-fast rivals like Solana.
By mid-2025, over 1,300 projects were actively building on Cardano, showing that developers are taking it seriously. This growth is visible on-chain, with over 17,400 Plutus smart contracts now live. The network now holds over 4.8 million wallets and is handling more than 2.6 million transactions daily, much of it driven by app interactions.
The money flowing into Cardano’s DeFi space has also climbed, hitting around $680 million by mid-2025 – Up 42% from the year before.
A handful of standout projects are leading the charge on Cardano –
- Minswap – This is the top dog among Cardano’s 42 decentralized exchanges, holding $230 million in locked value as of mid-2025.
- Liqwid Finance – A key lending and borrowing platform that forms another pillar of Cardano’s DeFi.
- JPG Store – The undisputed king of Cardano NFTs, handling most of the trading volume.
- Indigo Protocol – This platform for synthetic assets has seen its value and volume grow impressively.
Beyond finance, the NFT scene is thriving, with over 8.3 million NFTs minted and 3.1 million unique owners, proving the community is broad and engaged.
Road ahead for Cardano
Cardano’s slow-and-steady, research-first philosophy has created a solid, secure blockchain that appeals to people who value stability over hype. Its lower fees make it a decent alternative to Ethereum.
The challenge, however, is that it moves at a snail’s pace compared to its rivals. To stay in the game, Cardano needs to keep attracting developers and cool projects while making its apps easier to use. The Voltaire era, which hands governance over to the community, could be a game-changer, potentially speeding up growth by letting the users call the shots.
Cardano’s market sentiment – A mixed, but evolving landscape
Trying to get a read on how people feel about Cardano (ADA) is a complicated task. On social media, you’ll find a die-hard community, while news reports are more cautiously hopeful. However, the real story might be with the big money, where institutional interest is clearly growing – A sign of a bullish long-term view.
In fact, recent data revealed a serious uptick in institutional interest. In 2025 alone, institutions have poured significant cash into Cardano, with ReserveOne data showing inflows of around $73 million, pushing total institutional holdings past the $900 million-mark.
“Whales” or large-scale investors have been spotted buying up huge amounts of ADA, a strong vote of confidence in the asset’s future. Analysts see this buying as a bullish sign, indicating a focus on long-term value.
The fact that major asset managers like Grayscale are involved adds even more weight to this trend. The potential approval of a Spot Cardano ETF is the next big domino to fall, which could open the floodgates to billions in new investment.
A wave of big-money interest is gathering around Cardano (ADA), setting the stage for what could be a game-changing fourth quarter. A mix of heavy buying by “whales,” strong odds of a U.S. spot ETF getting the green light, and critical network upgrades are all pointing towards a potential flood of institutional cash.
Technological advancements as institutional magnets
This institutional interest isn’t just about speculation; it’s also being driven by major tech improvements. The highly-awaited launch of the Hydra scaling solution on the main network is set to massively boost Cardano’s transaction speed, potentially up to 1 million transactions per second. This upgrade will tackle scalability concerns head-on, likely cutting down on network traffic and fees.
Another key project is the Midnight sidechain, a new blockchain focused on privacy that uses zero-knowledge proofs. Midnight is designed to meet the growing demand for data protection in the crypto world.
The ongoing Voltaire era, which is building out a fully decentralized governance system, also makes Cardano more attractive to institutional investors. The community recently voted to approve a $71 million treasury allocation for protocol upgrades, proving that this governance model is already working.
A look at Cardano’s staking ecosystem
Finally, an assessment of the same tells us a very clear story – Holders have deep confidence in the project’s future, and the network is incredibly secure and decentralized. As of mid-2025, a massive 67.3% of all Cardano in circulation was staked, totaling over 24 billion ADA. This participation appeared to be spread out across more than 3,200 active stake pools, proving that a huge and engaged community is actively running the network.
This high level of staked capital is more than just a number; it’s a massive vote of confidence. By locking up their ADA, holders are not just earning rewards, they’re putting their money where their mouth is.
They are betting on Cardano’s long-term success and making the network more stable in the process.
One of the best ways to judge a blockchain’s security is to see how decentralized it is. With thousands of active stake pools, no single group has too much power to validate transactions. In fact, a recent analysis showed that the 10 biggest pools control less than 11% of all staked ADA.
Cardano’s commitment to decentralization can also be measured by its high Nakamoto Coefficient. It tells you the minimum number of independent parties it would take to compromise the network. For Cardano, that number is over 20 – Significantly higher than many other top blockchains.
Cardano made its staking system simple and open to everyone. Unlike many other networks, you don’t have to lock up your ADA for any set amount of time. Your staked coins are always liquid, meaning you can move or spend them whenever you want. Plus, there’s no minimum amount required to start, so even someone with a small amount of ADA can help secure the network and earn rewards.
This incredible security gives holders even more confidence, which encourages them to keep their assets staked. This cycle of participation and security is one of the fundamental strengths that underpins the entire Cardano network.