Cardano's performance in the first quarter of 2023 was quite remarkable with increases both financially and in its ecosystem. On April 18th, Messari's Protocol Research Analyst Red Sheehan released the “State of the Cardano Q1 2023” report.
Launched in 2017, Cardano is a PoS layer-1 smart contract network focusing primarily on security, scalability, and sustainability for decentralized applications and systems. Network overview from the report notes a decrease in new addresses (71.5% QoQ) and average daily transactions (10.6% QoQ) but average transaction fee rose by $0.01, from $0.11 to $0.12, still lower than $0.17 in Q3 2022.
Financial overview part of the report shows that ADA's price increased by 54% in this period, bringing Cardano up to the 7th largest cryptocurrency by market cap. As a result of the price increase, treasury balance rose to 1.21 billion ADA in Q1 which is a 100 million ADA increase compared to previous quarters. Value in ADA terms increased 9.1% quarter-on-quarter, while USD value increased by 66% from $278 million to $460 million.
Ecosystem overview from the report says USD denominated total value locked (TVL) in Cardano’s network revived 172% QoQ, from $50.8 million to $138.3 million. This growth was largely due to the increasing adoption of new stablecoins, which forms cornerstone for DeFi. Although Minswap remains leading DEX on Cardano, its dominance decreased for the second consecutive quarter in this period with other popular DEXs such as SundaeSwap, WingRiders, and MuesliSwap taking a chunk of the market.
The shift in dominance can be attributed to the adoption of IUSD and DJED stablecoins which led to 261% quarter-on-quarter increase in total stablecoin value. Hydra Head, Layer-2 state channel scaling solution introduced to the mainnet in March and other projects such as Milkomeda C1, IOG’s EVM proof-of-concept sidechain, Wanchain, and Midnight are also responsible for this growth.
In conclusion, Cardano's performance in the first quarter of 2023 sets the token up for a great year, with impressive increases in both financial and ecosystem metrics. Continued adoption of new technologies and increasing TVL suggest that way ahead for Cardano has great potential, making the project one of the most promising cryptocurrencies in the market.
Naomi Gonzales
- 2023-04-18
Cardano's Promising Q1 of 2023
Cardano made impressive advances in the first quarter of 2023 both financially and in its ecosystem. Messari's Protocol Research Analyst Red Sheehan released the “State of the Cardano Q1 2023” report which showcases continued adoption of new technologies, increasing TVL and great potentials for the project making Cardano one of the most promising cryptocurrencies in the market.
