Cardano is following in the footsteps of other blockchains that launched their hard forks to meet the needs of their communities. Its community wishes that the upgrade will inject more life into the cryptocurrency. But will Chang Hard Fork initiate a price rally for ADA? First, examine ADA’s current price performance after the previous crypto market’s bullish outlook.
As ADA moves towards Chang Hard Fork, the asset has remained bearish in the market. Cryptocurrency has been depressed for much of the year. For example, ADA’s trading volume has dropped to $5.29 billion, the second-lowest level this year. This follows its lowest trading volume, which was recorded on 12 August.
Many traders anticipate the ADA price falling further, as they have opened shorts after its price fell below a major resistance level. At the time of writing, ADA is trading at $0.3521 ADA/USDT on Gate.io. Its value dropped by 4.6% within the last 24 hours and 17% within the last 30 days. The following graph shows how the ADA price has fallen within the last 24 hours.
ADA Price Performance – CoinGecko
As the above graph indicates, ADA’s price fell sharply from $0.366 on 27 August to $0.34 on the 28th. Since then, it has been moving sideways within a narrow channel. Studying its monthly chart can provide additional information on how the cryptocurrency is performing.
ADA Monthly Price Chart – CoinGecko
As seen on the graph ADA spent much of the previous month in a downtrend. And the price trend still shows that the cryptocurrency has a strong bearish outlook. Despite its sluggish price performance the Binance Exchange has confirmed its readiness to go on with the Chang hard fork. As a result, other crypto exchanges should prepare for the change.
ADA Whale Activity Hints on a Rally
Despite the ADA’s bearish market outlook its whale activity shows a possibility of a rally. According to Santiment, ADA had a surge of large-scale transactions on 27 August. Specifically ADA had 89 transactions valued at least $100,000 each.
Cardano Whale Activity – Santiment
As the graph depicts, that was a surge of large-scale transactions, which shows that the whales may be accumulating the coin. Incidentally, the whale buying occurred when the ADA price had just fallen. Within the same period, there was a 16.91% increase in its daily active addresses (DAA). Sadly, the ADA trading volume declines despite the approaching Change Hard Fork. Data on Messari Research shows that ADA’s transaction volume has gradually decreased since March. This indicates that ADA has not been performing well during this year.
According to the Messari report, covering the second quarter, ADA price fell by 39.7% while its market capitalization dropped by 39.4%. One of the contributing factors to these changes was a slight increase in ADA’s circulating supply. The network’s revenue decreased by 44.3% QoQ to around $0.74 million. On the other hand, the average daily transactions fell by 27.5%.
Also, there was a drop in the level of Decentralized application (DApp) activity on the network which explains why there were some other negative changes in the other metrics. For example, the average daily DApp transactions fell by 35.7%. The Total value locked (TVL) also decreased by 41.2%. Now, hope for a strong revival of some activity on the network depends on the hard fork, which will be introduced soon.
Positive Developments of Cardano Network
There are several other areas where the Cardano network witnessed some improvements. During that period the ratio of transactions to active addresses rose by 8.4% which indicates that the power users had been actively engaging with the platform. Also, both the ADA staking rate and staked amount increase remarkably.
Chang Hard Fork
Now, let’s briefly discuss the Chang Hard Fork. The hard fork is the first stage in Cardano’s journey towards the Voltaire era, leading to the full decentralization of the network. In other words, it will enhance the network’s community governance. With it, the ADA holders will have a say in the developmental agendas of the blockchain. However, the hard fork will bring other benefits to the blockchain. For example, it will improve the network’s efficiency, resilience, speed, and security. Such improvements are expected to increase the adoption of the cryptocurrency. That may also contribute to its price performance.
The hard fork will also enhance the blockchain’s scalability since the network infrastructure will be upgraded. Regarding speed, the blockchain aims to reach 1,000 transactions per second (TPS). Currently, the blockchain processes around 250 transactions per second, far lower than its competitors. One objective of such improvement is to lure more decentralized applications to the blockchain. Sadly, the Chang Hard Fork expectation does not seem to affect ADA’s price performance, which is currently exchanging hands at $0.3521 ADA/USDT at Gate.io.