Cardano (ADA) price explosion? 5x more projects, 4x more funding ahead of Vasil

• The number of projects building on the Cardano platform has increased by fivefold since December 2021.
• Cardano is more energy efficient than Bitcoin and Ethereum at its current state.

Since December 2021 the number of projects building on the Cardano platform has increased by more than five-fold. A recent IOG data states that 1,093 projects are being built on Cardano. Also, there are 3,196 Plutus scripts while 94 projects have been launched on Cardano. As of this writing, the Cardano network has overseen the minting of more than six million ADA tokens across 61,314 minting policies.

Per multiple reports, 178 projects were built on Cardano as of December 2021, with 13 projects launched at that time. But by January 2022, the number of projects increased to 199. Cardano founder, Charles Hoskinson, jokingly asked which project wants to be project number 200. The latest data shows that this number has grown and there are now over 1,000 projects building on the Cardano platform.

The Alonzo upgrade which contained smart contract functionalities created several new opportunities for the development of Cardano’s decentralized exchanges (DEXs), decentralized applications (DApps), and decentralized finance (DeFi) solutions. The Alonzo upgrade resulted in a multi-functional environment that allowed the creation of smart contracts with Plutus scripts. This upgrade also builds on previous upgrades (Shelly, Mary, and Allegra). The Mary upgrade introduced the Goguen native token upgrade, making Cardano a multi-asset ledger similar to Ethereum.

Cardano runs 3,204 staking pools

The latest data by Cardano explorer shows that Cardano runs 3,204 pools (about 4,604 unique relays). Thus, its estimated annual usage is 3.156 GWH or 0.0031 TWH. By comparison, the Bitcoin yearly consumption estimate is 285,592 GWH or 285.592 TWH. Thus, indicating that Cardano’s energy efficiency is 90,492 times higher than Bitcoin.

Unfortunately, the increase in the number of projects building on Cardano hasn’t been reflected in its native token (ADA)’s price this year. ADA, like other digital assets, continues to suffer from bearish market conditions. Coinmarketcap data shows that ADA currently trades at $0.5026 and is down 1.82 percent in the last 24 hours.

Cardano had $0.4 million inflows last week

Cardano and Polygon topped altcoins with the largest inflows last week. While total altcoins inflows were $1 million, Cardano and polygon each had $0.4 million. For the 5th successive week, there were outflows in digital asset investment products totaling $63 million. The total outflows for the past five weeks are now $99 million.

However, volumes remain at 46 percent of this year’s average at $1 billion for the week. Friday was the largest day of outflows despite the uptick in prices. Broadly, the focus of the outflows was on the US and Canada, with outflows totaling $10 million and $60 million, respectively. Conversely, Europe had inflows totaling $7 million.

Ethereum was the primary focus of outflows, with a total of $62 million this past week. The huge outflow is surprising given the improved certainty surrounding the Merge date. The network has scheduled the Merge for September 15. The outflows might indicate that investors aren’t sure the Merge will take place as announced.