Cardano’s native token ADA is currently valued at about $1.37 as the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. At present, the highly anticipated upgrade of smart contracts is approaching faster for the third generation blockchain project. However, after the successful deployment of the Alonzo Blue phase, the developers are waiting for confirmation from all pioneer stakeholders to submit their confirmation for moving on to the Alonzo White phase.
When Alonzo’s hard fork is successfully implemented, it will mark the completion of the Goguen era for the development of Cardano. It would also signify the complete addition of smart contracts capabilities to the blockchain project. As the days are going by, the milestone for fully smart contracts functional blockchain is getting closer. According to recent statistics, the number of staked altcoins on the project has reached $31 billion.
For a blockchain project, staking means that investors chose to deposit their altcoins into a protocol for validating transactions. This validation process is incentivized by generating rewards for investors. The downside for staking tokens is that they become frozen assets and cannot be used when they are locked in. However, for Cardano, the investors can unlock their digital coins at any given time and utilize them at their discretion.
As soon as the digital wallet addresses crossed the 600,000 landmarks, the staking addresses started to show a visible rise. Since June, the number of addresses has increased and added 67,456 more points. As per the data from PoolTool, a Cardano metrics aggregator, the added number of addresses indicates an 11% rise since June. These addresses are divided into 2665 active pools.
Cardano Staked Addresses have Surpassed Ethereum
Cardano has called itself time and again an Ethereum killer. However, in some respects, it has also been able to able to surpass the silver cryptocurrency. Etherscan, a metrics aggregator for Ethereum 2.0 blockchain, uncovers that validator candidates have staked around 6 million altcoins on the ecosystem. This number translates into $13.74 billion at press time.
Such a vast difference gap could soon be bridged when the Ethereum blockchain would deploy the London hard fork. It is an upgrade that would pave the way for Ethereum to switch from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS). Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, claims that it would also allow the blockchain to process 100,000 transactions per second. On the other hand, Cardano developers are working on a converter that will enable investors to exchange ERC-20 compliant tokens with Cardano-based asset class.
