Cardano (ADA) za 24 hodin kleslo o 4,03 % na 0,20 USD poté, co prorazilo spodní hranici rostoucího kanálu; technický cenový cíl při potvrzeném propadu činí 0,17 USD.
Cardano (ADA), a major layer-1 blockchain platform known for its focus on peer-reviewed research and academic rigor, is facing renewed selling pressure as the price breaks below a key technical support level. Over recent weeks, ADA traded within a rising parallel channel that analysts view as a bullish indicator, but the pattern now faces a critical test after a downside move.
Rising parallel channel signals challengedCrypto analyst Ali noted that since the end of June, Cardano has been moving inside a rising parallel channel, with price fluctuations occurring between well-defined upward-sloping boundaries.
A rising parallel channel, also called an ascending channel, is a formation where an asset’s price travels higher between two upward trendlines. Typically seen as a bullish pattern, it reflects a controlled uptrend — but, if the lower boundary fails to hold, a break below can trigger further declines.
During this period, ADA rallied from a low of $0.138 to reach $0.282, reflecting gradually strengthening momentum despite intermittent pullbacks.
Mini dictionary: Rising parallel channel, a technical pattern where prices move upward between two parallel, ascending lines. It signals a trend with higher highs and higher lows and is generally bullish unless support fails and triggers a reversal.
Ali stated that “Cardano has broken below the lower boundary of its rising channel, which puts the possibility of a deeper correction on the table.”
With price action now outside its channel, ADA is testing a key resistance zone at $0.220. If this area continues to cap recovery attempts, analysts see potential for Cardano to drop nearly 20% from current levels, eyeing a support target at $0.166.
Whale activity and technical warning signsAli also highlighted that the behavior of Cardano’s largest holders offers few clues for imminent reversal or further breakdown. Wallets holding between 100 million and 1 billion ADA have not meaningfully changed their positions over the past 10 days, signaling an absence of a decisive stance from whale investors.
Meanwhile, a technical indicator known as the SuperTrend has flipped bearish. Historically, the last time this occurred on May 22, ADA saw a correction of 46%. While past performance does not always repeat, analysts caution that similar conditions should be monitored closely.
The ADA SuperTrend signal “flipped bearish,” which last preceded a sharp correction, making the current setup worth close attention.
Given the recent structure, a daily close below the former channel’s lower boundary at $0.21 would confirm a breakdown. In this case, technical targets suggest further downside to $0.17.
Key LevelStatusPotential Move$0.220ResistanceBelow keeps downward pressure$0.21Channel boundaryDaily close below signals breakdown$0.17Support targetNext key level if breakdown occursMarket performance and upcoming upgradesAt the time of publication, ADA had declined 4.03% over the past 24 hours to $0.20. Weekly losses have widened to 6.05%, marking a third consecutive day of selling pressure since October 21, in line with the broader market downturn.
Despite short-term price weakness, Cardano’s technology development continues to progress. A public Dijkstra testnet has recently been launched, serving as an important milestone in testing the network ahead of its next major upgrade.
Mini dictionary: Dijkstra testnet, a public testing environment designed to validate upcoming protocol upgrades for Cardano. Testnets like Dijkstra allow developers and users to experiment with new features before deploying on the main network, enhancing stability and innovation.
Cardano showed a modest recovery on Friday, with ADA rising almost 2% to trade near $0.2156 after suffering a 6% decline in the prior session. Despite this limited rebound, ADA remains below its key moving averages and the previous rising support trendline, highlighting persistent technical pressures on the cryptocurrency.
Large investors show mixed positioningData from on-chain analytics platform Santiment revealed that wallets holding between 10 million and 100 million ADA controlled 37.93% of the circulating supply on Friday, a decrease from 38.27% reported on October 10. This reduction suggests that some sizable investors trimmed their ADA holdings in recent days, although reclassification of wallet categories could have contributed to these shifts.
Meanwhile, the largest investors—wallets with more than 100 million ADA—took the opposite approach. Their share of the ADA supply increased from 15.92% to 16.04% over the same period, indicating selective accumulation among top holders even as other whales reduced exposure.
The divergence in holdings reveals an uneven approach among large investors, rather than blanket selling across the board.
Holder GroupOctober 10October 1810M – 100M ADA38.27%37.93%>100M ADA15.92%16.04%Santiment is a blockchain analytics provider that tracks on-chain metrics, including investor behavior, whale activity, and token distribution.
Mini dictionary: Santiment is an on-chain data analytics platform that monitors cryptocurrency wallet distributions, investor activity, and other blockchain metrics to help investors assess market sentiment and asset flows.
The share of ADA supply in profit also slid notably, dropping from 30.78% to 17.8%. This shift means significantly fewer Cardano tokens now trade above their acquisition cost, reflecting both price declines and potential unrealized losses.
Mixed whale activity and falling supply in profit show that Cardano’s rebound is accompanied by pressure from large holders and weak sentiment among investors.
Derivatives market reflects reduced risk appetiteDerivatives data from CoinGlass indicated that open interest in ADA futures declined 3.3% to $467.97 million over the past 24 hours. Falling open interest alongside the recent price drop is typically linked to traders closing positions and reducing leverage exposure.
Because open interest is denominated in dollars, declines can also result from lower ADA prices. Liquidations over the same period totaled about $1.08 million, with $1.02 million coming from long positions—a sign that bullish traders bore the brunt of forced closures as prices fell.
Despite these liquidations, the funding rate in ADA perpetual futures remains positive at 0.0038%, highlighting that traders are still paying a premium to maintain long positions. This suggests ongoing bullish positioning, although signals appear divided across investor categories.
Technical levels cap Cardano’s recoveryOn the technical front, ADA continues to trade below significant resistance zones. The daily chart shows Cardano below the 50-day Exponential Moving Average at $0.2274 and the recently broken rising trendline near $0.2282. The 200-day EMA at $0.2322 presents an additional resistance barrier further overhead.
The Relative Strength Index, currently near 41, reflects subdued momentum, as values below 50 typically indicate weakness. The MACD has drifted further into negative territory, supporting a cautious short-term outlook for ADA.
On the downside, immediate support centers on the $0.20 mark, a key psychological and technical level. If sellers push ADA below this threshold, the price could test the August 30 low around $0.1894.
Unless ADA regains and closes above the $0.2322 region, the current move is likely a brief bounce within a broader corrective phase rather than a sustained reversal.
For any lasting recovery, analysts point to the need for ADA to reclaim the $0.2274–$0.2282 resistance zone, followed by a daily close above the 200-day EMA. Until then, Cardano is viewed as remaining in a corrective trend despite Friday’s modest advance.
Toto Finance žádá z pokladny Cardana 22 milionů ADA na tokenizovanou měděnou rezervu; při nezměněné ceně ADA by cena mědi musela vzrůst o 49,4 %, aby se investice vrátila.
Cardano holders are being asked to bet $5 million on copper hitting a new record. (Shutterstock)Summary
Toto Finance is seeking 22 million ADA, or about $5 million, from Cardano’s treasury to buy and tokenize copper, with voting set to close Nov. 15.Copper would need to rise about 49.4% for the treasury to recover its investment if the full budget is spent and ADA’s dollar price remains unchanged.The proposal would use more than half of Cardano’s remaining withdrawal allowance, while Toto could receive up to 3.36 million ADA and retain commercial rights to its separately funded tokenized-copper business.Cardano’s community treasury is being asked to spend about $5 million on a copper reserve, with costs that would require the metal to rise nearly 50% to recover the original investment under the proposal’s assumptions.
Toto Finance, a company that turns physical commodities into blockchain tokens, wants 22 million ADA for what it calls the Cardano Strategic Copper Reserve. Voting closes Nov. 15.
Copper, also known as “Dr. Copper” for its role as a barometer of global growth, is widely tracked as a signal of industrial expansion, with rising prices often pointing to an economic boom.
About two-thirds of the money would buy exchange-grade copper stored in a COMEX-approved warehouse near New Orleans. A token called CuTT would represent each verified pound. The metal would be held for 18 to 24 months, then sold over the following year, with net proceeds and unused funds returned to the treasury by month 36.
There is no guarantee the treasury gets its original ADA back.
The other third covers storage, insurance, audits, oversight and Toto’s work. If the full budget is spent and ADA’s dollar price stays unchanged, copper would need to rise about 49.4% to recover the withdrawal.
The proposal assumes copper is bought at $6.73 a pound and sold at about $10.06. Lower spending would reduce that hurdle, while a stronger ADA would raise it.
“Copper has significant upside potential, with bullish scenarios projecting approximately 30% annual appreciation. At that rate, copper would appreciate 69% over 24 months, potentially more than covering the 49.4% break-even threshold. Of course, commodity prices can also decline,” Monty Metzger, Toto’s founder and chairman, told CoinDesk in an email.
“Toto takes no profit from this proposal,” Metzger added, attributing much of the additional spending to Cardano’s constitutional requirements for oversight and auditing.
The budget allocates 2.64 million ADA to Toto for technology and project management, plus a 441,732 ADA execution fee. Toto could also receive up to 278,291 ADA through a margin on third-party storage and insurance invoices, included within the operating budget. Together, those payments could reach about 3.36 million ADA, roughly 15% of the request.
What Toto getsToto would retain the platform’s commercial rights and income from its separately funded CuTT business. The treasury’s financial return would come from its copper sales and unused funds.
Metzger said the company wants to scale the product to “$5 billion in tokenized copper assets” and that “Cardano could become our flagship showcase.”
The tokens would first be minted on Ethereum and locked in a bridge, software that allows matching tokens to be issued on Cardano. The contracts and their security reviews remain future work. Metzger said trackers of tokenized real-world assets have “historically focused heavily on Ethereum-based assets.”
Toto would hold legal title to the copper. Metzger said “an independent collateral agent and first-priority security arrangements” would protect the treasury if Toto failed, but did not name the agent.
The request lands with Cardano’s spending room nearly used up.
A 500 million ADA withdrawal cap runs through about July 2027, and 457.4 million had been used as of Oct. 16 — meaning the copper proposal would consume just over half the remaining allowance. Under the existing rules, returning the proceeds would not replenish it.
In late May, the Cardano Foundation’s 7.8 million ADA request for its 2026 summit won 65.21% support, short of the two-thirds required, and the event was canceled. Toto is asking for nearly three times as much.
Read More: Cardano Summit 2026 canceled after community votes against Foundation funding proposal
Cardano’s public Dijkstra testnet has opened to stake pool operators ahead of node 11.2, which will support a planned test-network upgrade to protocol version 12 without Leios.
Summary
DijkstraNet currently runs node 11.1.3, with the protocol upgrade waiting for the next release. A separate MusashiNet prototype includes Leios, while formal node 11.3 development remains unfinished. Input Output estimates Leios activation will need voting keys covering roughly 90–95% of stake. Constitutional changes, BLS key management and ecosystem risk reviews remain part of upgrade preparations. Intersect said in its Oct. 22 Upgrade Bulletin #39 that DijkstraNet became publicly available after an Oct. 21 restart, inviting stake pool operators to begin joining before the next node release.
The organization described two parallel testing paths. DijkstraNet will use node 11.2 to test Dijkstra features without Leios, while MusashiNet gives downstream teams early access to a prototype containing the Leios-inclusive feature set.
The bulletin provided no mainnet activation date or required percentage of operators that must upgrade their node software.
Cardano DijkstraNet awaits its protocol version 12 upgrade Intersect said DijkstraNet currently runs protocol version 11, within the Conway era, using node 11.1.3. Once the node 11.2 pre-release becomes available, a hard-fork initiation action will be submitted to move the network to protocol version 12, known as Dijkstra.
For operators joining now, the bulletin directs participants to configuration files and a testnet faucet through Cardano book. Intersect listed one-day epochs and an available Kleioscan explorer among the network’s testing resources.
Node 11.2 remained in development when the bulletin was published, with a tagged version expected during the week. Intersect described its scope as:
“Includes the full Dijkstra hard fork feature set, apart from Leios”
The release is expected to clear LSM for mainnet use, with memory requirements estimated at approximately 12 GB when using LSM, according to the bulletin. Intersect said it was already working with operators to test LSM and gather feedback.
Cardano previously activated the van Rossem hard fork on July 18, moving mainnet to protocol version 11. The current bulletin concerns preparations on separate test networks, not another completed mainnet upgrade.
Leios testing proceeds separately on MusashiNet Intersect described the weekly RC 2026w42 pre-release as a Leios-based prototype containing the complete Dijkstra hard-fork feature set. Downstream tooling teams can use it on MusashiNet to explore integrations before the formal node 11.3 release.
For node 11.3 itself, the bulletin said substantial development work remained, and a tagged release was still at least two weeks away. Intersect presented the prototype as an early integration opportunity, without describing it as a finished release.
Input Output’s Oct. 20 rollout plan, previously reported by crypto.news, set initial Leios capacity targets at three to five times Cardano’s current transaction capacity, followed by later targets of 10–15 times.
The developer’s plan separates the hard fork from full Leios operation. Input Output said pools must register BLS voting keys after the fork, with roughly 90–95% of stake registered before Leios can begin operating.
Its proposed sequence then moves through mainnet load exercises and at least two protocol parameter updates, with capacity changes dependent on network results and governance approval. The throughput figures remain targets, not performance delivered by the public opening of DijkstraNet.
Earlier Intersect planning placed Linear Leios in Dijkstra’s first phase and Peras activation in a separate, later hard fork. The two-phase Dijkstra roadmap described its dates as estimates, with testing and governance able to affect the mainnet schedule.
BLS key management remains under discussion Intersect said developers were considering two ways to handle BLS key registration and rotation without requiring pool owners to participate in those operations.
The existing pool registration certificate mechanism requires signatures from the pool cold key and every pool owner, according to the bulletin. The proposed alternatives are a dedicated BLS key management certificate or permission to update BLS keys in pool parameters without owner signatures.
Intersect identified the second approach as the more likely option for Dijkstra, while noting that a more comprehensive solution could be deferred to the Euler era. The bulletin identified stake pool operators, wallet providers and tooling teams as affected participants.
On upgrade scope, Intersect confirmed that CIP-23 is fully included in Dijkstra. It said several operators had welcomed the development teams’ response to that long-standing request.
The organization reported that the Technical Steering Committee had reviewed an updated Leios impact assessment, which was expected to be merged into the Cardano Upgrades GitBook. Other assessments would follow after outstanding review comments were addressed.
Intersect asked downstream teams to compare the assessments with their own integrations and flag missing dependencies or impacts.
Governance and node diversity work continue Intersect said the Hard Fork Working Group had completed an initial walkthrough of the Dijkstra risk log. Each risk will receive an owner with editing access, and the log will gain a column for formal risk assessments.
Following discussions between the Parameter Committee and developers, an updated constitutional draft was expected during the week, according to the bulletin.
Intersect scheduled a constitutional update and guardrails meeting for Oct. 23 at 14:00 UTC, open to Constitutional Committee members, stake pool operators, and delegated representatives. The organization said the session would be recorded and shared afterward.
The bulletin listed a separate Node Diversity Workshop organized by the Amaru team for Nov. 12–13 at the London Marriott Hotel Canary Wharf. Its working agenda includes reviewing future hard-fork features through implementation costs and community needs to help inform how subsequent upgrades are scoped and prioritized.
Zakladatel Cardano Charles Hoskinson vyvíjí pro tuto síť nový programovací jazyk s podporou záměrů a dat nesoucích důkaz, které využívají důkazy Groth16.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson revealed on October 18, 2026, that he is personally developing a new programming language intended for the Cardano blockchain.
In a post on the social platform X, Hoskinson stated that the project is underway and that he is collaborating with another developer.
He characterized the language as the first of its kind, designed to support intents alongside proof-carrying data through the use of Groth16 proofs.
The collaborator identified by the handle @rvcas is Lucas Rosa, a software engineer associated with Input Output Global.
Rosa is recognized as a co-creator and maintainer of Aiken, an existing smart-contract language used on Cardano.
Public materials for Aiken list him among its authors, and his personal site notes a role connected to tooling for the Midnight project.
Cardano already offers developers two primary options for writing smart contracts:
Plutus, which draws from the Haskell functional programming tradition that underpins much of the network’s original design, and Aiken, a more recent alternative aimed at improving accessibility.
I'm actually personally developing a programming language for Cardano. It's the first of its kind, enabling intents and PCD via Groth16 proofs. @rvcas is building it with me
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) October 18, 2026
Hoskinson’s announcement positions the new language as an additional tool rather than a replacement whose precise relationship to these existing options has been clarified.
At a conceptual level, the features Hoskinson highlighted address common challenges in blockchain application design.
An intent allows a user or application to declare a desired outcome—such as completing a token exchange only if a certain price condition is met—while leaving the precise sequence of intermediate steps to be determined by the surrounding system or other parties.
Proof-carrying data refers to a technique in which computational results are accompanied by cryptographic evidence that every preceding step satisfied the required rules.
A verifier can then confirm the entire history by examining a single compact proof instead of re-executing the full computation.
Groth16, the specific zero-knowledge proof system referenced, is a well-established construction published in 2016.
It generates proofs that consist of only three group elements, keeping them small enough for efficient verification on-chain.
Because the proofs are zero-knowledge, they can demonstrate that certain conditions were met without exposing the private inputs that went into the calculation.
Combined, these elements could enable applications to coordinate complex multi-step interactions and transfer verified information between services while limiting the data that must be revealed publicly.
Hoskinson has not released a name for the language, published any code, shared technical specifications, or indicated a development or launch timeline.
The announcement itself appeared as a reply in a broader discussion about Cardano’s characteristics as a decentralized foundation for applications.
Separate recent comments from Hoskinson have referenced ongoing conceptual work related to Midnight, a privacy-oriented companion chain, though no direct technical linkage between that effort and the new language has been detailed.
The disclosure adds another layer to Cardano’s evolving developer tooling at a time when the network continues to introduce features such as enhanced programmable token standards. Whether the language ultimately streamlines the creation of applications that rely on verifiable outcomes and privacy-preserving checks will depend on the concrete design choices that have yet to be made public.
A longtime Cardano advocate has stepped down from his governance role, citing Sui’s technology and adoption as the reason. In a post on X, he said the Cardano Foundation and others “have not kept up.”
The move makes him the second well-known Cardano voice this year to shift toward Sui.
Why He Is Leaving His Cardano Governance Role #Cardano fam, this is a tough post to put out there but in the faith of transparency and integrity a must.
I have loved my time in the Cardano community and remain a believer but I have decided in my personal best interests to step away.
I still hold $ADA but it is no longer my…
— Chris O 🌎 Crypto Pundit (@TheOCcryptobro) October 22, 2026 He called the post “tough” but said it was necessary “in the faith of transparency and integrity.” He still holds ADA and describes himself as a believer. However, ADA is no longer his largest position.
“Things move fast and frankly @Cardano_CF and others have not kept up.”
He then compared the two networks directly. In his view, Sui’s technology and adoption are “a candid contrast” to Cardano. He added: “It’s not even close.”
As a result, he is stepping down as a DRep, a delegated representative who votes on governance proposals on behalf of ADA holders. He also asked his delegators to redelegate their voting power, since ADA delegated to him will no longer count in governance votes.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson replied to the post. “Thanks for your time here, and it was great to get to know you also,” he wrote.
A Second Cardano Voice Turns to SuiThe post follows a similar move by Dan Gambardello, a prominent Cardano analyst and YouTuber. In June, he moved part of his holdings from Cardano into Sui. Around the same time, he warned of a deep lack of support for the Cardano community.
Both shifts came during a difficult year for Cardano. In June, ADA fell below $0.20 for the first time since 2021. Meanwhile, ecosystem projects such as TapTools and Hosky wound down operations.
The price charts reflect the split. Over the past six months, SUI has edged higher while ADA has lost ground. Over 12 months, however, both tokens have fallen sharply.
Cardano (ADA) vs. Sui (SUI) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto (ADA, SUI)Pressure on the Cardano Foundation GrowsThe Sui comparison also lands at a sensitive moment for the Cardano Foundation. In June, the community voted down a 7.8 million ADA treasury proposal, which cancelled the Cardano Summit in Singapore. In addition, Foundation CTO Giorgio Zinetti left the organization at the end of August.
Still, a handful of high-profile departures does not prove a broader migration. For now, the shift toward Sui reflects frustration among some long-standing Cardano supporters rather than a measurable move of builders or capital. Hoskinson, for his part, has insisted that Cardano’s best days are ahead. Projects such as the planned Leios scaling upgrade may decide whether the network can win back its critics.
Indikátor SuperTrend pro Cardano přešel do medvědího režimu; denní uzavření pod úrovní podpory 0,21 USD by podle Aliho Martineze mohlo ADA poslat k 0,17 USD.
Cardano is flashing a bearish signal that could precede another significant price decline, according to Ali Martinez, a popular market commentator.
Taking to X, Martinez highlighted a bearish shift in an important Cardano indicator, warning of potential downside risks. However, large ADA holders have yet to demonstrate a clear selling bias, making the $0.21 support level a critical area to watch.
Cardano Whales Show No Clear Selling Bias
Martinez explained that changes in the holdings of ADA whales, from 100 million to 1 billion tokens, have historically coincided with significant price movements. However, these large investors have held stable positions since October 10.
During this period, their combined holdings fluctuated between 2.72 billion and 2.76 billion ADA. This limited movement suggests that major holders have yet to establish their next line of movement.
Consequently, Martinez is monitoring these wallets for signs of distribution, which could indicate that large investors are beginning to reduce their exposure to ADA. A sustained decline in their holdings could reinforce concerns about mounting selling pressure.
Cardano Whale Holdings
SuperTrend Indicator Flashes Bearish Warning
While Cardano whale activity remains stable, its SuperTrend indicator has turned bearish, raising concerns about ADA’s near-term outlook.
Martinez identified May 22 as the last time the indicator flashed a similar signal. At the time, ADA traded around $0.25 before plunging to around $0.135, marking a decline of about 46%. Rumors that Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson was leaving the ecosystem further intensified the downturn.
Although this previous correction highlights the potential severity of a bearish reversal, Martinez stressed that it does not guarantee that ADA will repeat the same price action.
Martinez SuperTrend Indicator
ADA Risks Falling to $0.17 if $0.21 Support Breaks
According to Martinez, $0.21 marks the lower boundary of Cardano’s rising price channel and represents a critical support level that could determine its next major move.
A daily close below this threshold would signal a breakdown of the channel, potentially exposing ADA to a decline toward $0.17. From $0.21, such a move would represent a drop of 19%.
Martinez ADA Daily Chart
Crypto Tony Also Warns of ADA Downside
Meanwhile, Martinez is not the only analyst expressing concerns about Cardano’s price outlook. Widely followed crypto analyst Crypto Tony recently warned that ADA could fall to $0.19 after failing to overcome resistance around $0.23.
His projection suggests that ADA could face further losses if sellers maintain control around this resistance zone. Consequently, the token’s ability to reclaim $0.23 could prove important in determining whether it can regain upward momentum or face another downturn.
Nevertheless, ADA has continued to trade above the crucial $0.21 support level while attempting to break through the $0.23 resistance zone.
At press time, ADA traded at $0.2243, representing a 3.79% gain over the previous 24 hours. Despite this short-term recovery, the token remained down 4.44% over the past week and 3.7% over the past month.
Na blockchainu Cardano získalo digitální identitu 100 000 indických zemědělských pozemků s ověřenými satelitními a údaji o pěstování, což má zemědělcům usnadnit přístup k úvěrům a pojištění.
One hundred thousand farm lands in India now have a digital identity on the Cardano blockchain. The Cardano Foundation flagged the milestone, which was reached as of October 21, 2026.
The goal is to make farm data easier to verify and easier to reuse. For smallholder farmers who have long been locked out of formal credit and insurance, that could matter far more than any token chart.
What actually got registered
The project assigns each farm parcel a tamper-resistant identity built on satellite-verified data and decentralized identifiers. Attached to each parcel are sustainability histories and crop data. The intended audience is lenders, insurers and traders, the people who decide whether a farmer gets a loan, a policy or a buyer.
The effort is a collaboration between the Syngenta Foundation India and the Agri-Entrepreneur Growth Foundation. A group of technical partners supports the work, including AIQUANT, Anastasia Labs and Andamio.
On-the-ground activity has centered on several districts in Maharashtra, including Achalpur and Anjangaon Surji.
From pilot to 100,000 in a few months
The growth curve is the most striking part of the story. Initial pilot registrations in April and May 2026 landed somewhere between approximately 7,965 and 10,500 farms.
By June 2026, the count had passed 15,000 farms. During parts of the expansion phase, daily registrations hit 500 farms.
The infrastructure is designed to scale to one million farmer registrations, which would put today’s figure at about a tenth of the target.
The expansion plan also envisions deeper integration with India’s agricultural ecosystem. That includes partnerships with the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
Why fragmented records keep farmers stuck
Smallholder farmers often lack formal documentation, and the records they do have are scattered across different sources. A verified, shareable record of a parcel’s history is meant to change that calculation for lenders and insurers.
A separate initiative is also worth knowing about. IndianChain launched on October 8, 2026, focusing on secure agricultural record-keeping and settlements in Telangana. IndianChain’s target and use case differ from the Maharashtra-focused registration project.
What this means
That said, the coverage of the project points to no direct market price implications. Registering farms is not the same as generating on-chain economic activity, and investors should keep those two things separate.
The real test is downstream. The value of a farm identity depends on whether lenders, insurers and traders actually use it to make decisions.
The involvement of the World Bank and IFC, if those partnerships deepen as envisioned, could be the signal to watch. Development finance institutions have the reach to turn a promising registry into infrastructure that banks rely on.
For now, the numbers to track are clear. Watch how quickly registrations climb toward the one million target, and whether credit and insurance products start appearing on top of the data.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
The Cardano Foundation is against bringing decentralized finance, staking and other blockchain activities under new European Union crypto regulations and argues that policymakers should rather focus on improving the existing Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation.
Summary
Cardano Foundation has urged EU policymakers to avoid introducing new regulations for DeFi and staking. The Foundation wants regulators to distinguish between direct blockchain participation and financial services operated by intermediaries that control customer assets. In its September 30 consultation response, the Foundation called for clearer rules covering hybrid tokens, stablecoins and NFTs while addressing overlaps with existing EU financial legislation. The Foundation warned that inconsistent regulatory interpretations across EU member states and complex compliance requirements could create difficulties for smaller crypto businesses. In its September 30 response to a European Commission consultation, the Foundation called for clearer rules governing digital assets and greater consistency in how existing legislation is applied across member states. It warned that creating separate regulatory frameworks for activities conducted through decentralized networks could introduce unnecessary compliance requirements without addressing risks already covered by existing laws.
European policymakers are currently reviewing MiCA’s implementation and considering whether activities currently outside its scope need additional oversight.
As previously reported by crypto.news, the European Commission opened its review in May to gather feedback from cryptocurrency businesses, financial institutions, regulators and other market participants.
Cardano Foundation wants DeFi and staking treated differently A central concern raised by the Foundation involves the distinction between decentralized blockchain infrastructure and financial services operated by identifiable companies or intermediaries.
The Foundation argued that regulatory requirements should be based on what a company or individual actually does, how much control they have over customer assets and the risks involved in those activities.
In the case of decentralized finance, the Foundation argued that simply providing blockchain infrastructure or software should not automatically qualify as offering a regulated financial service.
Public blockchains allow users to interact with applications, execute transactions and participate in network operations without necessarily relying on an intermediary. According to the Foundation, regulators should consider whether an identifiable person or entity actually controls the relevant assets or transactions before applying financial services requirements.
Staking was identified as one area where such distinctions would be particularly important.
On Cardano, ADA holders can delegate their stake to participate in the network’s consensus process without transferring custody of their tokens or locking them. The Foundation said participation of this kind supports the security and decentralization of proof-of-stake networks.
By comparison, staking services operated by intermediaries may involve custody arrangements or discretionary management of customer assets, creating different regulatory considerations.
The Foundation therefore recommended keeping direct participation in blockchain consensus mechanisms separate from commercial staking services when determining which regulatory obligations apply.
European lawmakers have taken a different position on whether additional oversight may be necessary. In July, the European Parliament called for a review of DeFi, staking, crypto lending and NFTs under MiCA, although its policy position did not introduce any immediate legal changes.
“Europe has the opportunity to become a global leader in tokenised capital markets, but this requires legal certainty and a technology-neutral regulatory framework. Financial instruments should continue to be regulated according to their economic characteristics, regardless of the technology used for their issuance, custody or transfer,” Coco Chen, Associate Director of Technology & Operations at the Association for Financial Markets in Europe told crypto.news in comments.
MiCA review raises questions over existing financial laws Another part of the consultation concerns how MiCA interacts with the EU’s existing financial services legislation, particularly the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II, commonly known as MiFID II.
Certain crypto assets fall under MiCA, while tokens classified as financial instruments are governed by existing securities and financial market rules.
However, determining the correct classification can become complicated when tokens combine several functions or their characteristics change over time.
The Foundation supported maintaining the current distinction between the two regulatory frameworks but requested clearer guidance for hybrid tokens and assets whose legal classification may be interpreted differently across EU member states.
Its response argued that classification should depend on an asset’s actual characteristics and legal rights, regardless of whether those rights are represented through blockchain technology.
Similar concerns were raised over stablecoins, particularly arrangements involving multiple issuers or operations across different jurisdictions.
The Foundation recommended clarifying how such structures should be treated under MiCA and addressing potential overlaps with European payment services legislation.
Meanwhile, the European Central Bank and other national central banks have proposed expanding restrictions on stablecoin remuneration to cover indirect returns generated through lending, borrowing and staking arrangements.
Environmental disclosure requirements were another area identified for improvement, with the Foundation calling for reporting rules that account for differences between blockchain architectures.
Cardano Foundation calls for existing NFT exemptions to remain NFTs were another focus of the consultation, particularly whether tokens belonging to large collections should continue to qualify for exemptions under MiCA.
The Foundation supported retaining the exclusion for genuinely unique and non-fungible assets, arguing that membership in a collection should not automatically determine whether a token is legally considered fungible.
Instead, classification should depend on the individual asset’s characteristics and whether it is genuinely interchangeable with other tokens.
Its response further argued that subsequent activities involving an NFT, including fractional ownership arrangements or integration into financial applications by independent third parties, should not automatically change the classification of the original asset.
The Foundation opposed creating a separate regulatory regime for NFT-related services, recommending that relevant activities be assessed under existing legislation.
A similar approach was proposed for prediction markets, perpetual futures and cryptocurrency lending, with the Foundation arguing that their economic and legal characteristics should determine which financial regulations apply.
EU regulatory differences remain a concern Despite MiCA establishing common rules across the European Union, the Foundation said differences in national interpretation and supervisory practices continue to create uncertainty for cryptocurrency businesses.
Among its recommendations were more consistent regulatory interpretations and clearer rules governing ownership, transfers and third-party rights involving tokenized assets across national borders.
The Foundation suggested harmonized conflict-of-laws provisions to determine which country’s laws apply to particular transactions, without requiring member states to adopt identical property laws.
Its submission addressed access for companies operating outside the EU, supporting legitimate reverse solicitation arrangements and consideration of comparable foreign regulatory frameworks.
Similar concerns over inconsistent supervision have appeared in the European Securities and Markets Authority’s 2027 supervisory priorities, which include coordinating national regulators, monitoring reverse solicitation and developing common reporting standards for crypto asset service providers.
The Foundation warned that complex compliance obligations could place smaller cryptocurrency businesses at a disadvantage compared with established companies that have more resources to meet regulatory requirements.
It said the ongoing review should address implementation problems while preserving regulatory safeguards, with the European Commission expected to consider the consultation responses before deciding whether legislative changes are necessary.
Ripple podpořila návrh regulace kryptoaktiv SEC, který vychází z Howeyho testu a nových výjimek pro získávání kapitálu. Chainlink spolu s Cardano, Hederou, Stellar, Aptos a Avalanche vyzvaly SEC ke kodifikaci rámce pro digitální komodity.
Ripple filed its comment letter on the SEC’s proposed Regulation Crypto Assets, supporting to finalize the proposed crypto rules. It rests on the Howey test, treating the investment contract, not the crypto asset itself as the security, and builds on a prior joint SEC-CFTC harmonization initiative.
Ripple CLO Stuart Alderoty said “We support the proposal, and the SEC has clear authority to adopt it.” He added that previous “case by case, coin by coin” enforcement has pushed crypto innovation offshore. He claimed the industry needs holistic rules for digital assets, and the Regulation Crypto Assets framework is a major move.
The proposal stays faithful to the Howey Test. Ripple CLO clarified the investment contract is a security, not a token. Stuart Alderoty cited that Ripple has spent more than $150 million to get clarity on XRP not a security.
“What matters is what an issuer actually promised and when those promises end, not a subjective decentralization test,” he added. Clear rules grounded in existing law will bring capital, investor protection and innovation to the U.S.
Also Read: XRP Finally Launches Official X Account and Website Managed by Ripple and XRPLF
Cardano, Chainlink, Hedera, Stellar & Others Join Ripple on SEC’s Regulation Crypto Assets
Chainlink partnered with Cardano, Hedera, Stellar, Aptos, and Avalanche in urging the SEC to codify its digital commodity framework. With Ripple seeking to exempt certain crypto assets from full SEC securities registration, the Blockchain Association also urged raising the startup exemption limit from $5 million to $10 million.
“Builders need lasting certainty. Codifying this progress would be a meaningful step toward keeping America the home of digital asset innovation,” said Chainlink head of policy Taylor Barr.
.@chainlink is proud to partner with @hedera, @Aptos, @AvaLabs, and @StellarOrg in urging the SEC to codify its digital commodity framework.
Builders need lasting certainty. Codifying this progress would be a meaningful step toward keeping America the home of digital asset… pic.twitter.com/rAjs9C6vdy
— Taylor Barr (@taylorjbarr) October 20, 2026
Although the official comment period for the SEC’s proposed Regulation Crypto Assets closed on October 20, the commission will continue accepting public feedback after the deadline, according to journalist Eleanor Terrett.
“While we encourage commenters to submit their feedback by the deadline, the Commission will continue to accept public comments on rule proposals after the comment period closes.”
The new crypto rules would create new fundraising exemptions for crypto issuers raising capital in the U.S., while the CLARITY Act developments remain uncertain ahead of midterm elections.
Also Read: Best Crypto Compliance Companies and KYC Providers for Web3 Enterprises
Input Output plánuje po hard forku Dijkstra prostřednictvím upgradu Leios nejprve zvýšit kapacitu Cardana na troj- až pětinásobek; aktivace vyžaduje registraci hlasovacích klíčů pro přibližně 90–95 % delegovaného staku.
Input Output has outlined a staged rollout for Cardano’s Leios upgrade, targeting an initial three to five times today’s transaction capacity before later governance votes could raise it to 10–15 times.
Summary
Leios targets 3–5x Cardano’s current capacity initially, with later gains toward 10–15x. Activation needs voting-key registration covering roughly 90–95% of delegated stake. Later capacity changes require mainnet load results and separate governance votes. Only 21 of 103 listed Cardano apps have enabled leaderboard transaction tracking. Input Output said in its Oct. 20 update that Leios will arrive with the Dijkstra hard fork, followed by stake pool registration, live network load exercises, and at least two protocol parameter updates.
The developer’s plan separates the network upgrade from the steps needed to activate Leios and permit more traffic. Pools must first register new voting keys, with the current estimate requiring roughly 90–95% of delegated stake before Leios can operate.
“The hard fork makes the protocol available,” Input Output wrote. The update gives no fixed Dijkstra activation date. Its proposed capacity gains remain subject to mainnet results and community approval.
Cardano Leios needs pool registration after Dijkstra Under Input Output’s rollout plan, stake pool operators will generate BLS voting keys after the hard fork and register them through updated pool certificates. Each registration becomes active at the next epoch boundary.
BLS signatures allow hundreds of pool votes to be combined into a compact certificate. Input Output says Leios needs votes representing at least 75% of all active stake to certify an endorser block, which carries references to transactions awaiting processing.
Registration must sit comfortably above that threshold to allow for pools that are offline or slow to respond. The developer estimates participation from roughly the top 500–900 pools, although the exact activation requirement depends on parameters still being finalized.
Pools without a registered BLS key can continue producing Praos blocks, according to the update, but cannot vote on Leios endorser blocks. Key registration requires no separate vote from delegated representatives or the Constitutional Committee.
The preparation follows Cardano’s July 18 van Rossem hard fork, which moved mainnet to Protocol Version 11, as crypto.news previously reported. Intersect confirmed that upgrade after testing and approval from the network’s governance bodies.
Capacity changes require separate governance approval Before Dijkstra, Input Output plans a constitutional update covering the new protocol parameters and the limits within which governance can change them. Its roadmap assigns preparation of those guardrails to the Intersect Parameters Committee, with the Plutus team updating the guardrails script.
The developer lists different approval thresholds for each stage. The constitutional amendment needs support from delegated representatives representing 75% of stake and two-thirds of the Constitutional Committee.
For the hard fork, the stated requirements are 60% of DRep stake, 51% of stake pool operator stake, and two-thirds of the committee. Later throughput changes require 67% of DRep stake, 51% of SPO stake, and two-thirds of committee members.
Once Leios is operating, Input Output plans controlled bursts of mainnet traffic to measure block delivery, voting speed, certificate reliability and the processing room left on nodes. Each proposed capacity step should include measurements from the preceding settings.
The initial target uses today’s Praos ceiling of roughly 4.5 kilobytes of transactions per second as its baseline. Multiplying that figure by the announced ranges gives approximately 13.5–22.5 TxkB/s initially and 45–67.5 TxkB/s at the later target.
These figures measure transaction data capacity, not a fixed number of transactions per second. The number of transactions that fit depends on their size.
Input Output says governance can change the Leios limits without another hard fork, provided the proposals remain within the approved constitutional guardrails.
Earlier testing reached roughly six times the Praos ceiling In an Aug. 20 engineering account, the Leios team recorded a MusashiNet peak of 26.8 TxkB/s against a Praos mainnet ceiling of 4.51 TxkB/s. The figures produce a ratio of approximately 5.94 times.
The team said the 41-day Earth phase involved more than 127,000 blocks and 63 registered pools. Traffic came from synthetic load generation and participating operators, so the results describe testnet performance rather than customer demand.
Its account documented implementation problems, including memory leaks, chain forks, stalled synchronization, and a network halt caused by handling an invalid certificate as a fatal error. The team said it corrected the faults.
For mainnet, Input Output’s Oct. 20 plan starts with conservative settings because the live network includes approximately 2,700 registered pools using different machines, connections and configurations.
Leios retains Praos ranking blocks and adds endorser blocks when pending traffic exceeds what a ranking block can carry, the developer explained. Transactions processed through endorser blocks are expected to reach the ledger in roughly 45–60 seconds.
Dijkstra preparation has proceeded through separate software releases. September’s node 11.1.1 release addressed operational issues ahead of later versions intended to introduce the new era’s features.
Intersect’s earlier two-phase Dijkstra roadmap placed Linear Leios in the first phase and Peras in a separate upgrade targeted for the second quarter of 2027. Its schedule described delivery dates as estimates subject to testing and governance.
App leaderboard covers projects with tracking enabled In a separate Oct. 20 X post, Cardano said 21 of the 103 apps listed on its website had enabled transaction tracking. Projects appear on the leaderboard once tracking is switched on, and participation is open to all projects building on Cardano.
The figures put tracking participation at approximately 20.4% of listed apps. Cardano’s statement describes which projects contribute to the leaderboard; it does not establish transaction totals for the remaining 82 apps.
On network economics, Input Output said more than 85% of epoch rewards currently come from Cardano’s Reserve. Its update cited a CIP-164 estimate that fee income would require sustained traffic of roughly 50–70 TxkB/s to reach break-even.
“Leios creates a route to that level of activity,” the developer wrote. “It does not create demand by itself.”
Dijkstra’s other planned features include nested transactions, account enhancements, guard scripts, Plutus V4, freely withdrawable staking rewards and a pledge-leverage parameter. According to Input Output, those changes arrive with the hard fork and do not depend on Leios reaching its later capacity targets.
Charles Hoskinson společně s Lucasem Rosou vyvíjí pro Cardano nový programovací jazyk, který kombinuje transakční záměry, data s kryptografickými důkazy a důkazy Groth16. Projekt zatím nemá název, veřejně dostupný kód ani termín spuštění.
Charles Hoskinson personally develops a new programming language for Cardano with Lucas Rosa, one of the creators of Aiken. The project aims to combine transaction intents, proof-carrying data, and Groth16 proofs. For this new crypto building block, no name, public code, or launch schedule has yet been announced.
In brief
Hoskinson works with Lucas Rosa on a new language for Cardano.
The project will combine transaction intents, proof-carrying data, and Groth16.
No name or release date has been announced yet.
Hoskinson personally takes the keyboard on Cardano
Charles Hoskinson does not just oversee the project. He states that he is directly involved in the development of the language. The announcement comes as Cardano is already accelerating its technical work. A few days earlier, Hoskinson explained that the Leios upgrade was to complete much of the network’s architecture, including higher throughput and new scaling capabilities.
This time, the work concerns more the crypto applications built on top of Cardano. Hoskinson works with Lucas Rosa, co-creator of Aiken, one of the main languages used to develop validators on the network. He describes their project as the first of its kind to bring together intents, proof-carrying data, and Groth16 proofs.
The language, however, still has no public name. No code repository has been presented either. Hoskinson has not indicated a testnet, release date, or first application using this technology. The project remains at an early stage.
Crypto transactions described by their result
The concept of “intent” changes the way to request an operation from a blockchain application. Today, a transaction may require several precise steps. With a system based on intents, the user mainly indicates the result they want to obtain.
A trader could, for example, request: exchange one token for another only if the final price respects a given limit. They would not necessarily have to define all the intermediate steps themselves.
Proof-carrying data adds another layer. Information can travel with a cryptographic proof certifying that a calculation or series of rules was indeed respected. The application receiving the result then verifies the proof instead of reproducing the entire calculation.
Groth16 is intended to serve this verification. This cryptographic proof system produces compact and fast-to-check proofs. Cardano is already strengthening its cryptographic toolbox. In May, the network had tested five new Plutus primitives, notably to improve performance and possibilities offered to developers.
The new language could go further by directly integrating several of these logics into the way applications are built. For now, Hoskinson has not explained how this technology will integrate with Cardano’s existing architecture.
Cardano already has multiple languages
The new project does not arrive on empty ground. Cardano has been using Plutus for several years, its historic environment for smart contracts. Aiken is a more recent alternative, with syntax and tools designed to simplify developers’ work.
Contracts written in several Cardano languages usually end up compiled to UPLC, the format executed by nodes during validation. Hoskinson has not yet indicated if his new language will follow exactly the same path.
He also has not explained whether he aims to replace Aiken or Plutus. Nothing in his announcement allows us to say so at this time. The ecosystem also has Compact, used on Midnight. This privacy-focused blockchain already occupies an important place in Hoskinson’s strategy, notably thanks to zero-knowledge proofs and applications handling private data.
The new language therefore shares some ideas with technologies already present in Cardano’s crypto ecosystem, while adding a strong orientation towards intents and proofs attached to data. Hoskinson promises a “first of its kind” approach. Now we wait to see the code.
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Lydie M.
Enseignante et ingénieure IT, Lydie découvre le Bitcoin en 2022 et plonge dans l’univers des cryptomonnaies. Elle vulgarise des sujets complexes, décrypte les enjeux du Web3 et défend une vision d’un futur numérique ouvert, inclusif et décentralisé.
DISCLAIMER
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do your own research before taking any investment decisions.
Project Catalyst společnosti Cardano vybral 12 ze 117 projektů pro pilotní fond v hodnotě 2 milionů ADA. Pouze 40 % grantů bude vyplaceno po zaškolení; zbytek závisí na adopci a aktivitě sítě.
Cardano’s Project Catalyst has selected 12 projects from 117 applications for its 2026 pilot funding program, which has a grant pool of 2 million ADA and ties most payments to actual network usage.
Summary
Cardano’s Project Catalyst has selected 12 projects from 117 applications, with funding focused on stablecoin payments, lending, tokenized assets, and identity solutions.
The pilot will release 40% of approved grants after onboarding, while the remaining payments will depend on adoption targets and sustained network activity.
A total of 52 community curators helped narrow the applications to 31 finalists, with 35 panelists contributing 466 accepted reviews.
Selected teams have up to three months to launch their integrations on Cardano mainnet, while three top performing projects may qualify for additional funding.
According to a September 24 announcement, the selections were the program’s first since October 2025 and followed a review process involving community curators and technical and business experts.
Project Catalyst’s latest pilot selected 12 projects from 117 applications, with almost 2M ADA in funding.
Linda (@Cryptofly777) breaks down what they’re building, from stablecoin payments and DeFi to tokenized assets and digital identities, plus the new funding model that ties…
— Cardano (@Cardano) October 19, 2026
The selected projects cover stablecoin payments, decentralized finance, tokenized assets, healthcare, and supply chain tracking. Each team must demonstrate measurable adoption of its proposed integration to qualify for the full grant.
Project Catalyst has funded more than 2,000 proposals since its launch. The latest pilot follows the Cardano Foundation’s takeover of the program earlier this year and introduces a funding model that rewards projects based on their use after deployment.
Cardano Catalyst grants will depend on network activity
Under the new funding structure, selected teams will receive 40% of their approved grant after completing onboarding. Another 40% is tied to adoption targets, while the remaining 20% depends on sustained activity after the initial adoption period.
The final payment will be assessed around two months after the adoption window closes. Three projects with the strongest performance can qualify for bonuses of up to 50% of their grants.
According to the program’s original funding announcement, the Cardano Foundation established the pilot with 2 million ADA to support applications using recently introduced ecosystem tools.
The August application round offered grants ranging from 50,000 ADA to 200,000 ADA per project. Eligible proposals needed to integrate stablecoins, Pyth price feeds, programmable tokens, or blockchain identity systems into existing products.
Unlike previous funding rounds, the pilot does not rely on a public vote by ADA holders. Community experts and a specialist decision panel instead assess applications before selecting recipients.
The program measures adoption through qualifying Cardano network fees generated by external users. Results will be published on a public dashboard under its Proof of Adoption standard.
Selected teams have up to three months to launch their integrations on Cardano mainnet and demonstrate the products at Demo Day.
Funding remains conditional on completing onboarding, meaning selection does not guarantee an immediate payment of the entire approved grant.
Stablecoin payments and lending among selected Cardano projects
Several of the approved projects focus on making Cardano stablecoins usable for payments and financial services.
SyncAI’s anyqr proposal would let Cardano wallet holders pay merchants through local QR codes in 10 countries using USDCx. Participating businesses would receive payments in their local currencies.
PagFinance was selected for a separate payment integration involving Brazilian reais. Its proposed service would convert ADA or USDCx into reais through Brazil’s PIX payment network, with settlement tools for businesses.
Cexplorer’s Pay project focuses on merchant checkout services. Businesses would be able to generate invoices and payment links using USDM and USDCx, with payments linked to orders once transactions are confirmed.
VIA Labs received approval for AnyToAny, which would combine cross-chain bridging and token swaps into simpler transactions between Cardano and other networks. Its proposed routes include converting USDC held on exchanges into Cardano-based tokens.
In decentralized finance, House of Titans plans to develop ATLAS, a perpetual trading platform using USDM and USDCx as collateral alongside Pyth oracle price feeds.
Liqwid Labs will work on integrating signed Pyth prices directly into lending transactions. The project focuses on the price information used when users borrow funds or face liquidation.
Cardano’s Pyth oracle integration was previously covered by crypto.news in December 2025, when the network announced its partnership with the market data provider.
Dano Finance was selected to develop a lending feature that allows borrowers to change collateral through a single transaction without first repaying outstanding debt. Its proposal includes opening liquidation participation to independent parties.
L4VA Technologies will develop AI-assisted vault strategies for tokenized real-world assets. Its proposed system uses Pyth prices and USDCx within limits established through governance.
Tokenized assets and identity projects receive funding
Beyond financial applications, four selected proposals cover asset ownership, healthcare credentials, and supply chain records.
Anvil’s Wayup project will introduce programmable transfer rules for tokenized real-world assets. The system would enforce issuer requirements, including buyer eligibility, when secondary market transactions settle.
GreenSun Tech’s OriLife project focuses on agricultural produce. It proposes tokens representing produce ownership, with programmable rules governing transfers between growers and buyers.
Aline Health was selected for a medical travel identity project based on CIP-0170. The system would allow organizations to verify patient credentials without placing medical records directly on the blockchain.
Nucast’s nuhuman proposal focuses on digital identities for industrial robots and shrimp shipments. The project would use signed production records to track processing activity and export batches across a shrimp export operation valued at $60 million in the proposal.
According to Project Catalyst, six of the selected proposals include open source commitments. Three teams have pledged to return a portion of future platform or protocol fee revenue to the Cardano treasury.
The program did not identify the individual revenue-sharing commitments in its September 24 announcement.
Cardano Foundation changes Project Catalyst selection process
The Cardano Foundation took over stewardship of Project Catalyst in 2026 after the program had operated under Input Output Group.
The transition involved changes to previously allocated funding. In its July 2026 update, the Foundation said 19,498,234 ADA earmarked for Fund 15 had been returned to the Cardano treasury, excluding 501,766 ADA reserved for reviewers and moderators.
Another 21 million ADA allocated to Fund 16 and retrospective public goods funding was returned after the associated smart contract was canceled.
The Foundation’s June announcement said the new pilot would use undistributed ADA from previous funding rounds, including funds made available when recipients withdrew or failed to meet project milestones. The pilot therefore did not require a new treasury withdrawal.
The funding program opened for applications in August and closed submissions on August 20.
During the latest selection process, 52 active community curators helped narrow the original 117 applications to 31 proposals for final assessment.
A total of 116 people applied to participate in the decision panel, with 35 ultimately serving as active reviewers. Of those, 28 represented the community and seven came from the Cardano Foundation.
Each shortlisted proposal was assessed by between 11 and 19 panelists, who submitted 466 accepted reviews across the process.
Business considerations accounted for 70 points of the evaluation, while technical assessment carried 30 points. Reviewers examined potential users, the reasons they would adopt an integration, and the applicant’s plans to reach them.
Every proposal that reached the final decision stage was scheduled to receive a private scorecard and written feedback covering its strengths, outstanding questions, and recommended next steps.
The Catalyst team will meet selected applicants to agree on project priorities before onboarding and grant payments begin.
Counterfeit wine is a quietly enormous problem. Cardano is pitching a fix that fits in the palm of your hand.
The Cardano Foundation’s on-chain verification system lets consumers confirm where a bottle of wine came from by scanning a QR code. As of mid-2026, more than 30 wineries in Georgia have adopted it, and over 100,000 bottles can now be traced on the blockchain.
That matters because fake wine is not a niche nuisance. Counterfeiting costs European producers an estimated €2.8 billion a year, and the people paying for it are winemakers and buyers alike.
How the verification actually works Think of it like a passport for a bottle. Each bottle gets a digital fingerprint, plus metadata describing its origin, and that record lives on the Cardano blockchain.
A buyer scans the QR code on the label. Within seconds, the system checks whether the bottle’s details match what was recorded on-chain.
Digital signatures do the heavy lifting behind the scenes. Put simply, each record carries a cryptographic seal that shows who issued it and whether anyone has tampered with it since.
The system does not replace paper. It works alongside traditional paper certificates, giving producers and buyers two separate ways to confirm a bottle is legitimate.
Suppliers can use the same verification tools as consumers. That means distributors and retailers further down the chain can check authenticity before a bottle ever reaches a shelf.
From a Georgian valley to an open-source toolkit The program’s home base is Georgia’s Bolnisi region. The Cardano Foundation built it in cooperation with the country’s National Wine Agency and other local partners.
The Georgian Wine Traceability Program officially launched in 2022, formalized through a Memorandum of Understanding between the parties involved.
In August 2026, an open-source reference implementation called OriginateNavio was released for wine provenance tracking.
In October 2026, the Cardano Foundation showcased the initiative and its potential impact on the wine and spirits market.
What this means for Cardano and the industry The Georgian program stands out because it has numbers attached. More than 30 wineries and over 100,000 traceable bottles is not global scale, but it is real usage in a real market.
Partnering with a national body like the National Wine Agency gives the system institutional weight that a purely private effort would lack.
OriginateNavio could be a key variable in wider adoption. By releasing the reference implementation as open source, the Cardano Foundation lowers the barrier for other producers.
A QR code only helps if buyers actually scan it, and changing shopper habits is a slower process than shipping software.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Kaye Quema. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Charles Hoskinson slíbil zvláštní gesto, pokud vkladový trezor sUSDrf na Strike Finance dosáhne hodnoty 1 milionu USD; komunita má navrhnout, o co by mělo jít.
Charles Hoskinson, Cardano founder, has teased a special gesture if RealFi’s USD stablecoin, sUSDrf, reaches a milestone of $1 million in deposits.
Hoskinson made the remark after Cardano-based DeFi platform Strike Finance disclosed that $70,000 had flowed into its liquidity vault through sUSDrf. Subsequently, RealFi reported that the vault held around $200,000, raising expectations that it could eventually reach the $1 million milestone.
Something Special Incoming? In response to the development, Hoskinson promised to do something special if the vault hits the $1 million target. However, he left the decision open to the community, asking users to suggest what the gesture should be.
If we reach a million, I have to do something special. What should I do? https://t.co/7mI3Y0Lrl7
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) October 18, 2026
The comment followed an earlier post in which Hoskinson asked whether users would like to create a prediction market on Bodega Market to forecast when the vault would reach $1 million in deposits. Although the timeline remains uncertain, his remarks have sparked interest in what he might do if the vault achieves the target.
RealFi Integration Boosts Strike Finance Liquidity The development comes after Strike Finance integrated RealFi’s yield opportunities into its platform. At the time, Hoskinson announced that RealFi was open for business.
The integration enables users to earn RealFi yields alongside existing Strike Finance vault rewards. Additionally, with eligible collateral, users can borrow USD without interest, while deploying the funds into vaults linked to Strike Liquidity Provider.
Meanwhile, Strike Finance reported that its liquidity vault had surpassed $1 million, with $200,000 flowing into it over the preceding 72 hours through RealFi’s USD stablecoin.
RealFi Could Support Cardano’s Liquidity Growth Hoskinson has positioned RealFi as a project that could attract additional capital to Cardano’s ecosystem and increase its total value locked (TVL). Through its integration with Strike Finance, the project could broaden access to yield opportunities and encourage more users to deploy capital across Cardano-based decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.
However, growth in a single liquidity vault does not necessarily translate into an equivalent increase in Cardano’s overall TVL. The broader impact depends on where the assets are deployed and how the respective platforms account for them.
At press time, Cardano’s TVL stood at $62.77 million, representing a 0.21% decline over the previous 24 hours. Nevertheless, the reported growth in Strike Finance’s vault offers an encouraging sign for the ecosystem. Whether it leads to sustained growth in Cardano’s DeFi liquidity will depend on the platform’s ability to attract and retain capital.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson says he is developing a concept for Midnight that will address several problems in the industry.
He describes the planned innovation as the “magnum opus” of his career. Notably, Hoskinson shared this in a post on X, saying he had nearly completed the conceptual design. He believes the initiative will bring something unique to the crypto space through Midnight.
Hoskinson Says Cardano Will Be Complete After Leios
Meanwhile, amid Hoskinson’s teaser about a new development for Midnight, some community members turned their attention to Cardano. Specifically, X user Matthew Casey asked Hoskinson whether Cardano was finished in the sense that it had achieved its core development goals.
Hoskinson replied that Cardano would be complete after the implementation of Leios, its planned scalability upgrade.
“After Leios, yes. It has everything I wanted to do,” he stated.
Meanwhile, Hoskinson noted that his vision for Cardano includes decentralized governance and development, secure consensus, the eUTXO model, Plutus smart contracts, and improved scalability.
He also highlighted Cardano’s strong security, support for different node implementations, and ability to evolve over time. He also added that millions of people already hold ADA.
Significantly, Leios aims to increase Cardano’s transaction capacity without changing its core design. Its implementation remains a major milestone in the network’s development.
After Leios, yes. It has everything I wanted to do. Decentralized consensus, governance and development, EUTXO, plutus, infinitely scalable, secure, built with formal methods, multiple independent nodes, recursively self-improving, and millions of people hold Ada.
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) October 17, 2026
Midnight’s AI Trading Plans Show Its Future Direction
The latest comments from Charles Hoskinson come as Midnight explores uses beyond its privacy-focused blockchain. During an October 13 discussion, the Cardano founder revealed plans for Midnight City to support AI cryptocurrency trading in the coming months.
The feature would allow users to fund wallets and set up AI agents to trade crypto assets in different blockchains based on their goals and strategies.
Midnight also plans to create marketplaces where AI agents can discover and share trading strategies designed by others.
The project is developing Midnight Passport, which is an identity system that links AI agents to their users. An initial version is expected in late 2026.
Midnight has also adopted the Open Wallet Standard, which aims to help AI agents access wallets and carry out transactions in different blockchains and other systems.
These plans offer some insight into Midnight’s future direction. However, Hoskinson has not confirmed whether his latest teaser about a project he called the “magnum opus” of his career is connected to the planned AI trading system.
Midnight Ambassador Supports Hoskinson’s Vision
Tommy John, who identifies himself as a Midnight ambassador, praised Hoskinson’s leadership and expressed confidence in his vision.
“Boss, I sleep well at night knowing you’re behind the wheels. Proud to be a Midnight ambassador,” John wrote.
Boss, I sleep well at night knowing your behind the wheels. Proud to be a Midnight ambassador.
“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” — John C. Maxwell , Thanks boss.
— TomJon (@TommyJohn70) October 17, 2026
Notably, Hoskinson has not yet announced when he will reveal the new concept or explained what it will involve.
Cardano price fell 2.04% to $0.219 over 24 hours, extending its weekly decline to 11%.
The broader cryptocurrency market consolidated slightly, with total capitalization near $2.73 trillion. Bitcoin price hovered at $81,650, and Ethereum and XRP were at around $2,400 and $1.30 respectively.
The developers of the Leios are aiming to release a mainnet-ready release candidate by the end of 2026. A rebound above $0.30 remains uncertain following the ADA price daily and weekly declines.
Cardano Leios Release Candidate Reaches 52% Completion
Cardano’s Ouroboros Leios release candidate has reached 52% completion, according to an update shared by Cardanians. A few development objectives were completed and 28 updates were reported on the post during the last week.
The improvement proposal, technical specification, 1,000 TPS showcase, and Leios testnet were among these. The dashboard indicates that the confidence testing was at 45% and that the hard fork objective had 0% completed.
Cardano’s Ouroboros Leios is steadily progressing towards a mainnet release candidate.
Several objectives are fully completed, and the release candidate is now 52% complete.
28 updates were added last week.
Can’t wait! 🔥 https://t.co/R808zf5oMd
— Cardanians (CRDN) (@Cardanians_io) October 16, 2026
Leios will boost the capacity of transactions on Cardano while maintaining its security with the introduction of more blocks and committee validation. To be ready for the deployment on the mainnet, a developer will need to do additional testing and integration.
Activations do also require audits, ecosystem coordination and governance approval. No confirmation of a launch date was given, and no reason was offered as to why the 28 weekly updates were made.
Cardano Price Outlook: Can Cardano Rebound Toward $0.30?
The ADA price traded at $0.2199 on October 17, as Cardano tested the $0.22 area.
The MACD line was at -0.0042, and a bit under its -0.0040 signal line, and the histogram was at -0.0002. Both lines were below zero, which confirms a bearish reading without determining the extent to which the price would fall.
The Chaikin Money Flow indicator also stood at positive value of 0.14, indicating that there was selling pressure as compared to buying pressure.
Source: ADA/USDT 4-hour chart: TradingView
The $0.22 mark has become the immediate pivot, and the continued trading under the mark poses greater downside risk. Further weakness would put a focus on the $0.21. In case of such a support, the psychological $0.20 level is a potential second target.
On the positive, the immediate outlook would be improved with the reclaiming of $0.22, leaving the first goal of recovery at $0.23. A four-hour high of over $0.23 may open a trade to the next resistance of $0.25, which is noted on the chart. The Cardano price outlook for long term could target $0.30 ahead of Leios Mainnet release candidate.
Cardano Open Interest Rises to $487.18M as Trading Volume Falls
The volume of the Cardano (ADA) derivatives trading decreased 8.99% to reach $324.55 million, and open interest rose 1.26% to reach $487.18 million. The volume of options trading fell by 92.94% to $6,590, the greatest percentage decrease among the reported indicators.
Source: Coinglass data
In the meantime, the options open interest declined 0.27% to $374,920, and the value of outstanding options positions had decreased modestly. The statistics indicated reduced trading in the derivatives market, although the aggregate open interest stepped up.
Zakladatel Cardana Charles Hoskinson vyvíjí nový programovací jazyk pro blockchain Cardano, který má jako první podporovat záměry a PCD (důkazy přenositelných výpočtů) prostřednictvím důkazů Groth16.
Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, has revealed that he is currently working on creating a new programming language for the blockchain, promising to add advanced cryptography features to it.
The new language will be able to handle intents and proof-carrying data (PCD) with the help of Groth16 proofs.
"I'm actually personally developing a programming language for Cardano. It's the first of its kind enabling intents + PCD via Groth16 proofs," Hoskinson wrote.
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He made this announcement after a community member inquired about the unique benefits of Cardano as a highly decentralized base for blockchain use cases.
The creator of Cardano did not share any details of the language's name, specs, or release timeframe.
Earlier this week, he also hinted at an ambitious use case for Midnight, a partner blockchain for Cardano focused on privacy.
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"I'm working on a concept that only Midnight can bring to the cryptocurrency space to solve most of the problems. It's gonna be the magnum opus for my career," he said.
It's unclear if the two announcements are related.
Merits of programming languages Hoskinson has shared his views on programming languages many times. He is a fan of Haskell, which was originally used as the basis of the development architecture of Cardano.
In June 2022, he jumped into a discussion between Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey on programming languages' merits.
After Musk shared his fondness for the C programming language instead of the modern C++, Hoskinson responded by suggesting they should try Haskell.
However, later on, Hoskinson admitted that the choice to develop Cardano with Haskell was not something he was sure about.
In May 2024, the founder revealed that he nearly picked Clojure at one point. He said Haskell was chosen eventually due to the presence of Cloud Haskell. Plus, he could use other technologies like Liquid Haskell, Agda, etc.
In an interview in April 2025, he said he would probably pick another language for programming if he could rewrite Cardano from scratch.
Currently, Cardano supports a few smart contract programming languages like Plutus (based on Haskell) and Aiken. Another privacy-focused language on Midnight is called Compact.
Zakladatel Cardana Charles Hoskinson bude síť považovat za dokončenou až po upgradu Leios, který má zvýšit propustnost, aniž by omezil decentralizaci a bezpečnost.
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In an X conversation, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson answered whether the Cardano blockchain network is complete. An X user had asked the question, "Is Cardano finished? Meaning completed?"
In response, Hoskinson pointed to one major milestone that remains before he considers Cardano completed: the Leios upgrade.
I'm working on a concept that only midnight can bring to the cryptocurrency space that solves most of the problems. Almost have all of it designed conceptually. It's the magnum opus of my career
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— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) October 17, 2026 "After Leios, yes. It has everything I wanted to do," Hoskinson answered. "Decentralized consensus, governance and development, EUTXO, Plutus, infinitely scalable, secure, built with formal methods, multiple independent nodes, recursively self-improving, and millions of people hold Ada," he continued.
The question from the X user about whether Cardano is complete comes after Hoskinson revealed that he was working on a concept that only Midnight a Cardano-related privacy sidechain can bring to the crypto space and that solves most of the problems. Hoskinson stated that he had almost designed it conceptually, describing it as the magnum opus of his career.
Leios upgradeLeios, which was mentioned by the Cardano founder, refers to Cardano's next-generation consensus and scaling upgrade designed to massively increase transaction throughput and speed without sacrificing decentralization or security.
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Leios delivers a phased throughput increase on mainnet, scaling from 2x to 30x current capacity, with full capacity demonstrated on testnet first. In September 2026, IOG developers demonstrated about 1,000 TPS with Ouroboros Leios in testing.
The public testnet (known as MusashiNet or Musashi Dojo) launched on June 23, 2026, rolling out through five phases (Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, Void). According to a recent update from Input Output, the Musashi Dojo testnet has entered its Fire phase.
Leios accelerates Cardano throughputCardano's current consensus protocol, Ouroboros Praos, was designed for security and decentralization but was not designed for the throughput that a globally adopted layer 1 needs. Enter Leios, which enhances Praos by adding endorser blocks and committee-based validation, which increase the number of transactions Cardano can process.
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Leios aims to increase throughput from about 5–10 transactions per second (TPS) to around 100 TPS, with a longer-term target of 1,000 TPS or more, subject to validation and parameter selection.
Areas where higher throughput could have a meaningful impact include global microtransaction ecosystems, decentralized supply chain tracking, scalable DeFi with time-sensitive transactions, decentralized identity for large populations, and real-time voting systems.
Cardano’s (ADA) price has come under pressure, declining 2.3% in the last 24 hours to $0.2248, despite a substantial rise in the network’s stablecoin market capitalization. Data from Cardanians (CRDN) shows that Cardano’s stablecoin market cap has expanded by 25.8% over the past 90 days, climbing to $68.3 million.
Stablecoin growth and top contributorsThis jump in stablecoin capitalization highlights growing activity in Cardano’s ecosystem, as dollar-pegged assets play a larger role in decentralized finance (DeFi) trading and application usage. According to Cardanians, USDC currently leads with $44.4 million, followed by USDM at $13.5 million and RealFi’s USDrf at $5.1 million.
Stablecoin market cap on Cardano $ADA has grown by 25.8% in the past 90 days. Currently it’s at $68.3M, led by USDC with $44.4M. RealFi’s USDrf launched just recently and has already reached $5.1M. Great to see the growth, hoping to see $100M+ soon!
The increase in stablecoin balances signals that users are increasingly utilizing Cardano for transactions, DeFi applications, and transfers, without frequently moving assets into traditional currencies.
Mini dictionary: Cardanians is a Cardano-focused analytics and advocacy community that tracks on-chain data, network metrics, and ecosystem trends. They share insights on ADA’s performance and growth, often through social media channels such as X.
ADA price under pressure, key technical levels in focusDespite the stablecoin uptrend, ADA’s price remains subdued. Technical charts from TradingView reveal that ADA fell back after touching $0.28 in early October, sliding below resistance at $0.2432. Traders now focus on the crucial support level near $0.2053, which could determine whether the token stabilizes or faces further downside.
A move above $0.2432 would see ADA return to its recent trading range, though bulls must sustain buying pressure to advance a recovery. Until then, ADA continues to trade below resistance, keeping sentiment uncertain.
StablecoinMarket Cap ($ million)USDC44.4USDM13.5USDrf5.1Total68.3If ADA maintains support above $0.2053, it could allow time for consolidation. A breakdown below this zone, however, would increase risk of further declines.
Technical indicators and market signalsCardano’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) is currently at 42.82, below its moving average of 53.70, suggesting weakening bullish momentum. The RSI remains above the oversold threshold of 30, meaning the market yet waits for a clear oversold signal.
The On-Balance Volume (OBV) indicator has dropped to approximately 45.25 billion, consistent with declining buying interest. Although both indicators suggest softer demand, traders look for signals such as the RSI rising above 50 or an uptick in OBV before confirming a turnaround.
Open interest and DeFi metricsCoinGlass data reveals that ADA futures open interest has decreased from around $650 million in early October to about $500 million now. Liquidations have been observed on both long and short positions during recent volatility, indicating that leveraged traders face pressure in both directions.
Decreasing open interest may reflect reduced speculative positions, but does not in itself confirm whether investors are favoring bullish or bearish bets. Monitoring stabilization in open interest, along with price momentum and support levels, could provide clearer insight for traders.
Separately, DeFiLlama shows Cardano’s total value locked (TVL) has reached $65.21 million, while decentralized exchange (DEX) volume stands at $1.45 million for the past day. These figures highlight ongoing activity in Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem as stablecoin balances grow.
While higher stablecoin capitalization indicates expansion, it does not guarantee an increase in DeFi participation or demand for ADA itself. Traders continue to watch for a link between rising on-chain volumes, ecosystem usage, and a shift in price momentum.
In the near term, ADA’s outlook hinges on whether positive network indicators join with technical recovery moves—such as recapturing the $0.2432 resistance and improving RSI and OBV readings. Conversely, losing the $0.2053 support could place the token at greater risk of further losses even amid ecosystem advances.
HOSKY today announces that its Doggie Bowl campaign was a major driver of Cardano’s new all-time records for transaction activity and network fees.
Following the completion of epoch 660, the network processed 1,780,896 transactions during the five-day period ending October 11 UTC,exceeding the previous record of 1,566,974 transactions set in November 2021 by 13.65 percent.
HOSKY reopened its Doggie Bowl token distribution mechanism on October 6 with the explicit goal of helping the network surpass previous transaction records. Participants sent 2 ADA to a designated address and received approximately 1.x ADA in return, along with a randomized allocation of HOSKY tokens.
Repeated participation, including automated activity, generated high volumes of both incoming payments and outgoing distributions. In some cases, single payout transactions served multiple recipients.
On October 8 UTC, Cardano processed 542,532 transactions, setting a new daily record. Peak throughput reached approximately 440 transactions per second. Total transaction activity during epoch 660 was 11.27 times higher than the preceding epoch. Transaction fees reached 337,720 ADA, exceeding the previous epoch fee record by 9.54 percent. These fees represent the amounts paid by participants to use the Cardano network.
The records cover activity over a five-day epoch, transactions within a UTC calendar day, and peak throughput. The transactions-per-second figure describes a brief peak rather than a sustained rate. Transaction totals measure overall ledger activity, including repeated participation, rather than unique users.
Transactions move assets, execute smart contracts, and create demand for blockspace. During the record-setting period, Cardano processed the increased activity on its production blockchain using infrastructure supported by developers and independent stake pool operators.
HOSKY previously helped drive Cardano’s record-setting activity during epochs 302 and 304 in November 2021. The latest campaign extends that involvement nearly five years after the original Doggie Bowl. Cumulatively, HOSKY-related activity accounts for more than 9 percent of all transactions recorded on Cardano since the blockchain’s inception.
This represents a long-term contribution across the network’s history, not solely the share generated during epoch 660. The project’s wider ecosystem involvement includes stake pool support, NFT initiatives, and community participation.
About HOSKY
HOSKY is a Cardano-native meme token launched in November 2021. Known for its satirical identity and its description of the token as worthless, the project operates Doggie Bowl distributions and community initiatives that support participation in the Cardano ecosystem.
For more information, visit hosky.io or join the community on Discord at discord.gg/hosky.
Media Contact Information
Hosky Media
[email protected]
HOSKY Announces Its Doggie Bowl Campaign Helped Drive Cardano to New Network Activity and Fee Records
HOSKY Announces Its Doggie Bowl Campaign Helped Drive Cardano to New Network Activity and Fee Records
Source: HOSKY
U Cardana dosáhly likvidace celkem 4,27 milionu USD, přičemž dlouhé pozice tvořily 4,2 milionu USD. Nerovnováha mezi dlouhými a krátkými pozicemi dosáhla 5 747 %.
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Traders betting on higher prices of Cardano (ADA) are under increased pressure as a wider sell-off in the cryptocurrency market is leading to liquidations that are heavily skewed toward longs.
Cardano (ADA) extended its drop early Thursday following a hotter-than-expected CPI report, with the continued price decline taking a toll on bulls, who suffered the brunt of liquidations.
According to CoinGlass data, Cardano saw a total of $4.27 million in liquidations, with longs accounting for almost all of this figure at $4.2 million while shorts came in at $73,080. The imbalance between long and short liquidations yields 5,747%, highlighting the extent to which bullish leveraged traders have been affected by the latest market decline.
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At the time of writing, ADA was down 1.33% in the last 24 hours to $0.224, after reaching a low of $0.216.
Market hit by significant selloffThe broader crypto market saw significant selling pressure as Wednesday's inflation data ignited concerns that the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates this month.
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Data released Wednesday showed consumer prices rose 3.7% in the 12 months through September, up from 3.4% in August and above economists' expectations. Core CPI climbed 2.6%, accelerating from 2.4% the previous month.
Losses worsened on Thursday, with $913 million in futures positions liquidated over the past 24 hours, according to Coinglass data. The majority of these were longs, or traders expecting the price to rise.
Cardano Leios testnet enters next phaseThe Musashi Dojo, a public Cardano testnet for Ouroboros Leios, has moved to its next phase. Running from late June 2026 through the mainnet hard fork, Musashi Dojo hosts successive node releases, from early prototypes to release candidates.
According to a recent announcement by Input Output, the Musashi Dojo has entered its Fire phase, the third among the five stages of the testnet, intending to raise the load step by step, testing the protocol and hardening the code to production grade at each level.
The Musashi Dojo testnet moves through five stages, Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, and Void, each named after a book in Musashi's 1645 treatise, the Book of Five Rings.
Following the mainnet launch of Leios, Cardano will support an initial 5 to 20 times increase in throughput capacity.
Strike Finance integrates RealFi yields into its liquidity vaults.
Advertised returns approach 50% APR but remain variable.
ADA trades near $0.235, with support around $0.228.
Open interest reaches $239.7 million after a modest daily increase.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has praised Strike Finance following its integration of RealFi yield into the platform’s liquidity vaults, a development that expands the use of real-world asset-backed products within Cardano’s decentralized finance ecosystem.
Alright Cardano, RealFi is open for business through Strike. One of the best DApps on Cardano
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) October 14, 2026
Strike says the integration allows users to access returns associated with RealFi alongside its existing vault strategies. The platform is advertising annual percentage rates approaching 50%, although those figures are variable and should not be confused with the returns generated by RealFi’s underlying assets.
Hoskinson welcomed the development, describing Strike as one of Cardano’s best applications.
The announcement comes less than two weeks after RealFi launched on Cardano mainnet on October 1. ADA, however, continues to face technical resistance, trading around $0.235 in the October 14 market snapshot.
Strike Adds Real-World Yield to Its Vault Strategies
RealFi brings a different source of returns to Cardano’s DeFi market.
Its two-token system consists of USDrf, a dollar-denominated stablecoin backed by a portfolio of financial assets, and sUSDrf, a yield-bearing token that provides exposure to returns generated by the underlying portfolio.
According to RealFi’s documentation, the portfolio includes U.S. Treasury bills, money-market funds, investment-grade credit instruments and private lending.
The structure is designed to separate liquidity needs from yield generation. USDrf serves as the more liquid base asset, while sUSDrf carries additional exposure to investment performance and potential losses.
Strike’s integration introduces these returns into a separate DeFi strategy.
Under its documented vault model, depositors allocate funds to managed trading accounts, where profits and losses are reflected in the value of their vault shares.
The latest promotional figures include:
49.27% APR for sUSDrf-linked positions.
37.03% APR for ADA-backed positions.
Up to 50% APR across selected vault strategies.
Strike also advertises borrowing against eligible collateral at 0% interest.
These figures were presented in the October 14 announcement and are not independently verified realized returns. The available information does not establish how much of each vault’s advertised APR comes from RealFi, trading performance or other strategy components.
That distinction is central to evaluating the integration.
Why a 50% APR Does Not Mean RealFi Earns 50%
RealFi’s own product information advertises up to 10% APY for its staked token, substantially below the figures associated with Strike’s selected vault strategies.
The difference is not necessarily contradictory. The products operate at different levels and involve different sources of return.
RealFi’s yield originates from financial assets supporting its token system. Strike’s vault performance can also depend on trading activity and how capital is deployed within its strategies.
APR and APY also use different annualization conventions. APR generally excludes compounding, while APY incorporates it.
Neither measure guarantees that the quoted return will persist.
For example, a strategy displaying 49.27% APR could subsequently produce a much lower return or record a loss. Its advertised rate should not be treated as a fixed payment obligation.
The risks extend beyond changing yields.
Collateral liquidation. Borrowers may lose pledged assets if their collateral falls below the required threshold.
Trading losses. Vault positions can decline in value, reducing depositor balances.
Credit exposure. RealFi’s underlying portfolio includes assets that may experience defaults or valuation losses.
Liquidity restrictions. Withdrawals and redemptions may depend on market depth, available funds and applicable waiting periods.
RealFi’s redemption disclosures distinguish institutional redemption arrangements from retail exits through decentralized exchanges. Retail holders are not guaranteed immediate liquidity or an exit at the token’s target value.
Geographic eligibility is another limitation. RealFi states that USDrf and sUSDrf are unavailable to persons in the United States, United Kingdom, European Union and certain other jurisdictions.
These restrictions mean the new integration should not be interpreted as universally accessible across Cardano’s user base.
ADA Tests a Support Zone Near $0.228
The latest price chart shows that Cardano’s broader market performance remains weaker than the optimism surrounding the RealFi integration.
At the time of writing ADA trades at $0.23480 on Coinbase, according to the TradingView chart from October 14, representing a daily decline of 0.38%.
Cardano trades within a rising price channel.
The token remained below its 20-day simple moving average at $0.24861.
That level closely matches the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement at $0.24863, creating a resistance area near $0.249.
A sustained move above that region would improve the short-term technical outlook and bring the recent trading area around $0.26 into focus.
Support is closer to the current price.
The 50-day moving average stands at $0.22813, just above the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement at $0.22740. The chart’s rising trendline also approaches this zone.
Together, these indicators make $0.227–$0.228 an important area to monitor.
A sustained break below it would weaken the ascending price structure. The next technical references are the 200-day moving average at $0.21251 and the 50% Fibonacci retracement at $0.21024.
The 100-day moving average, currently near $0.20410, provides a lower reference if selling pressure continues.
Momentum indicators support a cautious interpretation.
The 14-day Relative Strength Index stood at 47.26, below the neutral 50 level and its signal average of 55.94.
That suggests momentum has weakened, although ADA is not yet in traditionally oversold territory.
These levels describe potential market reactions rather than guaranteed support or resistance. The chart also does not establish a direct relationship between Strike’s announcement and ADA’s price movements.
ADA Derivatives Show Limited New Positioning
Derivatives data provide little indication of a major speculative buildup around the announcement.
ADA open interest reached approximately $239.7 million on October 14, according to information from Coinalyze, increasing 0.62% over the preceding 24 hours.
The figures cover perpetual contracts, with most outstanding positions concentrated across Binance, Bybit, Hyperliquid and OKX.
Cardano / Derivatives
ADA Open Interest by Exchange
Total Open Interest
$239.7M
+0.62% / 24h
Exchange
OI (USD)
Share
1
Binance
$93.8M
39.1%
2
Bybit
$68.6M
28.6%
3
Hyperliquid
$36.1M
15.1%
4
OKX
$33.7M
14.1%
+
Others
~$7.5M
3.1%
Market Concentration
Top four exchanges
96.9%
Most reported ADA perpetual exposure is concentrated on four venues. Open interest does not indicate whether positioning is bullish or bearish.
The concentration shows where leveraged exposure is held, but it does not establish whether traders expect prices to rise or fall.
Every derivatives contract has both a long and a short side. Open interest alone cannot determine which group is driving the market.
Funding rates, trading volume and liquidation data would be needed to assess positioning more thoroughly.
The modest daily increase therefore suggests limited expansion in outstanding contracts rather than a decisive shift in market sentiment.
RealFi’s Next Test Is Sustained Vault Performance
Strike’s integration gives RealFi another distribution channel shortly after its mainnet launch.
Separately, Cardano has brought CIP-0113 programmable tokens to mainnet, introducing conditional transfers designed for regulated financial assets.
The more meaningful measures of adoption will be sustained deposits, realized returns after fees and the ability of vault strategies to withstand unfavorable market conditions.
For Cardano, the development broadens the practical use of its real-world asset infrastructure. Whether that translates into lasting DeFi activity will depend on the performance of the products themselves, not their advertised annualized yields.
Alexander Zdravkov is a crypto journalist and market analyst specializing in digital assets, blockchain technology, and the rapidly evolving cryptocurrency market. He entered the industry more than four years ago, drawn to the speed of innovation in crypto and the potential of blockchain-based financial systems to reshape traditional markets.
His work focuses on understanding the forces behind crypto market movements, from Bitcoin and altcoin cycles to institutional adoption, regulation, exchange-traded products, stablecoins, DeFi, and emerging blockchain ecosystems. Rather than simply following price action, Alexander looks at liquidity, investor positioning, market structure, and macroeconomic conditions to identify developing trends and explain what they could mean for digital assets.
With a degree in International Relations, he brings a broader perspective to cryptocurrency coverage by connecting developments in the sector with monetary policy, geopolitics, regulation, and global capital flows. This allows him to examine crypto not as an isolated market, but as an increasingly interconnected part of the global financial system.
Over the course of more than five years in financial journalism, Alexander has written over 5,000 articles covering cryptocurrencies, blockchain, traditional markets, and the global economy. His reporting spans Bitcoin, Ethereum and altcoins, DeFi protocols, institutional crypto adoption, regulation, market infrastructure, security incidents, and major developments shaping the wider digital asset industry.
His approach is centered on giving readers context behind the numbers and headlines, explaining not only what is happening in crypto markets, but why it matters and what could come next.
Cardano has adopted the Open Wallet Standard (OWS), a framework designed to streamline wallet management across multiple blockchains. This move comes as Cardano’s native token ADA hovers at the critical $0.22 to $0.24 support zone.
New unified wallet standard aims to boost interoperabilityThe Cardano community backed the integration of OWS, describing it as a significant step for multi-chain interoperability. OWS enables applications and artificial intelligence agents to manage wallets on different blockchains through a single interface, offering flexibility in transaction authorization.
WingRiders, IOG, and the Midnight Foundation led the development of the OWS. These entities are recognized for their work on blockchain scalability and privacy solutions.
Developers working on cross-chain apps and AI tools are expected to benefit from the new standard. With OWS, there is no longer a need to build custom wallet management systems for each blockchain, potentially accelerating the rollout of decentralized applications.
OWS delivers a unified wallet management interface, enabling apps and AI agents to operate across several blockchains with configurable transaction-signing rules, according to project representatives.
The actual impact of the OWS integration will depend on its adoption by applications and the broader ecosystem.
Mini dictionary: WingRiders is a decentralized exchange built on Cardano, while IOG (Input Output Global) is the technology company behind Cardano’s core development. The Midnight Foundation is focused on blockchain privacy and data protection solutions.
ADA price tests key support, analyst outlines next levelsWhile Cardano enhances its infrastructure, ADA’s price remains at a crucial technical juncture. Chart analyst Giannis Andreou identified the $0.22 to $0.24 range as pivotal for ADA’s short-term trend after its recent rebound from summer lows.
Andreou’s analysis aligns the current support with ADA’s upward trendline. Should ADA maintain this support, the recovery may continue, providing a chance for renewed tests of resistance. However, a move below this range could shift attention toward the next support at $0.19 to $0.20.
Volume, open interest, and on-chain data remain key for gauging market momentum, but technicals offer the clearest guide for now.
The analyst highlighted $0.2712 as ADA’s initial upside target, followed by resistance at $0.2910. If ADA can surpass $0.2910 and confirm this breakout, subsequent resistance levels to watch include $0.3117, $0.3522, and $0.4277.
Andreou projects a potential extension to $0.4834, nearly doubling the value from the $0.2419 reference level. This upside remains dependent on ADA holding above key supports.
Key LevelsPrice ($)TypeSupport0.22 – 0.24PrimarySupport0.19 – 0.20SecondaryResistance0.2712InitialResistance0.2910CriticalResistance0.3117NextResistance0.3522NextResistance0.4277NextUpside Target0.4834ExtendedThe analyst noted that breaking below $0.22-$0.24 could invalidate the higher lows pattern, putting $0.19-$0.20 as the primary area to watch.
The outlined price levels serve as reference points rather than guarantees, with confirmation needed before higher targets are considered achievable.
Outlook for Cardano ecosystem and ADA priceCardano’s immediate trajectory will depend on the adoption of OWS across wallets and applications, as well as ADA’s ability to sustain its key support range. Successful integration of the standard could support new use cases for Cardano and encourage cross-chain development.
For traders, ADA’s near-term direction will be determined by its response to $0.22-$0.24 support, with potential upside targets of $0.2712 and $0.2910, or a possible move down to $0.19-$0.20 if support cracks.
The overall effect of these developments on ADA demand remains uncertain, with further clarity expected as OWS adoption and price action evolve.
Cardano Foundation oddělila společnost Veridian a tokenizovala většinu z jejího 1 milionu akcií na blockchainu Cardano prostřednictvím standardu CIP-0113. Akcie nejsou veřejně nabízeny.
The Cardano Foundation has spun out digital identity firm Veridian and tokenised its shares on Cardano ($ADA) using the CIP-0113 programmable token standard.
The Cardano Foundation has launched Veridian, its digital identity spin-out, and tokenised shares in the new company on Cardano ($ADA). The announcement, made by @Cardano_CF on October 8, makes Veridian an independent commercial business and the first to use the network's programmable token standard, CIP-0113.
What Veridian does, according to crypto.news. The project had been in development for three years before the spin-out. , CoinDesk reported.
The company's mobile wallet is already live. CoinDesk reported that Veridian develops credentials that help people, businesses and AI agents verify identities and authority. According to crypto.news, the company says it has mapped all 142 requirements in Utah's state-endorsed digital identity implementation guide, and it plans to seek strategic partners and investors in 2027, including for expansion in the United States.
How the shares were tokenisedVeridian's shares have been issued as ledger-based securities under Switzerland's DLT Act, crypto.news reported. The Foundation describes them as the first asset deployed on Cardano using CIP-0113.
Frederik Gregaard, the Cardano Foundation's CEO and Veridian's chair, told CoinDesk that most of the company's 1 million shares have been tokenised. CoinDesk noted that the tokenised shares are not being offered to the public.
CIP-0113 went live on Cardano mainnet on October 7, one day before the spin-out. CoinMarketCap Academy reported that the Foundation said the standard went live after multiple independent security audits. It lets issuers of stablecoins, tokenised funds and bonds build compliance controls into tokens, including KYC checks, sanctions screening, transfer limits and freeze-and-seize functions. CoinDesk said these features are designed to help issuers meet regulatory requirements.
Mainnet availability does not by itself show adoption. As TradingView News noted, the standard's relevance to $ADA depends on issuers choosing to build with it. Veridian is the first live example, but it is a Foundation-linked company, and its shares are not publicly tradable.
Sources:
CoinDesk: Cardano Foundation spins out Veridian, tokenizes its shares on new standard
crypto.news: Cardano Foundation spins out digital identity firm Veridian
CoinMarketCap Academy: Cardano rolls out token standard letting issuers freeze, seize assets
Cardano has set a new transaction record after processing 1,780,896 transactions during Epoch 660, according to blockchain explorer Cexplorer.io.
The figure surpasses the previous record of 1,566,974 transactions recorded in Epoch 304. Cexplorer reported that the latest epoch also generated ₳337.72K in transaction fees, with each block containing an average of 83.83 transactions.
The milestone highlights increased transaction activity on the Cardano mainnet amid recent price action of the ADA token.
Cardano Mainnet Passes 125 Million Transactions The new record follows another milestone reported by Cexplorer on October 9, when Cardano surpassed 125 million processed transactions on its mainnet.
At the time, Epoch 660 had already added 986,787 transactions to the network’s cumulative total. The epoch subsequently recorded 1,780,896 transactions, according to Cexplorer’s latest update.
The figures point to continued on-chain activity as Cardano processes transactions across successive epochs. Meanwhile, total transaction counts do not necessarily represent unique users, as one user or application can generate multiple transactions.
Epoch 660 Generates ₳337.72K in Fees Cexplorer’s data also provides insight into Cardano’s network activity during Epoch 660, which ran from October 6 to October 11, 2026. The epoch processed nearly 1.8 million transactions across 21,243 blocks, generating approximately ₳337,720 in fees. Average fees stood at around ₳0.19 per transaction.
For comparison, Epoch 659 processed 158,011 transactions and generated ₳49.49K in fees, while Epoch 658 recorded 159,916 transactions and ₳53.51K in fees.
These figures show that Epoch 660 recorded a much higher transaction count than the preceding epochs shown in Cexplorer’s data. The difference reflects a change in transaction activity during the period.
Cardano ADA processed 1,780,896 transactions in Epoch 660 Is ADA’s Price Fueling Record Transaction Activity? Notably, the milestone comes amid increased interest in ADA’s next price move. For context, ADA has surged by 20.55% over the past 30 days, while Bitcoin has gained only 8% over the same period.
ADA currently trades at $0.2515, representing a substantial gain of 82.5% from Cardano’s June low of $0.1387. The token even briefly touched $0.2824 before retracing slightly.
Now, many market watchers are looking to see ADA reclaim the $0.30 level and advance into the $0.40 range and beyond.
Essentially, these impressive price movements may be contributing to the ongoing record in Cardano’s on-chain activity.
Meanwhile, whether the higher transaction count continues in subsequent epochs will help determine whether this was an isolated increase or part of a sustained change in network usage.
13 October 2026 | 12:12 Cardano and Bitcoin treasury firm Strive surfaced in a podcast debate over a question many long-term crypto holders eventually face: would they make the same purchase today?
Key Takeaways Lark Davis says long-held crypto positions should be tested against current alternatives. ADA and Strive shares depend on different sources of value and risk. Distance from a previous all-time high says little on its own about either asset’s current case. Crypto YouTuber Lark Davis, known online as The Crypto Lark, has spent several market cycles discussing Bitcoin, altcoins and crypto-linked equities with a large retail audience. In recent podcast, he used Cardano and Strive to challenge a familiar habit: keeping an old position because it has been there for years.
“Every day that you’re holding it, you’re continuing to buy it,” Davis said.
The line captures the useful part of the discussion. A past entry price does not decide whether a position still belongs in a portfolio. The harder question is whether its current thesis still makes sense beside the alternatives available today.
ADA and ASST answer different investment questions The comparison becomes more complicated once the two assets are separated. ADA is Cardano’s native token, while ASST is a share in a public company that has adopted a Bitcoin treasury strategy.
Question Cardano (ADA) Strive (ASST) What is being valued? A token tied to Cardano’s network, liquidity and ecosystem activity. Equity in a listed company that holds Bitcoin and raises capital around that strategy. What can move the price? Network demand, token use, staking, liquidity and broader crypto sentiment. Bitcoin’s price, Bitcoin held per share, financing conditions and the value investors place on the company. What investors must monitor Whether Cardano converts development and ecosystem growth into sustained demand for ADA. Share issuance, debt or preferred claims, and whether new capital increases Bitcoin exposure on a per-share basis. The distinction matters because a bullish Bitcoin view does not automatically settle the case for a Bitcoin treasury stock, just as Cardano’s technical development alone does not settle the case for ADA. Each position requires a separate chain of evidence.
Cardano’s current case rests on more than staking The podcast debate focused heavily on whether Cardano’s use supports its valuation. That question is better approached through a current network snapshot than through a comparison with an earlier bull market.
At the time of writing, CardanoScan showed about 21.45 billion ADA staked, equal to roughly 57.1% of circulating supply. The network also had more than 2,800 registered stake pools and over 126 million confirmed transactions since launch.
Those numbers describe a sizable staking base and a long-running network. The next layer of analysis involves active users, stablecoin liquidity, decentralised-finance activity and whether applications retain demand over time. DeFiLlama’s Cardano dashboard can provide part of that picture, though no single metric can capture an ecosystem on its own.
Cardano’s Bitcoin DeFi push gives investors a current case to follow beyond the announcement itself. At the time of writing, DeFiLlama listed $68.92 million in total value locked on Cardano and $68.25 million in stablecoin market capitalisation. Minswap, with $17.02 million in TVL, and lending protocol Liqwid, with $13.12 million, were the two largest applications by value locked. Those figures establish the current liquidity base; the next test is whether new Bitcoin DeFi products add durable activity and capital rather than simply redistribute what is already on the chain.
A Bitcoin treasury share adds a corporate layer Strive’s appeal in the podcast came from the prospect that a smaller Bitcoin treasury company could offer more upside than a large, established crypto asset.
The speakers described Strive and Strategy as ways to amplify Bitcoin exposure, which is why the comparison can appeal to Bitcoin-focused investors. Its own treasury dashboard reported 29,462 BTC held as of October 2, putting Bitcoin at the centre of the company’s equity story.
Yet the company’s share price also reflects how that Bitcoin position is financed. In a filing covering the period from April 1 to May 12, Strive said it issued about 3.89 million Class A shares and raised $58.4 million through its sales agreement. The proceeds supported its wider treasury strategy, while the issuance also changed the number of shares through which investors claim that value.
This is why Bitcoin treasury stocks need to be read as companies, not only as Bitcoin proxies. The same balance-sheet pressure has become visible at Strategy, where recent results placed Bitcoin holdings alongside preferred-dividend obligations and common-shareholder outcomes.
Why the 10x comparison stops short The most tempting part of the podcast comparison is also the least complete: both Cardano and Strive appear to offer substantial upside when measured against previous highs.
The comparison also drew on the contrast between buying Cardano in its earlier cycles and buying it today. That distinction matters, but a previous high still does not explain what would drive a return there.
Prices and return comparisons cited by the speakers during the podcast. They are historical reference points rather than forecasts. An earlier ADA peak came in a different market cycle, with different liquidity conditions and a different level of adoption across crypto. A previous ASST high needs even more context, because public-company prices can be affected by mergers, stock structure, capital raises and changes in the amount of Bitcoin held per share.
A return to an old level therefore requires more than a positive market. Cardano would need its network activity and token demand to support a stronger valuation. Strive would need Bitcoin exposure, capital allocation and its corporate structure to work in shareholders’ favour at the same time.
That is the gap between a chart comparison and an investment thesis.
The question that follows the podcast debate Davis’s challenge is useful when it is taken beyond the simple choice between Cardano and Strive. A holder can ask what evidence currently supports the position, what would weaken that view, and whether the asset still fits the role it was originally bought to fill.
For ADA, the focus is whether Cardano can translate network development into durable demand. For Strive, the focus is whether it can grow Bitcoin exposure per share without allowing financing costs or dilution to outweigh that progress.
Both questions depend on current execution. Neither can be answered by an old chart peak alone.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Crypto assets and publicly traded shares carry risk, and past performance does not guarantee future results.
Author
Kosta has reported on cryptocurrency markets and blockchain infrastructure since 2020, bringing over six years of hands-on experience in the crypto industry built through daily tracking of markets, trends, and emerging blockchain developments. Specializing in Bitcoin on-chain analysis, institutional ETF flows, and digital asset price action, his work at Coindoo has been cited by other news agencies and consistently covers market developments with a focus on data-driven reporting across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP. Over the years, Kosta has contributed to multiple crypto media outlets in different regions, authoring over 6,000 articles across the sector. His reporting spans cryptocurrency markets and the broader fintech industry, tracking not only price action but also the technological and regulatory forces shaping the ecosystem. To support his analysis, Kosta actively leverages on-chain data and metrics from leading platforms such as Santiment, Glassnode, and CryptoQuant, enabling deeper, evidence-based market insights. He believes in the power of transparency and the data that underpins the blockchain ecosystem. His academic background in Marketing Management from Denmark further complements his analytical approach, adding a strong understanding of communication strategy and content positioning to his work.
Solada.fun, which calls itself the first Cardano launchpad on Solana, recorded 129,500 ADA in trading activity over the past 24 hours.
The development highlights strong interest in its cross-chain token launch platform. In an October 13 update, the platform reported 277 users, including 176 active traders. It also had 34 live token launches: 24 on Solana and 10 on Cardano.
Two tokens, $PAWS on Solana and $JUSTQ on Cardano, also graduated from the platform. Users earned more than 4,000 ADA in rewards during the same period.
These figures show Solada.fun’s early efforts to connect Cardano users and creators with Solana’s trading ecosystem.
Cardano and Solana numbers on Solada
How Solada Connects Cardano and Solana
Solada.fun launched its ADA-focused platform on October 9 as the first launchpad to connect Cardano and Solana. The project later confirmed that its cross-chain features were live.
The platform lets creators launch tokens on Solana through Pump.fun using Cardano wallets. Solana users can then buy and trade these tokens without needing a Cardano wallet.
This makes it easier for users to access projects on another blockchain without switching ecosystems.
Solada says it manages token supply across both blockchains using custodial reserves. It charges a launch fee of 15 ADA to help cover costs and liquidity, while creators receive rewards in ADA.
The platform aims to help Cardano creators reach more traders on Solana while still using ADA for parts of the process.
Could Solana Help Cardano Projects Reach More Users?
X user Kat said Cardano projects could reach more people by going where traders already are instead of trying to bring them to Cardano. Solana has a large trading community and strong liquidity, making it an attractive option for Cardano creators who want to reach more users.
The idea is to bring Cardano projects to Solana’s existing traders rather than asking those traders to switch to Cardano.
Credit where it's due, this is exactly the type of project that blows up in other ecosystems, is this going to be Cardano's moment?@soladafun is the 1st Cardano launchpad on Solana 👀
Creators can launch tokens on Solana using ADA/Cardano wallets, and Solana users can buy…
— Kat (@TheRealWeb3Kat) October 12, 2026
Solada’s latest figures show early user activity, and analysts are watching to see the platform maintain trading volumes, rewards, and user growth over time.
The platform has launched tokens on both Solana and Cardano, suggesting it aims to serve both communities. Solada’s long-term success will depend on keeping traders active, supporting token performance and maintaining growth beyond its initial launch period.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by our writers are their own and do not represent the views of U.Today. The financial and market information provided on U.Today is intended for informational purposes only. U.Today is not liable for any financial losses incurred while trading cryptocurrencies. Conduct your own research by contacting financial experts before making any investment decisions. We believe that all content is accurate as of the date of publication, but certain offers mentioned may no longer be available.
The official Cardano Card X (formerly Twitter) account announced that the multi-chain crypto payment card associated with the Cardano ecosystem, Cardano Card, will be discontinued on October 31, 2026.
Important update for Cardano Card holders:
The Cardano Card will be discontinued on 31 Oct 2026. Your card will keep working as normal until then.
Wirex, our partner on the Cardano Card program, is moving to a non-custodial model and discontinuing its custodial infrastructure. Because of that, our partnership with Wirex ends on 31 Oct 2026.
If you hold a Cardano Card, this affects you directly, and we want you to hear it from us first.
Stay tuned for what comes next for the program, more details to be shared soon.
— Cardano Card (@cardano_card) October 13, 2026
In an important update for cardholders, the account said the Cardano Card will continue to function normally until the scheduled sunset date. The announcement gives users a deadline to prepare for the end of the service while they await further information about the program's future.
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This decision follows a change in business direction by Wirex, the partner behind the Cardano Card program. The announcement said Wirex will shut down its existing custodial infrastructure and move to a non-custodial model. Consequently, its partnership with the Cardano Card program will end on October 31, 2026.
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In November 2025, Emurgo announced a partnership with Wirex to launch the official Cardano Card, integrated into the Wirex app and accessible to over 6 million users in 130 countries.
The Cardano Card enables users to spend over 685 cryptocurrencies including ADA, BTC, ETH, and USDC, and pay anywhere Visa is accepted. Users can also access DeFi services such as loans and yield.
Now the card is set to be discontinued on October 31, 2026, leaving the Cardano community to seek answers on what comes next.
According to the notice by Cardano Card, for holders directly affected, it seeks to hear from them first. The account also indicated that more details about what comes next for the program would be shared soon.
October 31 remains key dateIt should be recalled that in July 2026, Emurgo, the entity behind the Cardano Card, announced it was stepping down from its duties as a member of the Pentad—a collaborative executive governance and strategic alignment structure formed by five key entities in the Cardano ecosystem to drive critical infrastructure deployment and growth—in order to focus on the SecondFi recovery process. This leaves the rest of the Pentad as Input Output, Cardano Foundation, Intersect, and Midnight Foundation.
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Given this, what comes next for the Cardano Card remains unknown, as it has not yet been confirmed whether a replacement card, a new service provider, or an alternative payment arrangement will be introduced.
For ADA holders who use the card, October 31, 2026, remains the key date to remember.
A massive token reserve looks like the ultimate safety net for a proof-of-stake blockchain. New research from the Cardano ecosystem suggests that the net may have holes in it.
A paper presented at the 8th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2026) argues that a large stockpile of native tokens is not enough, on its own, to guarantee a network’s long-term security.
What the paper actually found
The research is titled “Reserve Depletion and Security Runway in Proof-of-Stake Systems.” It was co-authored by Paolo Penna of Input Output Global (IOG) and Manvir Schneider of the Cardano Foundation.
The Cardano Foundation presented the work at AFT 2026, held in London from October 6-9, 2026. The paper appears in the LIPIcs proceedings, dated October 2, 2026.
The central contribution is something the authors describe as a state-dependent reserve threshold. Think of it as a dividing line whose position moves depending on the current conditions of the network.
Above or below that line, a proof-of-stake system lands in one of three distinct security conditions:
Complete failure: the network cannot sustain adequate security, regardless of how things play out.
Reserve-dependent security: the network is secure, but only because the reserve is propping it up.
Fee-only security: the network can stay secure on transaction fees alone, with no need to dip into the reserve.
The authors built their model using discrete-time stochastic methods, treating key variables as uncertain rather than fixed. According to the research, the findings point to vulnerabilities that may persist even when reserves are substantial, particularly in the face of market volatility.
Why Cardano’s reserve design is a useful test case
Under Cardano’s design, 0.3% of the remaining reserves is drawn each epoch to fund rewards. Taking a fixed percentage from a pot means the absolute size of each withdrawal gets smaller as the pot itself shrinks.
Because the threshold is state-dependent, a network does not get assigned one permanent category. Shifts in market conditions could move it from one region to another.
What this means for investors and protocols
For investors, the most direct takeaway is that reserve size alone may be a misleading comfort metric. The research suggests two factors stand out: whether a protocol’s reserves are adequate relative to its security needs, and how its reward disbursement mechanism actually works over time. A slow, percentage-based drawdown behaves very differently from a fixed payout schedule, and both behave differently when markets swing.
There are clear limits to keep in mind. This is a theoretical model, not a verdict on any specific network’s present condition, and the paper does not predict when or whether any chain will cross into the failure region. What it offers is a framework for asking better questions.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Whale selling and declining network participation are putting Cardano under pressure.
After ending September with massive gains, Cardano appears to be struggling again, losing almost 12% in the past week alone.
But new data suggests that it could face more downside pressure as whale selling and weaker network activity raise concerns about its price outlook.
ADA Price at Risk?
According to crypto analyst Ali Martinez, large holders have sold more than 110 million ADA over the past five days. This adds selling pressure as the token approaches a key support level. To top that, network activity is also slowing. Daily active addresses have dropped 41.36%, after falling from 27,248 to 15,977. The decline indicates fewer users are interacting with the Cardano network.
All eyes are on the $0.24 support level. Martinez believes that a break below it could push ADA toward $0.21, near the lower boundary of its rising channel.
Despite the drop in daily active addresses, Cardano recently set a new transaction record for the first time in five years. During Epoch 660, the network handled 1,780,896 transactions, beating its previous high of 1,566,974 from November 2021. That works out to an average of 83.83 transactions per block, which is a new all-time high for the network.
While short-term signals exhibited a mixed picture, Crypto Patel is sticking to a much more optimistic view of ADA. The analyst believes Cardano could still have plenty of room to run. The analyst is now watching $0.2887, a level the crypto asset needs to close above on the two-week chart to confirm the breakout. If that happens, ADA’s rally could extend toward $0.50, $1, $2, $3, and eventually $5.
Other Developments
Beyond its price action, the ecosystem has seen a couple of notable developments. The Cardano Foundation rolled out CIP-0113, a new token standard for regulated assets last week. It lets issuers set rules on who can hold their tokens and freeze or seize holdings when required. The move could make it easier for banks and fund managers to bring assets like bonds and funds onto Cardano.
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Additionally, the foundation’s digital identity project, Veridian, has become an independent Swiss company. It has also tokenized its shares on Cardano and plans to build identity tools for businesses, governments, and AI agents.
Cardano zaznamenalo 157 velkých transakcí v hodnotě nad 100 000 USD, nejvíce od června. K potvrzení obratu musí ADA uzavřít týden nad úrovní 0,323 USD.
Cardano is drawing renewed attention, driven by a surge in large-holder activity and rising price volatility across the crypto market. ADA is trading near $0.25, with technical analysts highlighting a decisive price region between $0.31 and $0.32 as critical for confirming a sustained recovery. For now, buyers are focusing on defending support levels in the $0.22 to $0.25 range to keep upside targets intact.
Technical hurdles define next ADA trendADA has rebounded sharply from lows around $0.14-$0.15 and has re-entered a trend channel that acted as resistance until November 2024. However, Cardano does not yet show clear bullish dominance. According to Trend Rider, a weekly close above $0.323 is necessary for ADA to exit the bearish trend channel and confirm momentum has shifted in favor of the bulls. Until that technical level is reached, the price remains exposed to possible rejection at resistance.
On the downside, losing support near $0.22 would weaken the recovery and could shift focus to $0.18, with a larger $0.14 region as the next major test if selling accelerates. For traders, $0.323 marks the key upside trigger, while $0.22 is the first critical risk zone for the current structure.
Cardano price is at a crossroads, facing strong resistance at $0.31-$0.32 while sustained support above $0.22 remains critical for maintaining its recovery outlook.
Resistance levels, trendlines, and market structureADA’s technical setup has improved after breaking above a descending trendline and reclaiming the bull market support band. With these moves, ADA is no longer just rebounding from former lows, but also attempting to build support around $0.25. The bull market support band currently clusters in the low $0.22 region, overlapping both horizontal and trendline support, forming an important short-term base for buyers.
To the upside, initial resistance appears at $0.3136, with further targets at $0.3825 and $0.4488 contingent on a breakout. For the long term, ADA must first convert $0.31-$0.32 into clear support to lend credibility to higher price targets, including $0.70 and beyond, as various analysts note.
Whale activity and wallet concentration on the riseOn-chain activity shows that 157 Cardano whale transactions, each exceeding $100,000, have taken place in recent days, marking the highest count since June. Social dominance for ADA also climbed to a high of 1.16% in 2026, according to Santiment, highlighting rising interest alongside this increase in whale trades.
Meanwhile, data from konnektr points to an accumulation trend among major holders, as wallets with over 1 million ADA continue to grow their collective balances while the total number of such wallets declines. This suggests greater coin concentration in fewer hands. In contrast, smaller wallets holding under 100 ADA are increasing in number but have seen their combined holdings decrease, creating a widening gap between large and small market participants.
If ADA can hold above $0.25-$0.27, this on-chain dynamic may set a constructive backdrop ahead of the next breakout attempt. Increased whale flows and growing concentration among larger wallets indicate building momentum, which could be key for a move beyond $0.32.
Altcoin market volatility shapes ADA’s pathwayThe opening weeks of October have seen heightened volatility in both Bitcoin and Ethereum, yet neither asset has committed to a clear new trend. This broader uncertainty is putting pressure on altcoins such as Cardano, where breakouts remain tied to the performance of overall crypto leaders. If Bitcoin and Ethereum begin trending more decisively, ADA could receive the tailwind needed for a breakout above its key resistance range.
Technical structure is also being closely watched, as ADA’s recovery from the $0.20-$0.25 area mirrors portions of its 2020 bull market cycle. Analyst Jesse Peralta has drawn parallels with historic cycles, focusing on $0.70 as the next major milestone if current supports hold. Beyond that, $1.90 remains a distant target, predicated on buyers successfully defending subsequent retracement levels around $0.55 after a breakout.
History may not repeat exactly, but ADA’s current buildup and whale accumulation call back to earlier cycles, with $0.70 and $1.90 representing significant future objectives once resistance at $0.31-$0.32 is cleared.
In a market where a single Federal Reserve decision or a new altcoin listing can rapidly shift prices, technical and on-chain factors alone are not always enough. Many traders have begun adopting privacy-first tools such as CryptoAppsy, which combine live charts, real-time price alerts, relevant news, and macroeconomic data into a single interface. This consolidation helps eliminate the need to switch between multiple apps, allowing for quicker reactions and potentially better trading outcomes—all without requiring an account.
Key risks and next steps for ADACardano’s next substantial move depends on its ability to hold the $0.22-$0.25 support and achieve a confirmed breakout above $0.31-$0.32. Whale activity and wallet concentration are giving the recovery some momentum, but confirmation from price action is still required for a broader bullish shift.
Looking ahead, traders remain focused on volatility in Bitcoin and Ethereum, as these bellwether assets continue to shape the trajectory of altcoins. For Cardano, technical, on-chain, and macro factors will all play a role as the market approaches its next decision points.
Cardano zaznamenalo 27 500, respektive 27 200 denně aktivních adres, což je zhruba o 70 % více než zářijový průměr ve všední dny. Kumulativní počet transakcí překročil 125 milionů.
Cardano price rose 6.80% to $0.257 over 24 hours on Saturday, outperforming Bitcoin as network activity increased.
ADA is above $0.25, placing the $0.30 mark back in the spotlight following 20% gains in the last month.
On October 7 and 8, Santiment recorded 27,500 and 27,200 daily active addresses, respectively. Both readings were roughly 70% above September’s weekday average, reflecting a rise in addresses sending or receiving ADA.
Bitcoin price remained close to $82,800, Ethereum price was close to $2,494, and XRP was close to $1.40.
Cardano’s On-Chain Activity Surges as Active Addresses Jump The Cardano network is experiencing increased activity, with the number of daily active addresses increasing significantly above the weekday average in September. On the 7th and 8th of October, Santiment reported about 27,500 active addresses and 27,200, respectively. Both the readings were approximately 1.7 times the September weekday readings, which was more interaction of the public blockchain.
Another milestone of the network, which was launched in 2017, is the data indicated by CardanoScan, which is that cumulative transactions have surpassed 125 million. A previous snapshot had epoch 660 transactions close to 450,000, as compared to 130,000 to 160,000 in recent epochs.
In the meantime, a report on October 3 with reference to DeFiLlama pegged the volume of the weekly decentralized exchanges at 37.14 million, which is 112% higher. SundaeSwap recorded $23.51 million and Minswap recorded $6.59 million in the same seven days period.
Will Cardano Price Reach $0.30 After Reclaiming $0.25? The ADA price surged to $0.256 on October 10, with its latest four-hour candle showing a 0.79% gain. The cardano price has regained its position above the $0.230 level and has surged again above the highlighted $0.250 level.
The first resistance target is at $0.27. Four consecutive hours in the close position above that might open up a retest of the recent level of $0.280. The ADA long-range prediction target is at $0.300, which is equal to the upper horizontal level and upward projection.
The support level of $0.250 offers a starting point of support following the rebound that crossed the level. A lower level would reexpose the area of $0.230 and undermine the short term recovery situation.
Source: TradingView The MACD line was close to minus 0.002 above its signal line, which is around minus 0.004. Its positive 0.002 histogram indicates the momentum can be improved. The two lines were however, below zero, and the momentum recovery was not complete.
The Chaikin Money Flow also increased to 0.09 having fallen to the negative side.
TLDR: Cardano price rose nearly 7% on Oct. 10 and reached about $0.256 after a short-window rebound. ADA reclaimed the $0.2353 moving average and $0.2359 Fibonacci level, while reported volume fell 34.86%, leaving the breakout short of strong confirmation. Daily active addresses reached 27,500 and 27,200 on Oct. 7–8 after CIP-0113 launched, but ADA fell roughly 13% over that same period. Analyst Andreou’s $0.90 scenario remains conditional: ADA must hold the 0.22–0.25 base, reclaim 0.30–0.35, then clear higher resistance zones. Cardano’s ADA token climbed 7% on Oct. 10, trading near $0.256 as buyers returned to the market. The Cardano price gain outpaced major cryptocurrencies during the session. The rebound followed an October decline, making this a recovery attempt rather than a confirmed trend reversal.
Cardano price analysis reveal ADA reclaimed its 30-day average near $0.2353 and the 50% Fibonacci level around $0.2359. But reported trading volume fell 34.86%, leaving buyers to prove they can defend the breakout. Network activity had increased earlier in the week.
Cardano (ADA) Price Cardano Price Rebound Tests Support as Volume Remains Thin The reclaimed average and retracement level now form a short-term checkpoint. A drop below them would weaken the breakout case. The support band extends from $0.2359 to $0.2276.
Holding that area could leave room for a test of weekly Supertrend resistance near $0.2762. The Cardano price would need a daily close above $0.256 to show that buyers can sustain the bounce. A rejection at that level would raise the risk of a false breakout.
Volume remains a key concern. The 34.86% decline suggests the rally drew less participation than its price move implied. The figure varies by exchange and measurement window, but the direction argues for caution. The Altcoin Season Index rose 5.17% to 61, pointing to stronger relative demand for alternative tokens. That measure describes rotation; it does not prove capital will stay in ADA.
Bitcoin traded near $82,800, a level that matters for altcoins. Spot Bitcoin ETFs shed $729 million over two days, adding pressure to risk assets. Renewed selling could again put ADA support levels under strain.
The immediate test is twofold: defend reclaimed levels and attract stronger spot volume. Until both happen, the Cardano price recovery remains technically constructive but unconfirmed.
Source: Santiment ADA Active Addresses Rose After CIP-0113, Then Price Fell Santiment reported about 27,500 daily active Cardano addresses on Oct. 7 and 27,200 on Oct. 8, around 1.7 times September’s weekday average. The increase coincided with CIP-0113 going live on mainnet on Oct. 7. The standard enables programmable tokens with issuer-defined rules. The Cardano Foundation says issuers can add KYC checks, sanctions screening, and transfer restrictions to native tokens. Wallets and explorers can handle these assets like other Cardano tokens. The standard required no protocol hard fork.
Coincidence does not establish that the upgrade caused the address spike. Santiment’s figures also showed Bitcoin and Ethereum addresses at or below September averages. Active addresses measure participation, not intent.
They cannot show whether users bought ADA, moved tokens, staked, or used applications. The Cardano price fell about 13% from the Oct. 6 close through Oct. 8, despite the increase. That divergence shows network use did not translate into immediate buying pressure.
The Cardano price bounce came on October 10, after both the activity increase and the selloff. It should not be attributed to CIP-0113 without evidence linking buyers to the upgrade. A lasting signal would require elevated addresses to persist beyond launch.
Source: X Analyst Giannis Andreou says initial support is present at 0.22–0.25 and first resistance at 0.30–0.35. A weekly reclaim and successful retest would strengthen that recovery case. Higher zones sit at 0.40–0.45 and 0.55–0.65. The $0.90 scenario depends on clearing each barrier, so it remains conditional. A sustained break below $0.22 would weaken the setup.
Cardano-linked privacy network Midnight expands its foothold in Japan following the listing of the NIGHT token on OKCoinJapan (OKJ), the Japan branch of OK Group, a global cryptocurrency exchange conglomerate that includes OKX and OKCoin.
In an X post that shared Midnight's X account's initial post, Input Output highlighted that more access is coming for Midnight in Japan, as the NIGHT token will be available on OKCoinJapan starting October 13, 2026.
More access to NIGHT in Japan. 🇯🇵 From October 13, NIGHT will be available on @OKCoinJapan, another step forward for @MidnightNtwrk's growing presence in Japan and its work to bring programmable privacy to everyone.
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— Input Output Group (@IOGroup) October 10, 2026 OKJ expands access to NIGHT in one of the world's most established digital asset markets, being a registered crypto-asset exchange in Japan. Following Midnight's listing on S.BLOX, this marks another step in Midnight's growing presence in Japan, bringing NIGHT to more users looking to explore privacy-enhancing infrastructure.
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In August 2026, Midnight's NIGHT token was listed on S.BLOX, a Sony Group company and the first exchange to support it in Japan. The new listing on OKJ is a major milestone for Midnight's expansion into the Japanese market, as it gives local users another way to access NIGHT.
This week, permissionless smart contract deployment went live on the Midnight mainnet, giving builders more freedom to deploy contracts directly and enabling applications to deploy contracts on behalf of users.
Cardano onchain activity picks upIn a recent post, Santiment corroborated that onchain activity for Cardano is picking up.
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ADA daily active addresses reached 27,500 on October 7, 2026, and 27,200 on October 8, about 1.7x the September weekday average, though still below the late August peak. The jump lined up with the CIP-0113 token standard going live on mainnet on October 7.
Cardano settled 542,551 transactions on October 8, according to Chainspect, which averages 6.28 TPS on its busiest day of the past seven days. In a major network milestone, Cardano has surpassed 125 million transactions on mainnet; almost 1 million transactions were added in the current epoch alone.
At the time of writing, Cardano's ADA was up 6.47% in the last 24 hours to $0.244 and up 4.07% weekly, according to CoinMarketCap data; Midnight was up 9% in the last 24 hours to $0.049 following the listing news.
@Cardano has officially crossed the 125 million cumulative transaction mark on its mainnet, with network data showing close to 1 million transactions registered within the current epoch alone. The milestone reflects a sustained uptick in on-chain activity that has been building across several months.
Momentum Building Across the Network The 125 million figure is the latest in a series of transaction records for the network. As recently as late September 2026, That trajectory has continued upward, supported by a broader surge in activity.
The activity is spread across multiple use cases. Network statistics confirm contributions from DEX liquidity pools, native asset transfers, and smart contract execution. while
What Drives Activity on Cardano's eUTXO Model Cardano's architecture sits at the centre of its usage patterns.
That architectural approach has drawn growing interest from developers. as part of its broader infrastructure, underscoring the scale of participation across the ecosystem.
The 125 million transaction milestone adds another data point to a network that has maintained uninterrupted operation since launch, with activity now clearly accelerating heading into the final quarter of 2026.
Sources:
The Crypto Basic: Cardano DEX Volume Jumps 112% as On-Chain Activity Grows
The Coin Republic: Cardano Foundation Marks 9 Years with 123 Million Transactions
CryptoNews: Cardano Transaction Activity Surges as Daily Transactions Hit 7-Day High
Zakladatel Cardano Charles Hoskinson uvedl, že síť Midnight zaměřená na ochranu soukromí by mohla být větší než Zcash, aniž by upřesnil, zda tím myslí tržní kapitalizaci, počet uživatelů nebo aktivitu on-chain.
Cardano’s (ADA) recent stretch has mixed technical progress with public friction. Founder Charles Hoskinson has argued that the privacy-focused Midnight network could eventually surpass Zcash, pressed Gemini (NASDAQ: GEMI) to list ADA again, and pushed back against critics who say years of building haven’t translated into stronger token performance.
At the same time, the Cardano Foundation advanced a bid for a .ada internet domain, while Hoskinson criticized the same organization for leaving Midnight off a major conference display.
On September 28, Hoskinson replied to a bullish note from Weiss Crypto, saying Midnight would become larger than Zcash.
He pointed to selective disclosure, private agents, a DeFi kernel meant to work across major chains, and a stack that combines zero-knowledge proofs, trusted execution environments, and multiparty computation, alongside Cardano’s uptime and the planned Leios upgrade.
The gap remains wide. Around the time of the comment, NIGHT’s market capitalization sat near $443 million, while Zcash’s stood in the mid-$20 billion range.
Separate reporting around October 1 noted that ADA itself was still trading roughly 92 percent below its all-time high, even as Zcash held a far larger valuation and stronger recent momentum.
Hoskinson has framed Midnight as infrastructure for controlled privacy and cross-chain activity rather than a pure privacy coin, but he did not specify whether “bigger” referred to market value, users, or on-chain activity. Exchange access remains another sore point.
On October 6, after Gemini co-founder Tyler Winklevoss marked the exchange’s 11th anniversary, Hoskinson replied with two words: “List ADA.”
The request continues a multi-year campaign.
Gemini already supports several proof-of-stake assets, including Solana, Avalanche, Polkadot, Cosmos, and Tezos, yet it has not added Cardano’s token and has not publicly explained why.
Hoskinson previously estimated that the omission cost the exchange about $70 million in revenue over five years, comparing it to volumes on Binance and Coinbase.
He has raised the issue in interviews, at events, and once by posing with a handwritten “Wen ADA?” sign near a Gemini booth.
Governance and visibility have also collided.
At TOKEN2049 Singapore in early October, Hoskinson walked through the Cardano Foundation’s large booth and noted that Midnight—widely described as the ecosystem’s largest project, with its NIGHT token already trading on Binance as a Cardano native asset—did not appear among the featured teams. Projects such as Minswap, Iagon, SNEK, and GravityDEX did.
He jokingly called Midnight the “Where’s Waldo” of Cardano and suggested its privacy focus might explain the absence, then turned more serious, stating that the booth was a public asset funded by the community and urging holders to watch how treasury resources are used.
Midnight maintained a separate presence at the event.
The episode fits a longer pattern of disagreement between Hoskinson and the Foundation over representation.
Those tensions sit beside a defense of delivery.
In early October, after community members questioned whether spinning Midnight out as its own network hurt ADA holders and whether the year had produced enough activity, Hoskinson asked what else he was supposed to do.
He listed RealFi going live on mainnet on October 1 after public testing, Midnight’s network launch earlier in the year, NIGHT’s earlier debut as a Cardano native asset, the Pentad integration push involving USDCx, Pyth, staged LayerZero support, and Fireblocks plans for native tokens, plus work tied to Pogun, Midnight.city, Draper, and AlphaGrowth.
He noted that NIGHT itself was issued on Cardano and is managed through Cardano wallets.
However, the price has not followed the roadmap: holders continue to see ADA lag well below prior highs.
A separate thread from a July interview still frames how Hoskinson explains the pace.
He compared Cardano’s methodical path to Anthropic’s rise in artificial intelligence, arguing that Google and then OpenAI held early leads, yet Anthropic advanced by prioritizing a disciplined approach over raw speed.
In an environment of frequent exploits and AI-assisted attacks, he said, markets may increasingly favor security and governance over the fastest launch.
On the naming front, the Foundation announced on October 8 that its .ada application had moved into the next stage of ICANN’s new generic top-level domain program.
ICANN published advancing applications on Reveal Day, October 7.
The bid followed a Cardano governance action that passed with roughly 75 percent support.
Approval is not guaranteed; technical, financial, and operational reviews still lie ahead, with delegations from this round expected between 2028 and 2030.
If granted, .ada could sit alongside extensions such as .com and support shorter wallet addresses, links to decentralized identity tools such as Veridian, and domain tokenization.
Other crypto-focused strings, including .sol, .ethereum, .btc, and .bitcoin, are also in the round.
The updates show an ecosystem shipping privacy infrastructure, institutional integrations, and a formal internet-domain bid, while its founder remains publicly at odds with parts of the governance structure and with at least one major US exchange. It remains to be seen whether Midnight narrows the gap to Zcash. And whether ADA’s price eventually reflects the buildout remains an open market question.
Cardano spustilo standard CIP-0113 na mainnetu, který emitentům stablecoinů a dalších aktiv umožňuje zabudovat do tokenů pravidla KYC, sankční kontroly a možnost zmrazení.
Cardano (ADA) price is down 4.84% to trade at $0.239 at press time. ADA is now down 14% since October 6, with this drop pushing the altcoin’s funding rate to its lowest level since late June.
However, while Cardano price is falling, the number of active addresses is rising amid multiple developments on the network.
Cardano’s Funding Rate Falls as Short Positions Dominate Data from CoinGlass shows that the Cardano funding rate has dropped to -0.0183%. This is the lowest funding rate reading for ADA since late June 2026. ‘
A negative funding rate shows that short sellers are paying long buyers to keep their positions open. This highlights a bearish Cardano future outlook where most traders are betting on a decline.
(Source: CoinGlass) The long/short reading of 0.89 further supports this bearish positioning, as it shows that there are more short accounts than long accounts.
Cardano’s open interest had also dropped by 10% at the time of writing to $526 million. The OI is now at its lowest reading since late September as futures traders shy away from opening new positions despite rising whale activity.
Network Activity Spikes Amid Major Network Update Data from Santiment shows that Cardano’s daily active addresses rose to 27,500 on October 7 and 27,200 on October 8. The data shows that this is a 1.7 times jump from September’s average.
Santiment notes that this increase does not stem from the selloff across the crypto market because Bitcoin’s and Ethereum’s active addresses are still within their September averages.
(Source: Santiment) However, the surge coincides with the launch of the CIP-0113 token standard on the Cardano mainnet on October 7.
This update seeks to bring regulated finance into Cardano where stablecoin and asset issuers can create compliance rules into native Cardano tokens, including Know Your Customer (KYC), sanctions screening and freeze controls.
Cardano Price Prediction as Bears Eye Drop Below $0.20 Cardano price has been moving within an ascending parallel channel on the one-week chart. The price has now dropped to test support at the midline of this pattern, and if it breaks, it could move below the psychological support of $0.20.
The RSI has dropped to 50, suggesting that the momentum is now neutral after bears lost their grip. A drop in this RSI line to below 50 will confirm that ADA price could edge lower.
The ADX line is also tipping south and remains below 50, which shows that the uptrend shown in the rising channel is weak.
(Source: TradingView) However, if the sentiment across the broader crypto market improves and Cardano price breaks resistance at $0.25, it may move to the next target at the 78.6% Fib of $0.328.
Cardano Foundation vyčlenila společnost Veridian a tokenizovala její akcie na blockchainu Cardano v souladu s CIP-0113 jako účetně vedené cenné papíry podle švýcarského zákona DLT.
On 8 October 2026, the Cardano Foundation announced the commercial spinout of Veridian and said the company’s shares had been tokenized on Cardano under CIP-0113. The shares are ledger-based securities under Switzerland’s DLT Act. The Foundation described them as the first asset of this kind deployed on Cardano.
Veridian is a digital identity company led by chief executive Thomas A. Mayfield. It was developed inside the Cardano Foundation for three years before the spinout. The company issues credentials for people, organizations and software agents. Those credentials can be verified or revoked without relying on a central identity database.
The equity deployment gives CIP-0113 a concrete securities use case. The proposal defines programmable tokens as assets that require a script to execute successfully before ownership can change. It remains in proposed status after an update on 29 September 2026.
Ordinary Cardano native tokens can move between addresses without transfer restrictions after minting. The CIP identifies that behavior as a barrier for tokenized securities because issuers may need allowlists, denylists, customer checks or other compliance rules. CIP-0113 adds those controls with existing Cardano primitives rather than a hard fork. From the ledger’s perspective, the assets remain normal Cardano native tokens.
The standard separates shared infrastructure from the rules for each asset. Its first layer is an on-chain registry. Each registered token gets a node with the token policy and the hashes of its configuration scripts. The registry orders those nodes by policy and checks that a new token is configured correctly before accepting it. The proposal also provides deterministic smart-wallet addresses for immediate wallet support.
A second layer supplies common validation infrastructure. Programmable tokens sit at addresses controlled by a base script, while a user’s stake credential identifies ownership. When a holder transfers one of these assets, the base script reads the live protocol configuration and delegates the transaction to the relevant validator. Every transaction spending programmable tokens must include a reference input containing the protocol parameters NFT.
The issuer supplies the third layer. A transfer script decides whether a holder-initiated transfer is allowed. A separate third-party script can define actions taken without the holder’s permission, including seizure or forced transfers. An issuance script sets who can mint or burn the asset and under what conditions. The configuration can also include global state for information such as whether transfers are paused or the token is frozen.
Registration binds those rules to the asset policy. The registry checks that the declared minting credential matches the credential stored in the node, reconstructs the expected issuance policy, and requires the token’s minting logic to run in the registration transaction. Registration may occur before the first mint, a sequence the proposal says is expected for real-world assets and supply-aware designs.
An issuer starts by writing the asset’s transfer and issuance scripts. A third-party action script is optional. The issuer then deploys an issuance policy and adds a node to the registry with the hashes of the relevant scripts. The registry rejects a duplicate policy or an incorrectly constructed issuance policy. Tokens minted during or after registration must go to the common programmable-token script.
Each later transfer carries proof of whether the token policy is registered. If it is registered, the transfer must execute the script recorded for that policy in the same transaction. If the policy is absent, the validator treats the asset as a normal, non-programmable Cardano native token. This proof step is how the shared address distinguishes restricted assets from ordinary tokens.
Holders cannot assume that ownership permits an unrestricted transfer. Each transfer must satisfy the issuer’s transfer script. A permitted third party may also act without holder consent if the asset’s configuration allows it. Wallets and applications need to derive the user’s smart-wallet address, supply registry proofs, and include the validator calls required by the standard.
For issuers, the design puts compliance behavior in token-specific scripts while sharing the registry and validation infrastructure across assets. The standard allows rules for transfers, issuance, seizure and pausing without changing Cardano’s base ledger. It also means the exact rights attached to any programmable asset depend on its registered scripts, not only on the token appearing in a wallet.
What Veridian is taking to market The tokenized equity sits alongside Veridian’s identity product. The company uses KERI and ACDC identity standards, and chief technology officer Fergal O’Connor maintains their core libraries. Veridian Wallet is live on iOS and Android. The company says it has mapped all 142 requirements in Utah’s State-Endorsed Digital Identity implementation guide.
Veridian is already used by Masumi, an AI agent payment and identity network on Cardano. Masumi uses Veridian credentials so a counterparty can check an agent’s identity before payment and revoke that identity if the agent is compromised. This connects the company’s identity product with payment authorization, while the tokenized shares demonstrate the programmable-asset standard on the same network.
The spinout also changes Veridian’s corporate structure. Cardano Foundation chief executive Frederik Gregaard is chair of Veridian. Gregaard and the Foundation’s chief legal officer, Nicolas Jacquemart, joined the board. Mayfield said independence would let the company sell to governments and enterprises after development inside the Foundation.
Veridian plans to seek strategic partners and investors in 2027. It intends to expand work with US state governments, its European enterprise business, its issuer network in Asia-Pacific and identity tools for AI agents. The next technical question is whether CIP-0113 moves beyond proposed status with the deployed Veridian equity as its first announced securities implementation.
Charles Hoskinson odmítl varování Vitalika Buterina, že AI může narušit mřížkovou kryptografii, jako panikaření; podle něj ji přední výzkumníci testují již 40 let.
Cardano (ADA) Ecosystem Update: Charles Hoskinson on the Future of Blockchain GovernanceVitalik Buterin wants crypto to prepare for a threat that does not exist yet. Charles Hoskinson says that preparation could do more harm than the threat itself.
On October 8, the Ethereum co-founder warned that AI-accelerated mathematics could break lattice-based cryptography, the backbone of the new post-quantum security standards. Within hours, the Cardano founder called the warning “panic” and accused Buterin of “bag-holding too much hash-based crypto research.”
Buterin began calmly, saying no one should “scramble to move their funds to new wallets today.” But he argued that AI could soon find hidden weaknesses in lattices that humans have missed for decades. He pointed to RSA encryption as a precedent. It once looked very hard to crack, until years of research produced a far faster attack. “What if there are skeletons in the closet like that?” he asked, ones “we are simply not smart enough to discover, but bots soon will be.”
That concern, he said, is why Ethereum’s lean roadmap has moved to hash-only signatures. His advice is to prefer hash-based tools and, for long-term safety, to multiply lattice key sizes by 10.
The Rebuttal
Hoskinson rejected the argument point by point:
Tested for decades: Lattices have faced 40 years of attacks from the field’s best researchers, and today’s standards are already sized to withstand them.Hashes are not immune: MD5 and SHA-1 were both broken. Ethereum’s own Poseidon hash is so mathematically structured that the Ethereum Foundation funded a bounty to attack it.The 10x rule is “numerology”: A 20% better attack would need about 25% larger keys, not ten times larger.“‘Structure’ names nothing,” he wrote.
The Real Stakes
Hoskinson’s biggest worry lies outside crypto. Browsers and messaging apps already use lattice-based ML-KEM to protect against hackers who steal encrypted data now to decrypt later. Casting doubt on it, he argued, could keep internet traffic on older encryption for longer, the very risk Buterin wants to avoid.
He also dismissed Buterin’s idea of sending encrypted notes off-chain through a third party. That only adds a middleman who can see users’ metadata, he said.
He questioned Buterin’s record too, saying past posts led engineers away from ideas such as Plasma and Casper, only for the industry to return to them years later.
Neither founder pointed to an actual AI-found attack. For now, the question is whether crypto should guard against a break that might come, or trust defences that have held for four decades.
Story Ends Here
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Žádost Cardano Foundation o doménu nejvyšší úrovně .ada postoupila do další fáze procesu ICANN po komunitním hlasování s přibližně 75% podporou. Schválení zatím neproběhlo.
The Cardano Foundation is moving fast to make .ada an official internet domain and has moved to the next stage of the ICANN application process.
ICANN published the list of applications moving forward on October 7, confirming that Cardano’s .ada application is included.
If approved, .ada would create a direct link between Cardano’s blockchain ecosystem and the traditional internet. The Foundation said the application follows a Cardano community vote that received about 75% support, after which it moved forward with the application for the wider Cardano ecosystem.
.ada to Become a Real Internet Domain Importantly, .ada would not just be another blockchain naming service. Upon approval, it would become an official internet domain, similar to .com, .org, and .xyz. Cardano’s application is part of ICANN’s first major round of new internet domains since 2012.
The 2026 application round includes other Web3 domains such as .sol, .ethereum, .btc and .bitcoin, as well as applications from companies like OpenAI, Meta and Anthropic. For Cardano holders, getting .ada gives the ecosystem a direct place in the traditional internet’s domain system.
Cardano Sees New Uses for .ada Notably, the Cardano Foundation said an approved .ada domain creates new opportunities for users and developers. One possible use is simpler wallet addresses. Instead of using long, complicated blockchain addresses, users will use easy-to-read names.
The Foundation also mentioned linking .ada domains with digital identity tools such as Veridian. Another possibility is tokenizing domains, which allows people to manage internet domain names using blockchain technology. Overall, the goal is to connect the traditional internet (Web2) with Cardano’s blockchain-based Web3 ecosystem.
Our .ada application is advancing to the next phase of the @ICANN Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) Program.
If approved, the .ada domain would bring Cardano into the global internet address system, same as .com or .org.
The application follows a Governance Action passed with… pic.twitter.com/9rqUZCYhnO
— Cardano Foundation (@Cardano_CF) October 8, 2026
The .ada Application Not Yet Approved While the .ada application has moved forward in the ICANN process, it has not been approved yet. ICANN will now review the application, including Cardano’s technical, financial, and operational ability to run the domain.
Cardano still has several steps to complete before .ada can become an active internet domain. ICANN expects new domains from this application round to launch between 2028 and 2030, depending on how each application progresses.
The Cardano Foundation has also opened registration for community members, developers, and businesses who want updates or are interested in getting a .ada domain.
Overall, this is a major step for Cardano. A proposal supported by the community is now going through the official process to become part of the internet’s global domain system.
@Cardano has crossed a notable operational cash-flow threshold, with monthly on-chain revenue rising 24.39% to $72,910, according to data from @Chainspect. The figure marks the first time the network has exceeded the $70,000 monthly revenue level, a milestone that points to real and growing fee capture through smart contract usage.
Smart Contract Activity Driving Fee Growth The revenue increase is not incidental. On-chain fees on Cardano are generated directly from transaction activity, including smart contract execution. , reflecting a maturing decentralised application layer rather than simple token transfers alone.
That stability makes revenue growth driven by volume and smart contract complexity, not fee inflation, a more credible signal of genuine network demand.
, meaning the revenue uptick reflects a lift in overall activity rather than a spike in per-transaction costs.
Broader Network Context The revenue milestone arrives as Cardano continues to expand its ecosystem footprint.
While $72,910 in monthly revenue remains modest relative to larger Layer 1 networks, the directional trend matters. A near 25% month-on-month increase suggests that fee-generating activity on Cardano, particularly through decentralised applications, is accelerating. For a network that has historically been criticised for low throughput and limited DeFi adoption, the data offers a tangible counter-argument.
Whether the momentum holds will depend on continued developer activity and user adoption across the protocol's growing application layer.
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Cardano has achieved a new record for its transaction throughput in a single block, another incredible milestone for the network's performance.
According to Chainspect, Cardano broke its own single-block TPS record, reaching 436 TPS on October 7, up from a figure of 345 TPS recorded earlier that same day.
"A record, then a bigger one, all in one day," Chainspect noted. The back-to-back milestones highlight the Cardano network's ability to handle significant bursts of transaction activity.
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⚡ @Cardano broke its own single-block TPS record. 436 TPS on October 7, up from 345 TPS earlier that day. A record, then a bigger one, all in one day. 📊 https://t.co/C2NFatKYPM https://t.co/bdvQ7EbhtH
— Chainspect (@chainspect_app) October 8, 2026 Cardano's upcoming Ouroboros Leios protocol is expected to supercharge the network's scalability, targeting 1,000 transactions per second (TPS).
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Additionally, Chainspect reported that Cardano reached $70,000 in monthly revenue, higher than the previous month, adding that Cardano's monthly numbers looked good.
Cardano returns to spotlight amid fresh developmentsAccording to Santiment, Cardano's social buzz recently reached yearly highs with fresh project developments serving as a catalyst. RealFi launched on Cardano mainnet on October 1, while anticipation around Leios, Fireblocks support, and new institutional integrations helped to drive Cardano's biggest discussion spike of the year.
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The last 24 hours have seen a string of developments for the Cardano blockchain. The Cardano Foundation recently announced that its .ada application is advancing to the next phase of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) New Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) Program. The Cardano Foundation's application initiative follows a Governance Action that passed with nearly 75% support from the Cardano community, with the Foundation pursuing .ada for the ecosystem's benefit.
If approved, the .ada gTLD will unlock several opportunities for the Cardano ecosystem, including ensuring a competitive digital presence for Cardano and enabling innovations for Cardano.
In separate news, Cardano is now supported in the Open Wallet Standard (OWS), starting with the v1.4.3 release. OWS is open-source software that lets applications and AI agents keep wallets on the machine they run on and sign through one interface across many blockchains.
Cardano's programmable token standard, CIP-0113, is live on mainnet, allowing issuers of stablecoins and other regulated assets to build compliance rules directly into native Cardano tokens.
Společnost Midnight na konferenci TOKEN2049 představila Night Mode, který kombinuje důkazy s nulovou znalostí, víceúčastnické výpočty a důvěryhodná prostředí pro chytré kontrakty a umožňuje selektivní zpřístupňování dat.
Charles Hoskinson helped popularize smart contracts on Cardano. At TOKEN2049 in Singapore, he spent time criticizing them.
The Cardano founder used the stage to promote what he calls the Night Frame, a framework that pairs zero-knowledge proofs, multi-party computation and trusted execution on Midnight, the privacy-focused partner chain built by Input Output Global (IOG).
What Hoskinson brought to Singapore TOKEN2049 ran on October 7-8, 2026. Hoskinson used the event to push Midnight to the front of the Cardano conversation, even where the rest of the ecosystem seemed not to.
He took aim at the community-funded Cardano booth, which did not feature Midnight. Hoskinson called the project the ecosystem’s “Where’s Waldo?”
Zero-knowledge proofs let someone prove a statement is true without revealing the data behind it. Think of showing a bouncer you are over 21 without handing over your birthday, address and middle name.
Multi-party computation lets several parties jointly calculate a result while each keeps its inputs private. Picture coworkers figuring out their average salary without anyone revealing what they earn.
Trusted execution environments are sealed-off areas of hardware where code runs out of view of the rest of the machine.
The Midnight product slate Midnight also ran its own keynote at TOKEN2049, separate from the Cardano booth it was left out of. The team showed several products, including Night Mode, Midnight Passport, the Collateral Warehouse and Offer Files.
Night Mode uses the same trio of zero-knowledge proofs, trusted execution environments and multi-party computation. It is designed to support programmable smart contracts with selective disclosure, written in Midnight’s Compact programming language.
The network runs on two tokens. NIGHT handles governance and utility and has a fixed supply of 24 billion. DUST is a shielded token that serves as a renewable resource for paying transaction fees.
Midnight has also been rolling out upgrades to support permissionless smart contracts on mainnet, with that capability going live in early October 2026.
The project is also reaching beyond Cardano. An integration with Solana wallets for private swaps has been announced as part of a broader cross-chain push.
How Midnight got here Midnight’s genesis block launched on March 17, 2026, marking its public debut. Hoskinson personally put around $200 million into the project’s development.
The booth episode also points to a wider strain. The event exposed governance tensions inside the Cardano ecosystem, particularly between IOG and the Cardano Foundation.
What this means for Cardano, Midnight and NIGHT holders For investors, the most direct exposure is NIGHT. The token has traded with notable volatility as Midnight updates have rolled out.
The Solana wallet integration may be the more consequential detail long term. A privacy layer that only serves one ecosystem has a ceiling. One that plugs into other major chains could draw transaction volume from users who never touch Cardano at all.
The risks are real, though. Combining three complex privacy technologies raises the engineering bar, and trusted execution environments add reliance on hardware rather than pure cryptography. Developers also have to learn Compact, which is a cost for any new language competing for attention.
What to watch next: developer activity now that permissionless contracts are live on mainnet, real usage of the Solana private swap integration, and whether the next Cardano booth finds room for Waldo.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Cardano’s booth at TOKEN2049 did not feature its biggest and most popular project, Midnight. The privacy-focused blockchain is a major part of the Cardano ecosystem, yet it wasn’t featured anywhere in the branding.
Charles Hoskinson has publicly criticized this and called it a result of governance politics at the project.
The timing made the omission harder to ignore. Hours earlier, Midnight announced plans to support Solana wallets.
Cardano’s Biggest Project Is MissingHoskinson walked viewers through the Cardano display at TOKEN2049, which featured projects from across the ecosystem. Even SNEK, the Cardano meme coin, made the wall.
Midnight did not. This is odd because Midnight is Cardano’s largest project and NIGHT already trades on Binance as a Cardano native token.
He also suggested the Cardano Foundation helped decide what appeared on the booth, joking that Midnight may simply be so private that it refused to reveal itself.
The dispute quickly became more serious.
“The booth is a public asset for Cardano. It was funded by the Cardano community.”
— Charles Hoskinson
That matters because Cardano’s treasury is ultimately funded and governed through ADA holders and their delegates.
Midnight Finds a Warmer Welcome on SolanaThe booth dispute also exposes a broader political divide inside Cardano.
Hoskinson has repeatedly clashed with the Cardano Foundation over governance and the direction of the ecosystem. That tension resurfaced in June when a crypto fund founder called for Hoskinson’s removal, triggering a fierce community debate.
Meanwhile, Midnight is widening its reach.
At a recent Solana Summit, the team said Solana users would eventually be able to make private swaps without installing separate software.
Hoskinson publicly welcomed the move in a quote post.
The irony is difficult to miss. A project built inside the Cardano ecosystem is now being welcomed by Solana while its own logo is missing from Cardano’s biggest conference booth.
Charles Hoskinson reacts to ADA’s latest rally with “#LeiosIsComing” as Cardano’s Linear Leios upgrade advances toward a planned late-2026 rollout.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has tied ADA’s latest rally to renewed attention around Ouroboros Leios, quote-posting a price chart with a simple message: “#LeiosIsComing.”
The post came as ADA pushed toward $0.27, but the bigger story is that Leios itself is still moving through testing rather than launching on mainnet today.
#LeiosIsComing https://t.co/SQT49YdM9U
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) October 5, 2026
Hoskinson reacted to a post calling ADA a “sleeping giant waking up.” The quoted 15-minute ADA/USDT chart showed price jumping from roughly $0.244 toward $0.264 before his response.
ADA went on to close around $0.2704 on Oct. 5, after trading near $0.244 two days earlier. That works out to roughly an 11% move across the period. Price has since cooled, with ADA trading near $0.253 on Oct. 7.
Leios Is Still a Forward-Looking Catalyst Hoskinson’s hashtag should not be read as confirmation that Leios has already gone live.
Cardano’s official documentation says Linear Leios is the version planned for mainnet as part of the first phase of the Dijkstra hard fork, currently targeted for late 2026.
The upgrade is designed to raise throughput by allowing producers to create larger “endorser blocks” alongside normal Praos blocks.
The public Leios testnet, Musashi Dojo, has been running since June 23. Cardano says the rollout remains subject to governance and will also depend on enough stake pools registering the BLS keys needed for the voting process.
Earlier development plans estimated Leios could expand Cardano’s throughput capacity by roughly 10x to 65x through a phased rollout. Those figures describe the intended scaling improvement, not current mainnet performance.
ADA Rally Already Had More Than One Driver The timing also matters.
Hoskinson’s post followed the rally rather than clearly preceding it, so the move cannot be attributed to Leios alone. Cardano had already seen fresh attention after RealFi launched on mainnet on Oct. 1, while derivatives activity also expanded sharply.
The Crypto Basic reported this week that ADA open interest climbed to $304 million, its highest daily close since at least early April, while whale transactions above $100,000 jumped to 413 on Oct. 5.
That makes the current setup broader than one social-media reaction. ADA rallied as fresh leverage entered the market, RealFi moved onto mainnet, and Hoskinson brought Leios back into focus.
The next development to watch is not another hashtag, but whether the Dijkstra process advances toward an approved mainnet rollout and whether the network activity following recent launches begins to match the technical expectations surrounding Leios.
ADA za posledních 24 hodin klesla o více než 8 % pod 0,255 USD, přestože počet transakcí velryb v hodnotě nejméně 100 000 USD dosáhl 5. října 314, což bylo maximum za více než čtyři měsíce.
ADA is down the most today among the larger-cap alts.
It was just yesterday that we wrote about ADA breaking out, as the asset had climbed to a multi-month peak of over $0.27 and analysts had just turned highly bullish, with massive price predictions flying left and right.
However, the asset was rejected badly. In fact, ADA is down by over 8% in the past 24 hours and now sits below $0.255. This is rather surprising given the latest developments on the whale front.
Whales Waking Up Data provided by Santiment Intelligence indicates that there’s a significant increase in activity among the largest market participants in the broader Cardano ecosystem. Transactions worth at least $100,000 jumped to 314 on October 5, the highest level of such activity in over four months.
It’s worth noting that higher whale transaction counts show that large holders are becoming more active again, but do not reveal whether they are buying or selling. Cardano crowd interest is on the rise again as ADA’s social dominance reached 1.16%. This became its highest reading for the year after the token rallied from under $0.19 to over $0.27 within a few weeks.
Santiment explained that fresh developments, including the October 1 RealFi mainnet launch, anticipation surrounding Leios, Fireblocks support, and additional institutional integrations, have helped put Cardano back on the social media map. After all, the asset’s market cap gained over 42% since September 16 before today’s pullback drove it south.
🚨 Cardano Whales Wake Up, ADA Marketcap Now Up 42% Since September 16th!
🐋 Cardano’s +42% run since September 16th has whales moving again. ADA transactions worth at least $100K surged to 413 in one day, marking the highest whale activity since June 4th.
🗣️ The crowd has suddenly arrived to the party as well. ADA’s social dominance hit 1.16%, its highest level of 2026. The altcoin’s move from ~$0.19 to ~$0.27 has clearly pulled Cardano back into the crowd’s spotlight.
🧑💻 What’s causing all this? Fresh project developments are adding fuel. RealFi launched on Cardano mainnet October 1st, while anticipation around Leios, Fireblocks support, and new institutional integrations is helping drive Cardano’s biggest discussion spike of the year.
🔗 Our Live Cardano Chart: https://t.co/txYFvaHIzO
— Santiment Intelligence (@SantimentData) October 6, 2026
Was Leverage to Blame? As mentioned above, ADA has slumped over 8% in the past day, making it the worst-performing altcoin among the 30 largest digital assets. Some of the blame could be on leveraged positions. As reported yesterday, ADA open interest increased by 25% in just days to over $300 million.
You may also like: Cardano Joins Solana, XRPL in AI Agent Payments Race as ADA Gains 6% Important Cardano News and ADA Price Update: August 5th Cardano (ADA) Is Quietly Pulling Off a Bear Market Comeback And Retail Hasn’t Noticed That made the rally more than a simple short squeeze, but it also meant more leverage exposure was sitting in the market when price direction flipped. ADA was up by almost 11% to over $0.27 on October 5, but the subsequent market-wide liquidation flush has now erased a major portion of those gains.
Výzkumník John Nakamoto označil za hlavní problém Cardana propast mezi tržní hodnotou 10,2 mld. USD a 71 mil. USD v celkové uzamčené hodnotě (TVL) v DeFi.
Crypto researcher John Nakamoto says Cardano (ADA) main problem is not its technology, but its ability to turn its high market value into real-world network use.
He made this point on X after examining Cardano’s performance since ADA became the third-largest cryptocurrency by market value in 2021.
On September 3, 2021, ADA was worth about $2.97, giving Cardano a market value of around $95 billion, according to Nakamoto. ADA later rose above $3 before beginning a long decline.
Since its peak, ADA price has lost more than 92% of its value. This has led some people to call Cardano “dead.”
However, Nakamoto says that view misses the real problem facing the blockchain.
Cardano Value vs. Network Usage Nakamoto says a massive gap exists between Cardano’s market value and how much the network is actually used.
He pointed to a market value of about $10.2 billion, compared with only about $71 million locked in Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem. In other words, Cardano’s market value is around 144 times larger than the money in use in its DeFi system.
He also noted that Cardano has about $67 million in stablecoins, around $4.4 million in daily DEX trading volume, and roughly 16,000 daily active addresses.
For Nakamoto, these numbers expose Cardano’s biggest challenge of turning its high valuation into real usage.
He believes Cardano’s technology is strong, but investors ultimately want to see more users, money, apps and activity on the network.
USDCx Brings More Money to Cardano Nakamoto believes USDCx can help solve Cardano’s liquidity problem. USDCx is backed 1:1 by USDC and gives users access to dollar-based liquidity on the Cardano network. This makes it easier for money to move into Cardano without relying heavily on third-party bridges.
Nakamoto also pointed to Cardano’s recent network upgrades and governance changes.
The Van Rossem hard fork was an important step because the Cardano community proposed, discussed and approved it through the network’s governance system.
He also highlighted Leios, a project designed to help Cardano handle many more transactions. One part of Leios, called Input Endorsers, increases network capacity by 10 to 65 times. The technology remains under development and has not been fully deployed.
Cardano Treasury Is a Major Advantage Nakamoto also believes Cardano’s treasury can become a major advantage. ADA holders participate in governance through representatives, while stake pool operators and the Constitutional Committee also help make decisions.
Nakamoto estimates that Cardano’s treasury holds around 1.4 billion ADA. Meanwhile, a large treasury does not automatically make the network more valuable. What matters is how that money is used.
The market wants to see the treasury bring in more users, liquidity, DeFi activity, transactions, fees, and applications.
Privacy and Real-World Uses Nakamoto says privacy is becoming an important part of Cardano’s future. He pointed to Midnight, a Cardano partner project focused on protecting private data, along with its NIGHT token. Privacy is becoming increasingly important as people and businesses look for ways to keep sensitive information safe while using blockchain technology.
Nakamoto also highlighted Cardano’s work with Petrobras, a Brazilian energy company. Petrobras is using Cardano to record and verify information about sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel.
This gives Cardano a real-world use beyond simply buying and selling cryptocurrency.
CIP-113 Helps with Real-World Assets Nakamoto also mentioned CIP-113, which helps Cardano with the tokenization of real-world assets. The proposal lets developers build rules directly into tokens. These rules include KYC checks, approved-user lists, transfer limits, freezing features and location restrictions.
CIP-113 does not automatically make Cardano legally compliant. Instead, it gives developers tools to build certain regulatory requirements directly into token transfers.
This is useful for stablecoins, tokenized securities and other real-world assets.
ADA Remains Important to Robinhood Nakamoto also noted that ADA was included in Robinhood’s initial list of cryptocurrencies for its planned perpetual futures product for eligible U.S. customers. The list includes Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), XRP, Dogecoin (DOGE), Cardano (ADA), Chainlink (LINK), and Hyperliquid (HYPE).
According to Nakamoto, ADA contracts offer up to 3x leverage and have no expiration date.
He said this does not prove Cardano is a DeFi leader. However, it shows that ADA still has enough market interest and liquidity to be included among the major assets.
Cardano Biggest Challenge Is Adoption In sum, Nakamoto rejects the idea that Cardano is “dead.” He urges investors to focus on how much people actually use the network.
The main problem is the enormous gap between Cardano’s market value and its real economic activity.
Cardano is worth far more in the market than the money currently in its DeFi ecosystem. Nakamoto believes this gap needs to shrink.
For ADA holders, growing the ecosystem is just as important as improving the technology.
Cardano has the technology, treasury, governance structure and infrastructure to build a larger ecosystem. The next step is converting those strengths into users, liquidity, applications, DeFi activity and real-world projects.
Cardano (ADA) po dřívějším 4% růstu v týdnu vzrostlo nad 0,270 USD; otevřený zájem na futures dosáhl 695,71 milionu USD. Klíčová rezistence se nachází na úrovni 0,299 USD.
Cardano (ADA) topped $0.270 on Tuesday, extending gains after a 4% rally earlier in the week and pushing the token above its major daily moving averages. Market participants noted increasing derivatives activity, echoing renewed investor interest in ADA as the network prepared for a key ecosystem event.
Node diversity event draws focus to decentralizationAttention within the Cardano community centered on Tuesday’s Node Diversity Celebration Day in Singapore, held as a precursor to the TOKEN2049 conference. The event brought together contributors and developers involved in expanding Cardano’s node ecosystem, which is essential to the blockchain’s decentralization and resilience.
Cardano, a proof-of-stake blockchain established by Input Output Global and known for prioritizing scalability and interoperability, uses a decentralized network of nodes to validate transactions and maintain security.
The workshop ran for three hours, featuring development updates and outlining timelines for new, independent node implementations. Organizers emphasized that diversifying node software is designed to strengthen network resilience against failures and attacks, with further phases aimed at long-term decentralization.
Participants said the event served as a status check on ongoing initiatives rather than marking full completion. For investors, progress in node diversity is often seen as a factor that can boost confidence in the network’s future, although much depends on the delivery and adoption of proposed improvements.
Mini dictionary: Node diversity, in blockchain, refers to the use of multiple, independently developed node software clients on a single network. This approach enhances resilience by reducing reliance on a single codebase, lowering risks from bugs and security flaws.
ADA’s price action received additional support from derivatives markets. Data from CoinGlass indicated that ADA futures open interest reached $695.71 million on Tuesday, nearing the September peak after steady growth since early October.
MetricValueReferencePrice$0.270TuesdayFutures open interest$695.71 millionNear September highsFunding rate0.010%TuesdayKey resistance$0.299Upside targetInitial support$0.245DownsideThe funding rate for ADA perpetual futures entered positive territory, moving up to 0.010% on Tuesday. Positive funding occurs when traders with long positions pay those with shorts, indicating stronger appetite for upward price movement. However, rising leverage can also increase price volatility.
Technical outlook: ADA tests resistance after strong rallyOn technical charts, ADA continues to trade above its 50-day, 100-day, and 200-day exponential moving averages, signaling a continued bullish outlook. Momentum indicators remain strong, although some suggest the current rally could be approaching short-term exhaustion.
The Relative Strength Index (RSI) for ADA stands at 71, marking entry into the overbought range and indicating that upside momentum is stretched. Meanwhile, the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) is still positive, reinforcing buyer enthusiasm.
Analysts caution that while indicators remain favorable, a period of consolidation or a brief correction could develop as ADA tests the next resistance zone. The key hurdle is located near $0.299, just below the psychologically significant $0.300 level.
ADA is currently in a constructive uptrend, but both funding data and technicals show that any sustained rally from here will require fresh demand, especially as the token approaches major resistance levels.
Should ADA break and close above this resistance on a daily basis, analysts see potential for the uptrend to extend further. However, if the token fails to overcome this barrier, a retracement toward initial support at $0.245 could follow, with further cushions at the 200-day EMA near $0.240 and $0.236.
Additional support is marked by the 50-day EMA at $0.226 and the 100-day EMA at $0.215. Should the correction deepen, longer-term support resides at a former trendline breakout around $0.203, with a base at $0.150 providing a more distant downside reference.
For now, Cardano’s recovery trend remains intact, as market participants await confirmation of a breakout or signs of consolidation near the critical $0.299-$0.300 resistance area.
Cardano (ADA) po spuštění mainnetu RealFi za 24 hodin posílilo téměř o 10 % na 0,273 USD; otevřený zájem u futures kontraktů vzrostl o 15 % na 614,98 milionu USD.
TLDR Cardano (ADA) advanced nearly 10% on Monday, reaching $0.273. The price surge came after the RealFi mainnet went live on October 3, a project backed by Charles Hoskinson. Futures open interest increased 15% to reach $614.98 million. Over the past 30 days, ADA has gained 27%, surpassing both Ethereum and Solana. Market participants are monitoring the $0.260 support zone before targeting the $0.30 level. Cardano’s native token advanced to $0.273 during Monday’s trading session. The gain represented a nearly 10% increase over the previous 24 hours, building on a 6% climb recorded the day prior.
Cardano (ADA) Price This performance positioned ADA among the top-gaining major cryptocurrencies during that trading window. Bitcoin maintained levels above $85,700, while Ethereum exchanged hands above $2,730.
XRP remained above $1.520 throughout the same timeframe. With the wider cryptocurrency market experiencing relatively muted price action, Cardano’s upward movement drew particular attention.
Catalysts Behind the Price Movement The price surge coincided with RealFi’s mainnet activation on October 3. RealFi represents a real-world asset platform that has received investment support from Charles Hoskinson.
This development provided market participants with a concrete fundamental catalyst beyond general cryptocurrency market dynamics. The launch delivered a practical use case directly integrated with Cardano’s blockchain infrastructure.
Market observers are also monitoring Cardano’s scheduled participation at TOKEN2049 Singapore on October 7 and 8. Such high-profile industry gatherings frequently generate increased interest in featured projects’ token valuations.
Meanwhile, the Cardano community voted down a treasury funding proposal for a Cardano Summit. Even with that setback, ADA has posted a 27% gain across the past 30 days.
Network metrics have shown improvement as well. Total value locked across Cardano-based protocols expanded by 20% within a five-day window, partially attributed to FluidTokens incentive programs delivering a 6% ADA yield through December 31.
Technical analyst Lucky (@LLuciano_BTC) commented on the price action, stating in his view that ADA “is setting its tone for another parabolic run.” This observation captures the optimistic outlook among traders monitoring the token’s recent momentum.
Derivatives Market Indicates Growing Long Positioning According to CoinGlass metrics, ADA futures open interest expanded 15% within a 24-hour period, climbing to $614.98 million. Open interest represents the aggregate value of all outstanding futures contracts.
A positive funding rate emerged concurrently with this increase. Under these conditions, traders maintaining long positions compensate those holding short positions, indicating heightened demand for bullish exposure.
Cardano’s monthly performance has exceeded that of other leading blockchain tokens. ADA’s 27% advance compares favorably to Ethereum’s 10% increase and Solana’s 17% rise during the identical period.
Decentralized exchange volume on Cardano, however, has moved in the opposite direction. Trading volume declined from $11.74 million on October 1 to $5.72 million by October 5, per DefiLlama data.
$ADA ✍🏻
4D A solid manipulation move. On our spot watchlist for the coming days.
Closes above the shaded area would strengthen the case for a move toward the dashed line target. pic.twitter.com/jSrCqaH3AK
— LSTRADER (@LSTraderCrypto) October 5, 2026
At the current price of $0.2718, ADA maintains a position above $0.2632, a Fibonacci retracement level derived from the drawdown between $0.3136 and $0.1385. Sustained daily closes above this technical marker could facilitate a move toward $0.30, followed by the previous peak near $0.3136.
An extended projection identifies $0.3916 as a potential target, though this level represents a longer-term objective rather than an immediate goal. For downside scenarios, the 200-day exponential moving average positioned near $0.2472 serves as the initial support zone.
Beneath that threshold, market participants are focusing on $0.2328, with additional support zones at $0.2260 and the 50-day exponential moving average at $0.2244. These price levels have historically attracted buying pressure.
As of October 5, ADA maintains its position above near-term technical support following the RealFi mainnet activation and in anticipation of its TOKEN2049 Singapore presentation.
