Cardano's fall began in September 2021 with the Alonzo hard fork, which added support for smart contracts. The upgrade paved the way for the fast-growing NFT and DeFi segments, which implied an increase in network usage and a rise in the coin's value. Investors were buying up ADA so actively that their share has exceeded the combined volume of whales and traders, with Cardano making it into the Top 3 of the rankings.

But things have gone awry, with the network facing enormous workloads and some users accusing the blockchain of being unable to process more than one transaction per block. Developer Charles Hoskinson denied the accusations and was supported by partners from young projects. 

For example, the decentralised exchange SundaeSwap promised to address its predecessors' shortcomings but still faced network overload and transaction delays on launch day (20 January 2022), which increased the outflow of investors.

Hoskinson promises that everything will change with the Vasil hard fork, which will add pipelining, increase network capacity and avoid a number of detected bugs. According to developers' estimates, Vasil is the most significant update to Cardano since it entered the Shelley phase. 

Major market players seem to share their optimism. Sharks with wallets of 10,000 to 100,000 ADA have added 79 million coins to their reserves in the last month.

Over 1,000 projects in various stages of development are also awaiting the update. Most of them are NFT-oriented.

The Vasil update should be rolled out by the end of July. If the network succeeds in achieving its goals, the number of projects implemented will increase manifold, as will the number of users and the demand for ADA.

StormGain Analytics Team

(crypto trading, exchange and storage platform)