Notably, the hard fork with the update promising to improve the network scalability carried on with the growth with 100 new Plutus Scripts (a Cardano-based smart contracts platform) added in two weeks since Vasil. As of September 22, the date of the hard fork update, the number of smart contracts stood at 3,292 compared with October 6 with 3,392. The figures represent an increase of 100 smart contracts in 14 days, according to data acquired by Finbold using statistics from Cardano Blockchain Insights. Incorporating smart contract functionality, increasing the blockchain’s speed and scalability, providing a DeFi application development platform, and making the blockchain programmable are just a few of the many improvements introduced by the Alonso update in September 2021, and these improvements continue to accrue to the network with the latest Vasil hard fork.
Staked Cardano drops to 8-month low
In spite of the Vasil hard fork, it has not been successful in gaining substantial momentum so far in terms of staking value. On October 6, the total value locked (TVL) in Cardano dropped below $80 million for the first time since January 2022. Specifically, Cardano’s TVL fell as low as $76.66 million, representing a drop of 76.49% from a high of $326 million it had reached on March 24, 2022. Nevertheless, the crypto community at CoinMarketCap remain bullish on the price of Cardano by the end of October, its member votes estimated that ADA would trade at $0.5873, over 36% more than its price at the time these predictions were collected. As things stand at press time, Cardano is trading at $0.428, down 0.75% in the last 24 hours and 1.97% across the previous week with a total market capitalization of $14.6 billion.
