Cardano is up 14% over the past week, due to increased institutional investment prior to upgrading Alonzo. Although the technical schedule is unpredictable, the Cardano team has set the start date for the smart contract function in the mainnet to be mid-September.
Cardano Ranks Third in Market Cap, Surpassing Tether
Cardano surpassed the stablecoin USD Tether and became the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. At the time of writing, the price of ADA is $2.01 and the market value has exceeded $64 billion.
Cardano’s upcoming smart contract has continued to attract institutional capital inflows. When the two current cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum saw an outflow of nearly $22 million, Cardano Investment Products saw its inflows rise by $1.3 million.
Input-Outputt Hong Kong (IOHK), the decentralized blockchain company behind Cardano, recently announced that the team is expected to meet the expected hard fork date of its testnet and mainnet. IOHK shared an update on Twitter
Exchanges Have Started Testing the Smart Contract Functions
In their latest technical update, ADA developers pointed out that the Alonzo Purple testnet has started and pioneers, exchanges and decentralized application developers have started testing smart contract functions.
Interestingly, the introduction of Cardano’s Alonzo Hard Fork and Smart Contract in the mainnet is a step further than Ethereum. IOHK calls Cardano a “green blockchain”. Although rival Ethereum is still months away from the consensus mechanism and mining transformation, Cardano and other proof-of-stake protocols claim they have found a solution.
Investors noted that Cardano is preparing to replace the energy-intensive cryptocurrency and buy it before the next big upgrade to the altcoin blockchain. The public bet against Polymarket opposes the introduction of smart contracts before October 1, 2021, and now supports Cardano. The odds are 80-20 compared to 63-37 4 weeks ago.
Experts attribute Cardano’s rapid rise to its release in mid-September. MichaĂ«l van de Poppe, CEO and Co-Founder of Eight Global, analyzed the likelihood of ADA reaching $5:
