Here’s why ADA transaction volumes surpassed those of Bitcoin

Crypto investors checking out Messari’s charts and stats may have expected to glimpse Bitcoin or Ethereum at the top of the rankings when it came to 24-hour transaction volumes. However, many were stunned to see that the top crypto was sometimes Cardano, with ADA’s 24-hour transaction volumes often coming in above Bitcoin itself.

While some Cardano investors joyously took the data at face value, others were skeptical and claimed that there was a glitch. Now, Messari has stepped in to answer some questions.

Just Messari-ing around with you

The crypto metrics platform first confirmed that there had indeed been some “confusion around the methodology and validity” of Cardano’s volume calculation process.

Messari did not exactly specify the nature of the confusion but went on to discuss Cardano’s UTXO architecture. The platform tweeted,

“5/ @Cardano‘s UTXO architecture into account but instead uses a methodology that would be similar for accounting for “economic transactions” on the @ethereum network.”

There was some debate amongst users as to what this meant, and Messari promised to improve the way it documented the rationale behind its metrics.

To understand, let’s take a look at the metric in question. At press time, Cardano was still at the top of the list with $42.93 billion in 24-hour transaction volume, putting it some $6 billion dollars ahead of Bitcoin itself.

While adjusted transaction volume for Bitcoin was around $15.82 billion, Cardano’s adjusted transaction volume was still above $42 billion.

Source: messari.io

Messari explained,

“6/ This caveat is important. “Adjusted” can be interpreted as accounting for the @Cardano UTXO architecture and filtering out change outputs which is not the case.”

When considering that Cardano’s market cap was close to only $37 billion at press time, one can understand why users are still demanding clarity.

A feel-good moment

Metric-linked hiccups aside, it’s been a good time for Cardano bulls, as ADA’s price marked a strong recovery and rallied slightly above the $1 mark.

This came after months of prices spiraling down. The weighted sentiment reflected the investors’ relief as it shot out of negative territory to a 2022 high of around 2.158 at press time.

Source: Santiment

What’s more, founder Charles Hoskinson further fueled euphoria by reporting that “millions of native assets” had been issued and that there were hundreds of DApps.

At press time, there was a record of 4,008,512 such assets on the Cardano mainnet.

Remember when I predicted thousands of assets and DApps on Cardano? Well I was wrong, there are now millions of native assets issued and DApps are now in the hundreds. #SlowAndSteady https://t.co/mK4So6NHa1

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) March 23, 2022