Cardano releases a major update on Voltaire era, will ADA make the most of it?

• In the derivatives market, sentiment for ADA started to turn bullish.
• Despite working on advancements, Cardano’s development activity stagnated.

Cardano [ADA] picked up pace over the last week, posting gains of 4.89% at the time of writing, per CoinMarketCap data. The coin was the fourth-largest crypto (excluding stablecoins) in the sector with a market cap in excess of $14 billion.

Read Cardano’s [ADA] Price Prediction 2023-24

However, a concerning factor was Cardano’s stagnant development activity. As per data from Santiment, the metric exhibited a flat line since 19 April. Development activity is an important indicator to evaluate the prospects of a blockchain, with low values implying that upcoming upgrades could be delayed.

Source: Santiment

Transition to Voltaire era

Cardano published the latest edition of its weekly development report on 28 April, highlighting key technological advancements.

One of the most important updates was regarding progress made on CIP-1694 and the Conway ledger era development. These included incorporation of Plutus v3 support into the Conway ledger, modifications made to delegation certificates and adding governance ledger states.

A change to Cardano’s on-chain governance system is proposed in CIP 1694, which has Voltaire’s birth year as its name. With the Voltaire era, Cardano intends to fully establish itself as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).

After CIP- 1694, any Cardano user will be able to submit a governance action which will be ratified by three groups – a Constitutional Committee, a group of delegation representatives (DReps), and stake pool operators (SPOs), thus giving the community a final say in Cardano’s functioning.

Another week, another #Cardano development update, now live on #EssentialCardano. Check this week’s highlights and get the latest on core technology, wallets and services, smart contracts, and scaling and governance developments. https://t.co/hxuEFoQVGN

— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) April 28, 2023

As far as progress on smart contracts were concerned, the Plutus team worked on Marconi indexers and built-in functions for BLS12-381 curves.

On the scaling front, the Hydra team worked on fixing state machine continuity on-chain, discussed voting project solutions and explored the addition of Hydra support to Kupo. Hydra is part of Cardano’s ambitious Basho roadmap, focused on improving the scalability and interoperability of the network.

Sentiment for Cardano shifts

After falling precipitously, the total value of assets locked (TVL) on the Cardano chain has started to recover. At press time, the TVL was $188.36 million, marking a 5% increase since 25 April.

It was during the market mayhem witnessed earlier in the month that the TVL fell below $200 million.

Source: DeFiLlama

How much are 1,10,100 ADAs worth today?

In the derivatives market, sentiments for ADA started to turn bullish as funding rates across most of the top exchanges were positive, data from Coinglass showed. Funding rates, which represent the cost of holding long or short positions, are positive when most traders position for price gains.

Source: Coinglass

The bullish narrative was also supported by data on Longs/Shorts Ratio. The number of long positions taken for ADA increased over the last two days, reflecting the growing optimism among traders.

Source: Coinglass