Cardano: With the Vasil hardfork just days away, ADA shows no signs of recovery

Cardano [ADA], in its newly published weekly development updates, saw some ecosystem growth between 9 to 16 September. According to the report, 98 projects launched on the blockchain within the period under review. This represented a 4% uptick from the 94 projects launched on the network the week before. 

With a 2% increment between 9 and 16 September, the number of native tokens on the Cardano grew to 6.1 million. Furthermore, since its launch, the total number of transactions completed on the blockchain stood at 50 million, increasing by 1% in the last week. 

How art thou ADA?

Considering the period under review, the price of ADA declined by 1%, data from CoinMarketCap revealed. The price of the #8 largest cryptocurrency had rallied to a high of $0.52 on 10 September, after which it took a beating. 

Since 20 August, ADA had traded in a tight range. The lack of significant price action was attributable to the decline in the general cryptocurrency market and the frequent postponement of the Vasil hardfork.

With the upgrade scheduled to take place in five days, one might wonder whether ADA would react to this important upgrade the same way ETH reacted following the Ethereum merge.

VASIL UPGRADE: DATE CONFIRMED ?
Following the successful completion & extensive testing of all core components, plus confirmed community readiness, we along with @cardanostiftung can today announce 22nd September for the #Vasil upgrade on the #Cardano mainnet. ?$ADA
1/9

— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) September 2, 2022

At press time, with a 2.31% price rally in the last 24 hours, ADA exchanged hands at $0.4765.

On-chain analysis

It is known that the amount of daily active users correlates strongly with an asset’s price action. With no significant ADA price action between 9 and 16 September, unique addresses fell within the same period. According to data from Santiment, a 15% decline in ADA daily active addresses was logged in the seven days. 

The asset’s seven-day Market Value Realized Value (MVRV) revealed that an average holder of ADA registered losses in the last week.

Source: Santiment

Since the release of the Ecosystem Readiness for Vasil Upgrade confirming the date of the Vasil Upgrade, developmental activity has grown. At 383 at press time, data from Santiment showed a 2% uptick in this metric since then.

Source: Santiment

In preparation for the hard fork, key stakeholders holding ADA have ramped up coin accumulation in the last three months. The count for addresses holding between 10,000 to 100,000 ADA coins has grown by 7% in the last 90 days.

Also, the index for ADA addresses holding between 100,000 to 1,000,000 ADA coins has gone up by 2% within the same period.

Source: Santiment

However, the bigger whales that held 1,000,000 and above ADA appeared weary of a low-price action . Hence, they have gradually reduced their ADA holdings. 

Source: Santiment