Cardano continues going from strength to strength as staking addresses increase by over 100,000 in two months.

According to the online staking metrics website pooltool.io, staking addresses hit 942,000 on November 10. Compared to 821,000 staking addresses on September 10, an increase of 121,000 or nearly +15% in two months.

The numbers bode well insofar as on-chain evidence of Cardano’s growing recognition as a blockchain that’s here for the long haul. But, as mentioned by IOHK’s Director of Marketing and Communication, Tim Harrison, many challenges still lie ahead, and the way to tackle them is by making incremental changes over time.

Cardano staking metrics show a buoyant ecosystem

As well as a significant jump in the number of staking addresses, Cardano has also seen a rise in the total USD value of tokens participating in staking.

According to stakingrewards.com, the staked value of ADA tokens came in at $29.73 billion in mid-July. But now, the figure currently stands at $51.22 billion.

At that time, Solana was ranked third most staked at $10.48 billion. But its run-up over the last five months or so has ousted Cardano as the most staked crypto. Now, Solana is the most staked cryptocurrency project coming in at $97.79 billion staked.

Since the Alonzo smart contract upgrade was released on September 12, price action for ADA has been relatively flat, leading to a slide down the top ten market cap rankings.

Although a 13% swing to the upside on Tuesday saw ADA hit $ 2.39, a seven-week high, Wednesday’s sell-off saw all of those gains returned to the market.

What’s more, ADA is currently 30% down from its all-time high of $3.10 set at the start of September. Twitchy investors point to this, while other crypto projects, including Solana, continue gathering momentum as a sign all is not well.

Continuous improvement

Speaking recently, IOHK CEO Charles Hoskinson dismissed the relevance of short-term price action. He said what matters is strong fundamentals and solving problems, which are the keys to sticking around for the long term.

Similarly, Harrison said optimizing network performance through iteration and improvement, rather than hype and marketing, is what will “win the race.” But the path to an optimal network is achieved by taking gradual steps.

His recent blog post spoke of IOHK’s efforts in maximizing throughput and optimizing dApp usability.

“These are gradual upgrades that will be implemented step-by-step over the next few months to ensure that changes meet the network requirements and do not compromise on different properties. “

With so much still to do, it’s still early days for Cardano.