• Cardano (ADA) has surged 13 percent in the day and surpassed Ethereum in terms of transaction volume.
  • Investors highly anticipate the launch of SundaeSwap DEX this Thursday, along with the developments following it.

 

Cardano (ADA) is the current highlight of the crypto space following recent achievements and expected developments. ADA has gained over 13 percent in the last 24 hours and over 32 percent in the last week to trade at $1.55. Compared to the rest of the top ten cryptocurrencies, Cardano is by far the best performer in those periods. The token has even pushed down rival Solana (SOL) to seventh place by market cap and taken up its spot as fifth.

Additionally, Cardano has surpassed Ethereum (ETH) in terms of transaction volume in the past 24 hours, according to crypto data provider Messari. Cardano had $7.02 billion, while the second-best cryptocurrency was followed by $5.41 billion. 

Even more, the network’s users have in the past 24 hours paid a collective $66,058 in transaction fees. Ethereum, on the other hand, a network plagued by high gas fees due to congestion, had $44.74 million in fees – almost 700 times higher than Cardano.

Cardano ecosystem developments

The above developments have been fueled by high anticipation for the Thursday launch of the SundaeSwap DEX. Investors hope the mainnet debut will provide momentum for additional projects and development on the network. However, there have been concerns on whether the network can handle an increase in transaction volume following SundaeSwap’s launch. Already, the platform reported a “large backlog in processing user transactions” during a test event. SundaeSwap added that it is launching with a beta label due to “transaction size limits” on Cardano.

Nonetheless, SundaeSwap is a development enabled by Cardano’s smart contracts, introduced with the September Alonzo hard fork. But even though the upgrade was much-hyped, there has been a slow deployment of decentralized apps (DApps) on the network. Cardano currently hosts only 62 DApps compared to Ethereum’s 3,022. Resultantly, ADA shed half its value from a September all-time high of $3.09. The token nearly hit a six-month low of $1.07 less than a week ago.

However, the launch of Pavia, the very first metaverse project brought it back from being too far gone. Additionally, a report from crypto research firm Santiment shows much activity behind the scenes. All through 2021, Cardano’s Github projects had more developer contributions than other smart contract platforms like Ethereum and Solana. Santiment calls developer activity “an underrated indicator of project success.”

Massive scaling in 2022

John Woods, director of Cardano architecture at IOHK, says the network has a “really solid plan for scaling” in 2022. Among the upcoming scaling solutions are Plutus script enhancements, Hydra, sidechains, and Mithril. Woods also said there is an “enormous” number of Cardano-based projects nearing the completion of their development. Cardano co-founder Charles Hoskinson echoed the same in a Jan. 14 blog post, saying massive scaling is coming in 2022.

Related: After Cardano smart contract deployment; the team takes focus on scaling and optimization

Last week, Cardano won a poll by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in which he sought to know Ethereum’s best alternative by 2035.