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<\/p>\nThe transaction volume seen on the Cardano ($ADA) network has briefly surpassed that of the Ethereum ($ETH) blockchain ahead of the launch of a highly-anticipated decentralized exchange on Cardano called SundaeSwap.<\/p>\n
According to data from Messari, Cardano\u2019s daily transaction volume was at one point above the $7 billion mark, surpassing the daily transactions volume seen on Ethereum of around $5.4 billion. Both networks remained far below BTC\u2019s $16.8 billion.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Transaction volumes on Cardano exploded after SundawSwap, a \u201cnative, scalable decentralized exchange and automated liquidity provision protocol\u201d announced it was preparing to launch on mainnet on January 20. The platform is backed by cFund, Alameda Research, and Double Peak Group.<\/p>\n
The decentralized exchange will launch with an Initial Stake Pool Offering (ISO), which will see people delegate their ADA to staking pools taking part in the ISO, so that every epoch \u2013 a period of around five days \u2013 delegators are given tokens.<\/p>\n
Cardano\u2019s transition volume explosion was accompanied by a significant price rise, with ADA moving up 8% in the last 24-hour period. The cryptocurrency\u2019s price appreciated over 17% over the last few days as new smart contracts start being used on Cardano.<\/p>\n
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Notably, SundaeSwap isn\u2019t Cardano\u2019s first usable decentralized finance application. The network\u2019s first DeFi platform, MuesliSwap, conducted an under-the-radar offering and saw its total value locked explode to over $1 million in little over two days. It now has nearly $4 million in total value locked.<\/p>\n
MuesliSwap\u00a0is a decentralized exchange with launchpad functionalities that has also been launched on top of the Bitcoin Cash blockchain. The platform is not available on either Ethereum or the Binance Smart Chain, two of the largest DeFi platforms by total value locked.<\/p>\n
The price of ADA exploded last year ahead of the rollout of the widely anticipated Alonzo hard fork, which brings smart contracts into the network and allows it to compete with the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Ethereum (ETH), and Solana ($SOL).<\/p>\n
The Alonzo hard fork is part of the network\u2019s \u201cGoguen\u201d era, named after Joseph Goguen, an American professor of computer science from the University of California and the University of Oxford. The Goguen era comes after the Shelley phase, in which Cardano became a decentralized blockchain and community members became validators.<\/p>\n
As CryptoGlobe reported, the number of Cardano wallets grew over 1,200% year-over-year\u00a0from 190,000 to 2.5 million, showing that adoption of the cryptocurrency\u2019s network has been steadily growing, partly thanks to the implementation of smart contracts.<\/p>\n