The Cardano ($ADA) network has been seeing increased interest from institutional investors and whales on its network, with the volume of large transactions exceeding $100,000 recently rising significantly.<\/p>\n
According to data shared by on-chain cryptocurrency analyst Ali Martinez, the volume of large ADA transactions has been steadily increasing, with a significant surge in the past few months. The surge shows growing engagement after a cryptocurrency market recovery and could shed light on their investment strategies.<\/p>\n
Whales are known to often take advantage of large cryptocurrency market movements, either to keep accumulating new tokens, or to divest some of their holdings after large price rises. While Cardano\u2019s price has recently surged amid a wider market recovery, it\u2019s still significantly down over the last 12 months.<\/p>\n
Despite the price drop, ADA\u2019s adoption has been growing. As reported, the total value locked on Cardano\u2019s decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem has recently hit a new all-time high of 361.8 million ADA tokens, worth over $110 million at the time of writing. The total value locked on Cardano surged this year.<\/p>\n
The largest decentralized finance protocol on the Cardano network is currently Minswap, which has a total value locked of over $44 million, representing over 37% of the total. The protocol is followed by WingRiders, Indigo, and\u00a0the Djed stablecoin, which went live at the end of January.<\/p>\n
Cardano is a smart contract hub with high throughput, making it a desirable option for developers seeking a scalable and secure platform. The protocol faces competition from rivals that include Solana ($SOL) and Avalanche ($AVAX), which themselves compete with the leading smart contract network Ethereum ($ETH).<\/p>\n
Despite the rise, data shows that\u00a080% of Cardano investors are in the red, 4% are at-the-money, or breaking even on their investments, and 16% are in-the-money, or sitting on unrealized gains.<\/p>\n
Cardano\u2019s supporters point out that the project has a strong development team and a solid roadmap for the future, which could make it a strong contender in the cryptocurrency space over the long term.<\/p>\n
The cryptocurrency community expects Cardano to experience an upward\u00a0movement during the month of March, at a time in which the cryptocurrency\u2019s adoption keeps on growing.<\/p>\n