Cardano could bring a compelling purchase opportunity with its wide usability

Cardano (CCC:ADA-USD) is the sixth largest cryptocurrency in the world. With a fully diluted market capitalization of about $ 90 billion, the ADA is one of the big ones in the crypto space.

There is a good reason for this; Cardano is not just another fashion fad or meme token. Instead, Cardano established itself as one of the first credible alternatives in the arena of proof-of-stake protocol.

Proof-of-stake excludes part of the mining in the cryptocurrency process and eliminates much of the cost and environmental burden found in traditional cryptocurrencies to prove work, such as Bitcoin (CCC:BTC-USD) in Ethereum (CCC:ETH-USD).

In fact, Cardano reached new heights this summer when he unveiled smart contracts. Cardano seemed to have a moment. Instead, a bad competitor, Solana (CCC:SOL-USD) appeared. So where does Cardano stand today and is it still good compared to other fast competitors?

Cardano’s intended use

Cardan has long been a great attraction that this is the clearest alternative to Ethereum.

Ethereum has, of course, created a huge amount of activity in its network thanks to the decentralized financial projects “DeFi”. However, Ethereum was a victim of its own success. With so many transactions, commissions have gone over the roof, making using Ethereum painful for smaller purchases.

Cardano is supposed to be the solution to this. Cardano was eventually built by a former Ethereum CEO with the aim of improving Ethereum’s weaknesses.

Because Cardano uses a proof-of-stake algorithm to prove work, it uses much less computing power to process transactions. It seemed inevitable that Cardano would take market share once his smart contracts went into effect.

Solana crashes the party

Unfortunately, things didn’t quite stick to the plan. Solana’s new rival has emerged from the ambiguity this year. The price of Solana started the year at $ 1.60. It now stands at about $ 230 per token, for more than 100 times the return on investment in one year.

Solana enjoyed these stunning profits because it was the fastest market DeFi with a low transaction fee. The saltworks is by no means perfect; this summer, for example, it had a major network outage. However, it was a good enough platform to quickly enable cryptocurrency applications to reach new heights.

While Cardano may have more solid technical support, much of winning is simply having a minimal viable product in the actual market.

Solana has achieved the huge advantage of the first step by incorporating so many high-profile non-exchangeable (NFT) projects into its ecosystem.

On the contrary, as our Mark Hake recently explained, Cardano is still missing killer application this will help her regain equality with Solana.

The window of opportunity is still wide open as Ethereum is stuck due to excessive transaction fees. If Cardano can seize the moment, ADA buyers should be doing well at today’s prices.

Cardano’s judgment

As a Cardan holder, it must be a disappointment to watch Solana take off so quickly. Cardano has been promising for years to create a vibrant DeFi ecosystem and smart contracts. Instead, Solana appeared seemingly out of nowhere and stole Cardan’s thunder.

In this case, the cryptocurrency seems to be a large enough market to have more than one ultimate winner. This is especially true in the DeFi space.

Although Cardano does not make the most of the current market opportunity, this is not necessarily a reason to abandon the project altogether.

As it is, Cardano’s investors spent a very long period of time getting to where ADA is today. Thus, Cardan’s supporters are unlikely to give up now, especially since real technical achievements were made in 2021.

While the price of the ADA has fallen by a third of its peak, it looks like a decent buying opportunity amid a wider rise in cryptocurrencies.

At the date of publication, Ian Bezek did not hold (directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author who are the subject of InvestorPlace.com Guidelines for publication.

Ian Bezek has written more than 1000 articles for InvestorPlace.com and Seeking Alpha. He also worked as a junior analyst for Kerrisdale Capital, a New York-based hedge fund valued at $ 300 million. You can reach him on Twitter at @irbezek.