ADA, the native token of the Cardano blockchain clinched a new all-time high (ATH), as traders and investors are bullish in anticipation of the network’s smart contract launch which puts them in direct competition with the likes of Ethereum and Solana.
ADA is now ranked the 3rd most valuable cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of approximately $81 billion, taking the spot of BNB, the native token of the Binance Smart Chain, with a market capitalization of $72 billion.
A major reason for Cardano’s bullish trend is investors anticipation of the long-awaited smart contract that is expected to launch on the 12th of September 2021. The date was confirmed by an IOHK mid-month update done by Tim Harrison, the marketing & communications director of IOHK; Nigel Hemsley, the head of delivery & projects at IOHK; and Kevin Hammond, a software engineer at IOHK.
As earlier reported, the platform launched its smart contract testnet in May 2021, which the platform announced would be divided into 3 stages; Alonzo Blue, representing the first stage, Alonzo White, the second stage and Alonzo Purple, the final stage.
As previously reported by Nairametrics, since the successful completion of the first two Alonzo stages, Blue and White, the final, Alonzo Purple has commenced as the first fully public Cardano testnet to support smart contracts. This final stage involves bringing onboard third-party partners, such as exchanges and wallet providers, to ensure integration of the new code with their systems. So far in this final stage of testnet, the developer team has started with the systematic onboarding of cryptocurrency exchanges.
Bottomline
ADA was trading at $2.49 at the time of this writing. Analysts expect that ADA will continue this trend till next month when the smart contract officially launches on the platform.
