Cardano’s Alonzo Upgrade Serves as a Game Changer for ADA

Cardano’s coming upgrade, Alonzo, will be a game-changer for the smart contract platform. There is a lot of pessimism, in general, surrounding the upgrade, with odds being 59 against 41 based on the Polymarket prediction market.

The Alonzo Upgrade

A pseudonymous head of Coin Bureau who goes by Guy stated on Youtube says that he is expecting that several major projects in the crypto space, Cardano included, will get major achievements in the next couple of weeks.

The Cardano network has been receiving upgrades and developments at this time of its growth. It is at its Goguen phase, which dictates bringing smart contracts to the network. The roadmap is the third phase after Bryon and Shelley, and it was split into Allegra, Mary, and Alonzo.

First, Allegra went live in December 2020. Mary, on the other hand, went live on March 1 this year. That makes the Alonzo upgrade the final one to conclude the Goguen era. The Alonzo upgrade is split into three phases: Blue, White, and Purple to break it down further. The final upgrade deployment on the mainnet was scheduled for August 2021 this month, but there have been delays because its testnet is still in progress.

The Cardano community has been waiting eagerly for Alonzo, which brings the smart contract functionality to the network since it enables decentralized applications(dApps) on the blockchain.

Just the Beginning for ADA

Guy believes that the later phases of the Alonzo phase of ADA will stress the smart contract scalability of Cardano and reliability and try to capture any issues that remain in the system after the deployment of smart contracts.

From a price perspective, Guy points to Cardano’s large community and that early investors were fully vested long ago as signs of the coin’s strength. He added that he could see the price of ADA reaching $ to $5 by the end of 2021, assuming that Bitcoin sees another surge in September or even November.

Despite the many developments that Cardano has made since it was launched, with smart contracts being released, it is just the beginning for ADA. It is exciting and terrifying at the same time, he says, because so much is at stake with the success of the smart contract.

Almost 72% of All ADA is Staked

The Cardano network is currently experiencing low utility, which in turn is affecting the staking of ADA. Data show that about 72% of all ADA tokens staked about $30 billion, of approximately $42 billion market capitalization. It comprises 2,745 active pools with a total of around 716,000 addresses.

ADA staking is far more versatile than other protocols’ traditional staking techniques. Stakers can access their tokens at a time of choice, making it convenient to stake on the network. Adding smart contracts will impact a high portion of staking in the network, and staking will drop significantly due to more use cases.