How has the Cardano (ADA) ecosystem been performing over the last three months? Here’s the latest onchain data.
Cryptocurrency data platform Messari has published its new report for Cardano (ADA).
The data reveals that Cardano achieved strong momentum in both technical infrastructure and ecosystem growth in the third quarter of the year. From DeFi and NFTs to governance and network activity, Cardano reportedly had one of its strongest quarters since 2022.
According to data from Messari, the Cardano DeFi ecosystem saw a 28.7% quarter-over-quarter increase in value locked (TVL) to $423.5 million, the highest level the network has seen since the beginning of 2022.
Cardano’s privacy-focused sidechain Midnight has entered into a significant partnership with Google Cloud.
In terms of governance, the most critical development of the quarter was Cardano’s transition to a fully community-elected Constitutional Committee. Roles previously held by organizations like IOG, EMURGO, and the Cardano Foundation were transferred to seven new, fully elected members following a DQuadrant audit. This step officially cements the Voltaire era on Cardano’s roadmap and is considered a major milestone in the network’s transition to a decentralized governance model.
The cultural aspects of the ecosystem also saw a significant recovery. Average trading volume in the Cardano NFT market increased by 561.7% quarter-over-quarter, reaching $262,450. Messari attributes this increase to both the emergence of new collectibles and the liquidity brought to the market by the rise in ADA prices.
On the technical side, the Halo2-Plutus verifier, released by the Input Output Engineering team, has attracted attention. This verifier allows Plutus smart contracts to verify zero-knowledge proofs. This simplifies the development of privacy-focused applications on Cardano and expands its interoperability with Midnight and other chains.
Network fees increased by 16.1 percent in dollar terms, bringing total fees to $841,000. In ADA terms, fees decreased by 2.2 percent to 1 million ADA. Messari attributes this divergence to the appreciation of ADA and the 14.6 percent decrease in app usage during the quarter.
On the staking side, the total staked ADA decreased by 0.5% to 21.8 billion ADA, while due to the increase in the ADA price, the USD staked amount increased by 40% to $17.6 billion. This was before the ADA price drop.
Cardano’s treasury, meanwhile, fell 10.9% in ADA terms to 1.6 billion ADA, but rose 24.6% in US dollars to $1.3 billion. The community controls the treasury entirely through on-chain governance after the Plomin hard fork, with 20% of transaction fees going to the treasury.
Network activity regained momentum this quarter. The number of daily transactions increased by 15.7 percent to 36,112, while the number of active addresses increased by 19.2 percent to 26,909. While the address-per-transaction ratio decreased slightly to 1.34, overall network utilization strengthened throughout the quarter.
