Cardano TVL Hits $573M as Network Preps for Chang Hard Fork

Cardano’s recent weekly development report for August 30, 2024, highlighted a range of technical updates and on-chain statistics, noting the network’s ongoing progress.

The report revealed a notable increase in Total Value Locked (TVL), now reaching $573 million, up from the previous week’s $556 million. Additionally, the network’s ecosystem continues to expand, with 1,373 projects actively building on Cardano and the number of native tokens rising slightly to 10.32 million from last week’s 10.31 million. Transactions have also seen steady growth, now totaling 95.6 million.

What’s going down on #Cardano? Check out this week’s development update on #EssentialCardano and stay abreast of all the latest developments in core technology, wallets and services, smart contracts, and scaling and governance.

🔗https://t.co/iBDOnKUQKy pic.twitter.com/oChlxhXGJc

— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) August 30, 2024

Core Technology Advances

Per the report, this week, the ledger team focused on enhancing the network’s core technology, particularly in preparation for the Chang hard fork, scheduled for September 1. The team conducted extensive conformance tests and worked closely with the community and other core teams to ensure a smooth transition.

Key changes documented for the upcoming Conway upgrade could affect decentralized application (DApp) developers, notably within PlutusV3, where visibility issues in stake credentials certificates may arise. Additionally, the team addressed a minor bug related to DRep expiration initialization, ensuring it does not impact the Chang upgrade.

Concurrently, the site reliability engineering (SRE) team made significant strides in enhancing Cardano’s environment. Notably, they upgraded the pre-production network to the Conway era and introduced improvements to the nixosModule, which now includes Prometheus metrics and automated scraping capabilities. These enhancements, alongside other updates, aim to bolster the network’s performance and reliability.

Scaling and Governance

The Lace team is preparing to launch version 1.15 of the wallet, which will introduce new governance features, further aligning Cardano’s infrastructure with its evolving governance framework. Meanwhile, the Mithril team initiated the decentralization of the Mithril network’s signature orchestration.

In addition, they optimized memory usage for signers and completed a proof of concept for diffusing Mithril signatures with the Cardano network layer. These efforts are part of broader scaling initiatives designed to enhance the network’s efficiency and scalability.

Analyst ADA Predictions

On the market front, Cardano (ADA) has faced challenges in recovering from recent losses, leading to a divided outlook within the crypto community. Per an update by The Crypto Basic, some analysts foresee significant gains, while others remain cautious.

Notably, Alan Santana, an analyst on TradingView, outlined a detailed chart showing Cardano’s prolonged bear market phase, characterized by a descending channel. This phase has led to lower highs and lows, reflecting a bearish sentiment. However, Santana’s analysis also highlights a potential breakout, with projections of a price surge of over 2,200%. The chart suggests possible increases of $1.0002, reflecting a 284.58% rise, and $1.6709, indicating a 475.39% gain, marking potential intermediate resistance levels.

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