Cardano Defies Bear Market As Smart Contracts Count Sees 10,000 Explosion

The Cardano network continues to defy expectations and prove its doubters wrong. This time, the network has hit a new milestone, which suggests that users are indeed taking advantage of its smart contract functionality. 

Data from Cardano Blockchain Insights has revealed an increase in the usage of Cardano’s Plutus V1 and V2 scripts. As of January 22, 24,050 smart contracts had been executed using these Plutus scripts. This is impressive, considering that this figure stood at 14,379 at the beginning of this year.

This recent increase can be traced back to January 9, when smart contract usage on the network really began to pick up. Specifically, the number of smart contracts executed on Cardano using the Plutus V2 scripts rose from 8,270 to 12,890 on that day. Since then, that figure has skyrocketed to 17,718. 

As expected, the Plutus v2 script is more widely used than its V1 counterpart, considering that the former is a newer generation of Cardano’s smart contract scripting language. Cardano introduced Plutus V2 to reduce user costs and enhance script throughput effectively. Meanwhile, this development no doubt further proves naysayers wrong. 

A recent report by crypto research firm K33 boldly asserted that there was no “proof of Cardano being used for anything.” K33 further suggested that a “group of bagholders” were the ones simply fabricating a majority of transactions on the network, and nothing meaningful was going on Cardano.

Dan Gambardello, the founder of Crypto Capital Venture, once highlighted how the Cardano network had improved since the last bull run. The network’s smart contract functionality was among the features he alluded to as undergoing a significant upgrade since then. Notably, these improvements form part of why he believes that ADA could rise to $11 in the next bull run.  

These improvements have indeed contributed to the ecosystem’s resurgence. Last year, the network saw a significant rise in its DeFi activity, and although there has been a decline recently, things are expected to pick back up soon enough. The network’s development activity also looks to be paying off, as Gambardello recently revealed that there is now Social Finance (SocialFI) on Cardano.

Members of the Cardano community will hope that a fiat-backed stablecoin can finally be introduced on the network. The introduction of a stablecoin is believed to be another factor that could help increase Cardano’s utility. This could also cause an inflow of new money into the ecosystem, something which could positively impact ADA’s price.