The Cardano (ADA) network underwent a substantial upgrade in September 2021, incorporating smart contract functionality and enabling the blockchain to process transactions more efficiently and at a faster pace. Despite a decline in the price of Cardano in 2022, the network’s development continued to grow through 2023.
In particular, the Vasil hard fork in September paved the way for the rapid development of Plutus Scripts, a Cardano-based smart contracts platform. Interestingly the number of smart contracts on the Cardano network reached 4,000 on December 3, and just two months on, that number has climbed to reach 5,000, as per data retrieved by Finbold from Cardano Blockchain Insights.
The number of smart contracts created using Plutus and presently running on the Cardano as of February 2 reached 5,006.
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Notably, the number of smart contracts on Cardano first hit 1,000 on January 28, 2022, meaning that in just slightly over a year, the network added 4,000 Plutus-based smart contracts on the blockchain.
Cardano Alonzo upgrade
Furthermore, the upgrade enabled the network to provide a decentralized finance (DeFi) application development platform while offering programmability to the community of developers. Despite multiple previous network enhancements, the adoption of smart contracts was a watershed point for the Cardano ecosystem.
Notably, the Cardano foundation tweeted on February 3 that in January, Cardano on-chain stats revealed that it ‘continues to see increases in transactions using smart contracts and metadata.”
As of February 2023, Cardano ranked second among the leading smart contract crypto projects by staking market cap with a valuation of $10.4 billion.
Notably, the Cardano team has been putting in some serious effort lately, focusing on enhancing the script capacity, completing the Plutus Debugger MVP, and ensuring full implementation of Babbage support in the Plutus tools before its official release.
