The Cardano blockchain has seen substantial growth over the last year, as shown by the increase in the number of wallets holding the network’s native token, ADA.
On December 24, 2021, the total number of Cardano wallets was 2.5 million. Since then, more than 500,000 ADA wallets have been added.
Indeed, as of February 3, the total number of ADA wallets stands at 3,002,727, showing that over 12,200 wallets were added per day throughout the time, resulting in a 20.1% rise in the total number of wallets.
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Cardano wallet growth
Notably, the number of Cardano wallet owners increased by 1,200% from 190,000 at Christmas 2020 to 2.5 million on December 24, 2021, and the most recent data suggests that Cardano is not slowing down any time soon.
The significant 3 million milestone has been reached at a time when the network is enjoying growth fueled by many updates, with ADA climbing to become the sixth biggest cryptocurrency in the world by market value.
In general, the upgrades have served as a catalyst for ADA’s surge, which has resulted in more interest from investors, which Finbold highlighted when reporting the 11 ways Cardano is planning to scale in 2022.
Updates to the ADA network
Elsewhere, coinciding with the wallet growth is the network development as smart contracts on Cardano recently hit the 1,000 milestone on January 27.
Following this, between January 30 and February 1, the number of smart contracts climbed by 116, its largest-ever rise.
Owing to the Alonzo update in September 2021, which involved the addition of smart contract capability, ADA’s scalability and speed were enhanced. This also had an effect on the Cardano blockchain load, which remained above 90% for over a week, the first time the system has ever achieved this level of blockchain load and sustained those metrics.
Most recently, Meld, a new decentralized finance protocol launched on the Cardano blockchain, has managed to secure 100 million stakes of its native token MELD in only three days after its launch.
Currently, Cardano is trading at $1.07, up 2.47% in the last 24 hours and 3.56% across the previous seven days, according to CoinMarketCap data.
