ADA

Cardano

Layer 1

A research-driven layer-1 with working on-chain governance, but little paid usage and a price down two-thirds in a year.

Large, but underused v1.2 · as of 2026-10-20 · framework v1.13 Coinsight · all analyses
Bottom line

Cardano's machinery works: the Van Rossem hard fork in July was the first upgrade ratified fully on-chain, and the Dijkstra fork with Linear Leios is scoped for late 2026. Usage has not followed: over the 12 months to 1 Sep 2026 fees were ~3.3M ADA against ~494M ADA of staking rewards, and DeFi TVL is only $62M. ADA is −66% over a year and −93% below its 2021 ATH. A Grayscale spot ETF targeted for late October is the main near-term catalyst.

Scorecard (1–5)
Project
Token performance
Tokenomics
Price
$0.2241
+2.7% 24h · −1% 30d · CoinGecko 20 Oct
Market cap
$8.42B
rank #17 · FDV $10.1B
24h volume
$251.7M
3.0% of market cap
From ATH
−93%
ATH $3.09, Sep 2021
2026 YTD
−33%
$0.3333 → $0.2241
Treasury cap used
457M / 500M ADA
withdrawals enacted since Feb 2026 · 16 Oct

The last 12 months

$0.25$0.5$0.75Oct 25NovDecJan 26FebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec2025-10-27: $0.6812$0.68 peak2026-06-29: $0.1436$0.14 low2026-10-06: $0.2704$0.272026-10-20: $0.2241$0.221NIGHT token trading begins2CME ADA futures launch3500M ADA treasury cap starts4USDCx arrives on Cardano5Year low at $0.146Van Rossem hard fork live7Record transaction week8Treasury cap 91% used9Grayscale GADA ETF target10Dijkstra fork with Leios
ProductMarketGovernanceAdoptionTechTokenomicsUpcoming

Daily closes from CoinGecko, 21 Oct 2025 to 20 Oct 2026.

Key events
  1. 1
    09 Dec 25 NIGHT token trading begins. Midnight's NIGHT, half of it airdropped to ADA holders, lists on exchanges; its value does not flow to ADA.
  2. 2
    09 Feb 26 CME ADA futures launch. Six months of regulated futures make ADA eligible for generic ETF listing rules from 9 Aug 2026.
  3. 3
    13 Feb 26 500M ADA treasury cap starts. Net Change Limit covers epochs 613 to 713 (to ~Jul 2027); later 2026 withdrawals count against it.
  4. 4
    20 Feb 26 USDCx arrives on Cardano. Circle's USDCx launched in February and became the largest stablecoin on Cardano within days.
  5. 5
    29 Jun 26 Year low at $0.14. A slide from $0.23 (2 Jun) to $0.16 (6 Jun) bottomed at $0.1436 on 29 Jun.
  6. 6
    18 Jul 26 Van Rossem hard fork live. Protocol v11, cheaper Plutus scripts; the first upgrade ratified fully by on-chain governance.
  7. 7
    06 Oct 26 Record transaction week. 1.78M transactions from 6 to 11 Oct; epoch 660 paid 337,720 ADA in fees vs 49,495 the epoch before.
  8. 8
    16 Oct 26 Treasury cap 91% used. 30 enacted withdrawals total 457.4M ADA, leaving 42.6M under the 500M limit.
  9. 9
    23 Oct Grayscale GADA ETF target. Conversion of the Grayscale Cardano Trust into a spot ETF; reported target date, not confirmed.
  10. 10
    Q4 26 Dijkstra fork with Leios. Phase 1 brings Linear Leios and nested transactions; needs constitutional changes and on-chain ratification.

How a Cardano transaction flows, from wallet to rewards

User
Signs a transaction in a wallet

For example a USDCx payment or a DEX swap; fee paid in ADA.

Plutus script
Contract validates the spend

Script execution is priced in ADA inside the same fee.

Stake pool
Slot leader adds the block

Ouroboros picks the pool by delegated stake; no mining.

Epoch pot
Fees pooled every 5 days

Pot = fees + 0.3% of the remaining reserve.

Treasury
20% of the pot set aside

DReps approve withdrawals to builders such as IOG.

Stakers
Rest paid as rewards

Pools and delegators earn ~6.8M ADA per epoch.

Where ADA comes in: it pays every fee and secures the chain through delegated stake. No ADA is burned; fees join the reward pot, but today over 99% of that pot comes from the reserve, so ADA holders are paid mainly in new supply. Stablecoin and NIGHT activity use ADA only for fees.

Usage and adoption

ADA per year, 12 months to 1 Sep 2026
Fees paid by users
~3.3M
Staking rewards (from reserve)
~494M
Reserve to treasury
~274M
Treasury withdrawals enacted, Feb to Oct
~457M

Fees and rewards: Bitquery count of 73 epochs to 1 Sep 2026 (CryptoSlate); fees were ~0.7% of rewards. Treasury inflow estimated as ~3.75M ADA per epoch × 73 from cardano.org snapshots (epochs 634 and 637). Withdrawals (grey) are treasury ADA released to builders since 13 Feb 2026 (CryptoSlate, 16 Oct), shown for scale; they overlap with the inflow row rather than add to it.

  • strong signal
    Fees paid
    ~3.3M ADA / yr

    73 epochs to 1 Sep 2026. Rose in early Oct (epoch 660: 337,720 ADA), a one-off spike so far.

  • medium signal
    Stablecoin supply
    $70.2M

    DefiLlama, 19 Oct. USDCx is the largest; tiny next to other major L1s.

  • medium signal
    DeFi TVL
    $62.4M

    DefiLlama, 19 Oct. 0.76% of market value; ~88% below the Aug 2025 high.

  • weak signal
    ETF holdings
    None yet

    Grayscale GADA targeted for late Oct 2026, not confirmed.

  • weak signal
    Transactions
    ~24,900 / day

    Jan to Aug 2026 average, down from ~90,300 in 2022. Counts all ledger transactions, not payments.

Cardano pays its stakers almost entirely from the reserve: users paid ~3.3M ADA in fees while ~768M ADA left the reserve as rewards and treasury funding. The scoreboard to watch is fees per epoch and stablecoin supply, not transaction counts.

Project

What it is
A proof-of-stake layer-1 (mainnet 2017) using the Ouroboros protocol, an extended-UTXO ledger and Plutus smart contracts. Every ADA can be staked to a pool without lock-up.
Team
Founded by Charles Hoskinson. Built by Input Output (IOG), the Cardano Foundation and EMURGO; Intersect, a member organisation, coordinates the roadmap and the yearly treasury budget.
Governance
Voltaire (CIP-1694) is live: DReps, stake pools and a Constitutional Committee vote on hard forks and treasury withdrawals under a ratified constitution. Van Rossem (protocol v11, 18 Jul 2026) passed with 77.6% of DReps.
Traction
Weak. Transactions averaged ~24,900 a day in Jan to Aug 2026, down from ~90,300 in 2022. DeFi TVL $62M and stablecoins $70M (DefiLlama, 19 Oct). Circle's USDCx became the largest stablecoin after its Feb 2026 launch.
Ecosystem
Hydra is a layer-2 state-channel system for fast off-chain transactions. Midnight is a privacy partner chain with its own NIGHT token; half of NIGHT's 24B supply was airdropped to ADA holders in 2025, but its fees and value accrue to NIGHT, not ADA.
Competitors
Ethereum and its L2s, Solana, Avalanche and other smart-contract L1s, which hold far more TVL and stablecoins.
Key risks
Paid usage is tiny next to staking emissions; the treasury spends hundreds of millions of ADA a year; governance continuity (Constitutional Committee renewal) has been a risk for the Dijkstra timeline; whale-tagged wallets hold ~67% of supply.
Roadmap
Dijkstra hard fork phase 1 (Linear Leios plus nested transactions) targeted for late 2026, pending constitutional changes and on-chain votes; Peras in Q2 2027. Hoskinson is writing a new proof-based contract language (no date) and teases a Midnight plan; Midnight Passport v1 is due near end-2026.

Token performance

1-year return (21 Oct 2025 → 20 Oct 2026, CoinGecko)
ADA
-66%
BTC
-25%
ETH
-38%

ADA fell far more than BTC and ETH over 12 months. Over 3 years it is about −14% (from ~$0.26 in Oct 2023), against BTC (~+179%, from ~$29.7k) and ETH (~+53%, from ~$1.6k). 3-year figures are manual and approximate because the free CoinGecko API covers 365 days.

Range 2026
$0.14 low (29 Jun) to $0.43 high (14 Jan), daily closes; now $0.22
12-month drawdown
−79%, from $0.68 (27 Oct 2025) to $0.14 (29 Jun 2026)
Liquidity
$252M traded in 24h, 3.0% of market cap; rank #17
Relative strength
−66% in a year vs BTC −25% and ETH −38%. Up 56% from the June low, but the 6 Oct high of $0.27 faded to $0.22 within two weeks.
ATH check ATH check passed. The $3.09 high (Sep 2021) came four years after the 2017 launch, so it is not a launch spike; price is now −93% below it.

Tokenomics

Supply
Hard cap 45B ADA; ~37.56B circulating. The rest sits in the reserve (~6.31B, Jun 2026) and the treasury (~1.49B).
Emissions
Each 5-day epoch 0.3% of the remaining reserve plus fees forms the reward pot; 20% goes to the treasury, the rest to stakers. ~494M ADA of staking rewards in the 73 epochs to 1 Sep 2026, ~1.3% of circulating supply.
Unlocks
No team or VC vesting schedule. New float comes from rewards and treasury withdrawals: 457.4M ADA enacted since 13 Feb 2026 under a 500M ADA cap running to ~Jul 2027.
Utility
Transaction fees, liquid staking with no slashing, governance votes and DRep delegation (a governance action needs a 100,000 ADA deposit).
Concentration
Large holders control ~25.1B ADA, about 67% of supply (May 2026), a share that includes exchange wallets.
Sinks
No burn: fees are recycled into rewards. Staking removes no supply. A spot ETF (Grayscale GADA) is pending; there are no US ADA ETFs yet.

Bull case

Grayscale's GADA launches in late October and draws steady inflows, and the Dijkstra fork with Linear Leios is enacted on schedule. Stablecoins grow beyond $100M and ADA reclaims the $0.27 October high, then the $0.33 level where 2026 began.

Bear case

The ETF draws little money, Dijkstra slips into 2027 and fees stay below 1% of emissions while treasury withdrawals keep adding float. ADA loses the $0.21 support zone and retests the $0.14 June low.

Watch before the next re-run

  • GADA launch date and ADA held by ETFs
  • Dijkstra hard fork ratification and Constitutional Committee continuity
  • Fees per epoch vs ~6.8M ADA of staking rewards per epoch
  • Stablecoin supply and DeFi TVL; $0.21 support and the $0.14 low

Where to trade

Krakenlisted

ADA against EUR · USD · USDT · USDC · AUD · BTC · ETH · GBP

24h $6.53M · ±2% depth $2.81M

OKXlisted

ADA against EUR · USDT · USDC · TRY

24h $3.67M · ±2% depth $999.5k

Largest exchanges

Exchange24h vol±2% depth
BinanceADA/USDT$17.3M$1.35M
BitvavoADA/EUR$13.0M$1.23M
CoinbaseADA/USD$8.97M$973.0k
UpbitADA/KRW$7.00M$1.19M
KrakenADA/USD$4.82M$2.81M

Deepest DEX pools

Pool24h vol±2% depth
MinswapADA/NIGHT · Cardano$275.3k$65.8k
MinswapADA/USDM · Cardano$27.8k$37.0k
MinswapADA/USDA · Cardano$18.7k$29.6k

Pool size (TVL), fee tier and fee APR are not in yet: they need DefiLlama, which this setup cannot reach so far. CL = concentrated liquidity (higher fees, more impermanent-loss risk).

On-chain share of all ADA volume: 0.2%.

As of 21 Oct 2026 · CoinGecko tickers (24h volume, ±2% depth). ±2% depth is the money it takes to move the price 2% either way: the real size of a market. Exchanges ranked by volume among well-known venues; pools by depth. Not investment advice.

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