Messari’s Q4 2024 report highlights big growth for Cardano. ADA’s price jumped 126% to $0.84, and its market cap rose 127% to $30.3 billion. This growth pushed ADA from the 11th to the 9th spot in circulating market cap rankings.
Transaction fees were split, up by 254% to $1.8 million in USD but down by 60% to 2.2 million in ADA. The treasury of Cardano, backed by 20% of transactions’ fees, added its holding by 6% to 1.6 billion ADA, adding its value by 126% to $1.4 billion.
According to the report, the network saw a 65% increase in daily transactions, reaching 71,500. Active addresses also grew 58% to 42,900. Staking ADA dropped slightly, but its dollar value shot up 117% to $18.4 billion, thanks to ADA’s price rally.
In October, the Ouroboros Peras update was launched to speed up transactions and improve scalability. At the same time, the Chang Hard Fork began introducing governance upgrades, bringing Cardano closer to fully decentralized voting.
Cardano Dapps show mixed activity trends
Activity across Cardano’s apps fluctuated. Transactions on a daily basis were 8% lower, but Minswap was the top DEX by posting a traded volume of $3.1 billion. Lending platform Liqwid Finance revamped its features and reached the value-locked top spot among DeFi protocols. Jpg.store led the top NFT marketplace although there were lower sales of NFTs on it.
Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem also gained traction. The locked value of DeFi increased by 13% to $231.6 million. Smaller protocols like Splash Protocol had phenomenal activity level increases. Stablecoins on Cardano also gained traction, adding market cap by 66%.
Moreover, NFT activity remained static. Though there had been a dip in ADA volume traded, surging ADA prices had elevated NFT volume by 86%. jpg.store dominated its position in the NFT market.
