Is Cardano Dead? Important Signs to Look Out For

Anything that hypes eventually fizzles; no trend has ever been immune to doomsday predictions, whether it’s Bitcoin, NFT, or the Metaverse. Some things, though, manage to stand the test of time. Now, the question turns into is Cardano dead?

While Bitcoin was founded by a mysterious figure behind the hood, Cardano has a solid background story. ADA was engineered in 2015 by Charles Hoskinson, the Ethereum co-founder, together with Jeremy Wood. The asset made a breakout in 2017, and it sparked a fresh wave of optimism with its environment-friendly narrative and peer-reviewed scientific foundation.

Recently, whether Cardano is dead has become a heated discussion due to its lagging adoption throughout the mid-2020s. Yet traders actively tracking ADA on major exchanges like Binance and Bybit hint at a potential Cardano revival. So, what lies ahead? Let’s uncover it all.

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Is Cardano Dead? What the Technical Indicators Say

Let’s try to uncover how the very question of “Is Cardano dead?” surfaced in the first place. 2024 was a tug-of-war for ADA, and truthfully, the coin didn’t start out that bad. ADA was oscillating around the $0.5 mark before peaking at $0.7 to $0.8 in March 2024.

Pessimism began setting in when April 2024 came, and HODLers were preparing to lay their holdings to rest with a white flower in the coffin. Cardano slipped into a correction within the $0.3 to $0.4 range that dragged on for over six months. For some traders, this prolonged period was more depressing than the European winter.

Suddenly, November 2024 flipped the mood overnight, proving once again how volatile the crypto market can be. ADA saw a spike of 300% while reaching a high of $1.32. It was a full-blown altcoin party. The Cardano Summit was happening, whales piled in with fresh buys, and the broader crypto gang joined the frenzy. DOGE, XRP, and XLM were also riding the wave.

ADA might have entered 2024 at $0.5 and spent mid-year stuck in a rut, but it ultimately closed the book at $1. This was an increase of more than 80%. Not to mention how its trading volume almost tripled from $685M to $1.31B.

This rebound had set up a foundation for upward momentum in January 2025. Cardano's charts revealed a bullish candlestick pattern, also known as the “morning star”. Traders often see this signal of prices potentially rising.

Additionally, with Donald Trump back in office, excitement around crypto found a new life after years of heavy-handed regulation. In March 2025, Cardano reignited its bullish charge, soaring more than 70%. This surge came on the heels of Trump’s announcement of a US Crypto Strategic Reserve, where ADA was named alongside the top 5 coins: ETH, XRP, SOL, and BTC.

Fast forward to mid-June 2025, geopolitical tensions sent shockwaves through the entire crypto market. Retail investors fled to safer havens like the USD, gold, and treasuries. Following widespread sell-offs across crypto assets, ADA dropped by 5% to $0.7. Whales, though, were secretly loading $120 million into Cardano.

Then in July 2025, Bitcoin reached an all-new high at $120,000. This phenomenon triggered a broad market euphoria, and ADA saw a breakout around $0.75, with its price pushing up by 27%.

As of writing, particularly September 2025, more investors are eyeing altcoins with strong fundamentals and rising adoption. Among their picks are BlockDAG, Hyperliquid, and, of course, Cardano.

ADA has been consolidating around the $0.8 to $0.9 level. On August 12, 2025, Grayscale filed for the “Grayscale Cardano Trust ETF”, following the same legal pathways it previously took with Bitcoin and Ethereum Trust ETFs.

📚 Read More: Crypto ETFs Explained

Analysts believe that ADA’s ETF is a catalyst for the next major rally. However, short-term price actions remain uncertain. Cardano’s $0.9386 Fibonacci retracement acts as a ceiling, and a breakout above it could open a path toward $1.02.

On the downside, slipping below the 7-day SMA at $0.9175 may put ADA at risk of retreating to the $0.85 support zone.

So, is Cardano dead? Its 2025 performance does give a balanced outlook. For more clarity, let’s take a look at the arguments between the bullish and bearish camps.

Bullish Camp: Why Cardano is Not Dead

ADA might not be as loud as BTC or ETH. Nevertheless, Charles Hoskinson has assured that huge developments are on the horizon in the coming years.

Here are some factors likely to fuel Cardano’s next big push.

Strong Team Backing and Network

Many crypto projects (take Bitcoin, for instance) are led by anonymous and mysterious figures, but not with Cardano. Charles Hokinson and Jeremy Wood have been openly steering the network since 2015, backed by a team of over 160 blockchain researchers whose work is publicly peer-reviewed and accessible to the public.

Under the Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) Foundation, more than 250+ papers have been published. Every major protocol upgrade, from Byron to Chang, has undergone rigorous study and consultation with academic partners before being deployed.

Cardano’s scientific pursuit also underpins its mission to educate global communities, be it developers, researchers, professors, or business professionals. So far, it has forged partnerships with the following major institutions:

• Carnegie Mellon University;
• University of Wyoming;
• University of Athens;
• University of the West Indies;
• European Business University of Luxembourg;
• etc.

Cardano has also dedicated a blockchain laboratory at the University of Edinburgh, led by IOHK’s Chief Scientist, Prof. Aggelos Kiayias. The team has also designed the curriculum on blockchain design for Yeovil College in the UK and Consillum Academy in South Africa.

The culmination of the platform’s networking efforts came together at the Cardano Summit, an annual event that will make a comeback on November 12 to 13, 2025. It will invite more than 75+ speakers and 800 enterprise leaders, including Richard Teng from Binance, Christian Rau from Mastercard, and Saurish Basu from McKinsey.

Over the years, Cardano has grown as one of the most academically grounded and institutionally connected blockchain ecosystems. Its high-profile engagement, world-class research, and academic partnerships further prove that the network is shaping its role in the future of real-world blockchain adoption.

Rock-Solid Technology

Cardano is one of the few projects that positions itself as a science-backed foundation. Admittedly, this approach puts the platform on a slower move than Ethereum, Solana, and other experimental or newer chains.

Although Cardano has ignored past hype cycles, namely the NFT and meme coin mania, the platform has consistently steered clear of the FOMO. Since its debut in 2017, ADA has survived multiple bear markets. The reason behind the network's resilience lies in its robust tech.

📚 Read More: How to Make Money in a Crypto Bear Market

During the 2018-2020 bear market, for instance, ADA dropped into the market at a shy $0.02. Many altcoins died out, but Cardano continued to build quietly, releasing the Shelley upgrade on February 20, 2020. Its price began a steep climb to $0.6 during that period.

Another case study was the bear stretch of 2022 to 2023. ADA plunged from its all-time high of $3.10 to $0.3. In other words, it was on the verge of dying. But Cardano decided to rewrite its fate with the Vasil hard fork in 2022.

Then in 2024, Cardano further restored confidence in the network with the Chang hard fork. Responding to the public’s criticism over the lack of liquidity, the platform moved forward with its own fiat-backed stablecoin, USDM. The token is trading at $1.05, remaining tightly pegged to USD with a 24-hour volume of $38k.

Cardano’s seamless upgrades over the years have been made possible by its hard fork combinator technology. Unlike radical disruptions or chain splits seen in Ethereum’s 2016 DAO fork, Cardano adapts to challenges steadily without fracturing its ecosystem.

The network’s evolving story is in line with its mission to address the long-standing issues of first- and second-generation blockchains. Bitcoin might have paved the way for decentralized ledgers for secure value transfers, but it lacks support for multi-party agreements and dApps.

Meanwhile, Cardano hosts over 1,300 active projects and 300 DAOs. Its DeFi ecosystem is reported to secure approximately $400 million in Total Value Locked (TVL) as of mid-Q3, 2025.

Beyond its DeFi growth, the treasury system and governance network, Project Catalyst, regularly engages tens of thousands of participants worldwide.^[1] Cardano’s technological development shows that it’s not running out of breath anytime soon, as it’s ambitiously chasing its mission to lead the race of third-generation blockchains.

Supportive Community

There’s no crypto without the community, and Cardano has quite the cult following - well, minus the robes and lightsaber. Many users on X are even eyeing a $10 mark for ADA. People do get carried away sometimes, but it pays to understand what’s driving the hype before making your call.

Among the top 15 market cap assets, Cardano is the only Proof-of-Stake blockchain that offers native, non-custodial liquid staking. Compared to ETH staking, for instance, ADA has no lock-up period, so users have more flexibility in timing entrances and exits.

Every coin you stake directly corresponds to enhancing network security and preserving its decentralized nature. Although some users have voiced concerns about lowering APR, returns generally stay within the healthy range of 1.6% to 3.6%, depending on the staking pool and platform. Kraken, for instance, offers a 2% to 6% yield for staking ADA.

This steady incentivization has translated to a loyal community of Cardano stakers. Derived from Coinbase, more than 59.22% eligible ADA are actively staked, or equal to 21.1 billion ADA locked in staking pools. This represents a staking market cap of $15.8B out of the total market cap of $26.5B.

Aside from that, Cardano’s expanding utility further strengthens its bond with the community. To give you some recent updates:

• Cardano can now be transferred directly inside Unreal Engine 5, a real-time 3D world simulator from the same studio that brought Fall Guys and Fortnite.
• The multi-phase Midnight airdrop continues to gain traction despite institutional dominance concerns, with more than 35,000 users claiming a combined 739.5 million NIGHT tokens. Cardano users will get 50% of the total pie, and the current Glacier phase is still running until October 4, 2025.
• Cardano maintains low transaction fees (0.17 ADA or 1 cent) compared to peers like Ethereum (0.463 gwei or 3 cents) by cutting processing times and removing intermediaries. Exchanges that offer the lowest rates include Binance and Bybit.

• Some meme coins on Cardano, such as SNEK and STRIKE, are respectively backed by liquidity of $11.7M and $1.8M (as of writing), showcasing strong swapping demand.

So, if you ask is Cardano dead in 2025, its online community will clap back harder than Kendrick Lamar’s diss track for Drake. Let’s face it, billions in ADA staked, expanding real-world utility - it’s hard to call Cardano dead when it’s alive and kicking, at least from the X and Reddit perspectives.

Green Narratives

Outside the social media echo chamber, Cardano has also found its place within the environmentally conscious circles.

Cardano utilizes Ouroboros, the first provably secure PoS protocol that aims to facilitate permissionless networks capable of sustainably supporting new markets. Its main proposition reads:

Ouroboros exists to define the parameters of the new world - a protocol more secure, scalable, and energy-efficient than anything that has come before.

The network’s simple, deterministic protocol for ledger consensus can tolerate Byzantine faults.^[2] To simplify scientific terms, this system brings the following to the table:

• Transaction processing at full network speed without relying on energy-intensive mining;
• Instant confirmation that reduces computation;

• Instant proof of settlement that minimizes prolonged energy use.

According to CardanoSpot, the blockchain consumes 0.027 TeraWatt/hour (TWh) annually. This is less than the energy YouTube and PayPal spend to power their mainstream platforms.

Importantly, green narratives are not only gaining traction in the blockchain field. They have also become an international agenda. The Paris Climate Accord, the UN’s Sustainable Goals, and ESG reporting standards keep pushing industries, including blockchain, toward producing a smaller footprint.

Of course, when it comes to environmental problems, the answer is never straightforward. Nevertheless, Cardano sparks hope by offering an eco-friendly PoS model that puts it ahead of legacy systems.

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Bearish Camp: Why Cardano Might Be Dead

Although I’ve outlined a couple of reasons that debunk the endless "Is ADA Cardano dead?" chorus, it’s still worth asking why these predictions are nowhere near dying themselves.

Ignoring them might give you Zen, but it’s also a bit like dismissing flashing warning lights in your dashboard. I do believe that it’s time for the foundation and the community to hit back at the critics by addressing these pain points.

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Market Price Fatigue

Critics often say that Cardano emits dead energy coin vibes, as it hasn’t delivered outsized returns in recent cycles.

Bitcoin has vaulted past $120k on one Monday in July 2025, Ethereum broke $4k, and Tron printed billions in USDT transfers. Meanwhile, Cardano keeps struggling to push through the $1 bar despite the bullish chatter.

Compared to its rivals, ADA has clear liquidity gaps. Without the integration of major stablecoins like USDT or USDC, Cardano doesn’t attract the same trading volume. Sure, ADA has USDM, but it’s still in infancy compared to other mature fiat-backed options.

Just to double down further, USDT and USDC are the base pairs behind nearly all trading activities. They are available across interoperable blockchains, from Ethereum to Binance Smart Chain, and are used for cross-border remittances.

Meanwhile, the liquidity pools of USDM are relatively small since the token was just launched in 2024. Beyond its listings on MEXC and a handful of other exchanges, its presence remains confined to Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem. There’s one good news, though, as USDM is coming to the European market through a partnership with the Norwegian Block Xchange (NBX).

For now, Cardano’s collaborations remain modest, and that’s why it’s sailing behind big-bang corporate assets like Bitcoin. Strategy (previously MicroStrategy) and even the US government, for instance, keep adding Bitcoin into their financial blueprint. Every time Michael Saylor announced a billion-dollar buy, BTC scores an instant PR boost.

It’s clear that Cardano lacks the macro hedge, nor is it seen as a store of value or hedge against inflation. Until ADA can carve out a comparable positioning, it will continue depending on its ecosystem for its growth driver.

History of Dead Projects

"Is Cardano dead 2025" might not just be a panic-driven Google search, especially after an AlphaQuest report listed Cardano among the top 10 categories with the highest number of dead coins.

AlphaQuest, an asset management firm in the heart of New York City, analyzed 12,000 projects and revealed a grueling outcome. More than 72% of tokens failed to survive the brutal bull cycle from 2020 to 2021. Some of the categories that hit the hardest included asset-backed stablecoins and metaverse assets, which shared an overlap with Cardano’s broader sub-project profiles.

CardanoCube, a community tracker, has also documented a graveyard of failed Cardano projects. A prime example was Ardana (dUSD), once hailed as the network's flagship stablecoin. After raising more than $10 million, the project collapsed following a series of poor trading decisions that ultimately bankrupted its backer, The Arrow Capital.

Besides Ardana, Orbis was another unsettling news. It had the grand goal of maximizing Cardano’s throughput by using zkSNARK’s L2 roll-up, a proven technology. It envisioned a DeFi world with mass adoption capabilities for Cardano, but ultimately, it resulted in nothing more than an NFT sales refund.

Charles Hokinson was left utterly disappointed, and fans couldn’t stop noticing the three glaring typos in Orbis’ announcement.

So why did these projects, even those lining up with supporters, fail to float? A couple of reasons:

• Very low trading volume or liquidity;
• Deleted or inactive social media activity;
• Websites taken down;
• Delistings from crypto tracking platforms.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Wanchain has been making a splash as the first decentralized bridge to Cardano.

Wanchain is compatible with MetaMask and has processed over $1.5 billion in liquidity. It has recently announced a partnership with VeChain, a blockchain solution focusing on sustainability.

📚 Read More: What is VeChain?

Now, Cardano’s challenge lies in the survivability that extends beyond ADA itself. It needs to foster an ecosystem where smaller projects can bloom beautifully.

Investors Turned Into Bag Holders

Those chanting "Cardano is dead" are likely bag holders seeing their ADA portfolio in the red. To be frank, there's a troubling gap between the network's valuation and actual usage.

The latest data in 2024 reveals that 71.7% of wallets, or 3.2 million ADA addresses, are sitting at a loss. Only a quarter of them are in profit.

The 2021 bull market drew in retail investors at inflated prices, leaving them underwater since ADA's value has been fluctuating. A wallet with 1,000 ADA that was worth $3,100 at its highest point now holds $365. Today, more than 80% of wallets own less than 1,000 ADA, and 90% hold under $1,000 in value.

Nearly three-quarters of holders have kept ADA for over a year, less out of conviction and more because they found themselves effectively trapped. That's why having a clear strategy is critical. Timing your entries, setting realistic exit points, and managing overall risks help save you from last-minute regrets.

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But why has Cardano been trending downward over the years? The cause may be linked to its slower pace compared to competing blockchains. From a technological point of view, this is more of a blessing than a curse. As mentioned earlier, Cardano is one of the blockchains designed to withstand future stress tests rather than chasing short-lived hype cycles.

However, it also comes at the sacrifice of investor confidence. Slow yet steady rollouts, after all, are often mistaken for stagnation.

Despite its long presence in the market, Cardano averages only 36,000 daily active wallets, compared to hundreds of thousands on younger networks like Solana, Sui, or Aptos. Transaction activity is similarly muted, averaging at over 110,000 transactions and $2.6 million in on-chain volume.

Nevertheless, surprises still happen. In early Q3 2025, Cardano recorded a sudden surge of 111 million transactions. In the background, developers were actively pushing hundreds of commits, stabilizing the backend, and testing new protocol variants. Despite sluggish adoption and market headwinds, Cardano's technical foundation keeps the network afloat.

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Slower DeFi Adoption

A look into Cardano's on-chain metrics might give a hint as to why the whole "ADA is dead" debacle keeps popping up at every turn.

As discussed before, Cardano's DeFi TVL stands at roughly $400 million. That is almost a double from the $220 million reported last year. However, this number is outpaced by rival ecosystems.

Since Cardano brands itself as Ethereum's successor, it's hard not to compare the two. As of writing, Ethereum shares the largest TVL in the market at $95B. The gap has sparked criticism that Cardano is heavy on promises but light on results. Nevertheless, keeping up with Ethereum is a steep hill to climb, given its first-mover advantages that come with pioneering smart contracts.

For a more apples-to-apples comparison, traders often look into the progress of BNB Smart Chain and why is ADA Cardano dead or stale in comparison. It's actually pretty clear - BSC commands a $7B TVL as it powers one of the largest exchanges by volume, Binance. Aggressive marketing, CEX support, and low fees drive BSC's explosive growth. Meanwhile, Cardano lacks all those.

There's also Solana. Just like Cardano, it's known for its lightning-fast network and low-cost transactions. However, Solana neatly fits itself in the center of the broader NFT, meme coin, and dApp puzzle. The network's alliance with Shopify, Mastercard, and VISA further improves its presence among retail investors. On the other hand, Cardano is losing the narrative battle.

Even so, Cardano will always mark its place as the first research-driven blockchain. This serves as a reminder that understanding a project's philosophy helps you make sense of its price chart. While Cardano may not cater to rapid experimentation, its focus on methodical growth reflects a trade-off that could influence its resilience over the long term.

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Conclusions

Is Cardano dead? Evidently not, especially when it still holds a spot among the top cryptocurrencies by market cap. ADA still attracts quite a loyal following, particularly among those who value its signature peer-review approach, zero-hack security track record, and energy-efficient PoS design.

Cardano's strategies help maintain its credibility, but they also limit its ability to keep pace with flashier ecosystems. Unlike BSC or Solana, for instance, Cardano lacks retail hype, exchange funnels, and consumer-facing dApps that have gone viral.

Ultimately, ADA's story is less about competing with heavyweights like ETH or BTC, but more about carving its own path. So, is ADA dead? Hardly, though it needs to prove whether its cautious approach will translate into sustainable success or slip into stagnation.

The content published on this website is not aimed to give any kind of financial, investment, trading, or any other form of advice. BitDegree.org does not endorse or suggest you to buy, sell or hold any kind of cryptocurrency. Before making financial investment decisions, do consult your financial advisor.

Scientific References

1. Zhang B., Oliynykov R., Balogun H.: 'A Treasury System for Cryptocurrencies: Enabling Better Collaborative Intelligence';

2. Kiayias A., Russel A.: 'Ouroboros-BFT: A Simple Byzantine Fault Tolerant Consensus Protocol'.