Cardano occupies position #4 on Coinmarketcap as of 10th February 2021. Although this means the coin dines among the top cryptocurrencies, its price has seen both good and bad days in the recent past.
After ending January consolidating at the $0.350 mark, Cardano price started February with strong bullish momentum as the price quickly broke above the $0.400 mark towards the end of February 1. After briefly consolidating below the $0.450 mark, the bulls continued the rally raising the price above the $0.500 mark. ADA was up 10.4% as of 8th February 2021 afternoon and is up roughly 311% since the start of the year. Some are expecting the price to reach $2, a massive increase over its roughly 70-cent price.
This Cardano price prediction outlook consolidates information on Cardano technical development and takes current data from the Cryptopolitan site.
What is Cardano, a brief overview
Cardano is a blockchain project optimized for smart contracts. Created by Charles Hoskinson, the platform is tagged as a “third-generation” blockchain. It has a native cryptocurrency known as ADA.
Notably, there are three wings involved in the well-being of Cardano; Cardano Foundation, Emurgo, and IOHK. The Cardano Foundation is majorly involved with promoting the use of ADA while Emurgo is into support and development. IOHK (Input Output Hong Kong) looks into Ethereum Classic (ETC) development and researches distributed and cryptographic systems.
Unfortunately, the connection between the three departments has not been without its challenges. In 2018, for example, IOHK and Emurgo accused the Cardano Foundation of not having a solid vision and transparency in its operations.
The development of Cardano is split into Byron, Shelly, Goguen, Basho, and Voltaire stages. Recently, the Shelly stage entered the testnet era which will include bootstrap and a reward phase.
Byron was the first stage that saw the introduction of the Daedalus wallet, the official desktop wallet for ADA. It also brought with it a light wallet, Yoroi, aimed at powering near-instant transactions and ideal for day-to-day use.
Shelly, the second and current stage, aims to bring delegation and Cardano reward system to boost ADA adoption. This stage is also referred to as the “family and friends” stage.
The Goguen era follows with a simplification of the platform to allow smart contracts to be created by people with less technical exposure.
Basho, the third stage, is anticipated to introduce parallel accounting styles with the ability to switch between account models added using sidechains.
Voltaire is the last development stage. By the time this milestone is completed, Cardano will have a treasury and voting system that will allow participants to utilize “their stake and voting rights to influence the future developments of the network.”
The Voltaire stage will also introduce an extra treasury system that will see a percentage of transaction fees set aside for development purposes.
Completion of this last stage will make the Cardano platform completely decentralized, eliminating the need for IOHK’s oversight.