Cardano whales are splurging on ADA, is a rally brewing

• Cardano whales accumulated 130 million ADA tokens ($39 million) despite price decline.
• The decline in staking and development activity raised questions about Cardano’s growth trajectory.

Amidst a relatively stable price trajectory, Cardano’s [ADA] development strides have remained persistent. This consistent effort seems to have piqued the interest of major investors.

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Cardano witnessed a substantial accumulation by whales recently. Over the past month, these large investors amassed approximately 130 million ADA tokens, translating to a value exceeding $39 million.

While this accumulation could suggest bullish sentiment, ADA’s price trajectory revealed a different narrative. Despite the inflow of investments, the cryptocurrency’s price experienced a dip from $0.235 to $0.299.

Is whale interest enough?

The indicators of ADA’s activity showcased a pessimistic outlook despite whale interest. The token’s velocity, which represents the rate of token transfers, decreased, indicating reduced movement of ADA amongst addresses.

Additionally, the number of token holders also saw a decline. A fall in the number of holders implied that even though whales were showing interest in ADA, retail interest was dwindling.

Source: Santiment

A crucial aspect of Cardano’s ecosystem is staking, which allows ADA holders to participate in securing the network and earning rewards.

Despite the revenue generated by these stakers remaining the same, in the past month, there was a slight decline of 0.27% in the number of stakers.

Source: Staking Rewards

The fall in activity extends to the development front as well. Even though development on Cardano has remained consistent, new data from the token terminal could suggest a slowdown in updates and upgrades going forward.

Over the last 30 days, core developers on the Cardano network dropped by 7.1%, while code commits saw a 5.1% reduction in the past month.

State of the ecosystem

The Cardano network’s NFT market also experienced fluctuations. The volume of NFTs sold on various marketplaces witnessed a decline, hinting at changes in the demand for these unique digital assets.

This drop in NFT volume could reflect shifting trends in the broader NFT market or specific dynamics within Cardano’s ecosystem.

Source: opencnft

Realistic or not, here’s ADA’s market cap in BTC terms

Shifting to the DeFi landscape within the Cardano ecosystem, Total Value Locked (TVL) in DeFi protocols encountered a dip. A decline in TVL indicated that there was a lack of interest in the overall Cardano ecosystem.

However, according to Artemis’ data decentralized exchange (DEX) volumes demonstrated growth. This implied that the DEX’s on the Cardano ecosystem were pulling their weight compared to other dApps on the network.

Source: Artemis