$ADA‘s been on a bit of a joyride lately. A whopping 120% climb since October 20. And with December still unfolding, ADA reached new 2023 highs, while the Cardano DeFi ecosystem is blooming like a rare desert flower after a rainstorm. 🪷
Cardano’s TVL rocketed past $370 million this past Friday. That’s a mind-blowing 520% growth since the year kicked off. What’s fueling this meteoric rise? A cocktail of increased DEX activities, more network developments, and a rising tide of investor confidence in Cardano’s DeFi scene.
The DEX scene in Cardano? It’s like a beehive of activity. The TVL’s recent surge coincided with a massive spike in DEX volume, crossing $12 million. This jump came hot on the heels of ADA hitting the 50-cent mark.
Now tracking @Cardano on our Treasuries Dashboard pic.twitter.com/cbG3BY5rsU
— DefiLlama.com (@DefiLlama) December 10, 2023
DefiLlama has the receipts showing that Cardano DEXs churned out a jaw-dropping 140% weekly increase. Cardano might be looking at a monthly trading volume north of $100 million if this keeps up – a feat it hasn’t achieved since last August. 🤯
Updates: Speed, Wallet, Contracts, Scaling, and Education
From Essential Cardano’s Weekly Development Report
- The performance team strutted out the first-ever Conway benchmarks, and they’ve been tweaking the tracing output and adding a new test suite to their arsenal.
- On the ledger end, the team has been dabbling in the art of randomness. In the past two weeks, they’ve rolled out the initial version of Conway conformance testing. It’s a brainy way of generating random yet valid data, applying it to Conway ledger rules, and ensuring the output makes sense. It’s like making a cake with unexpected ingredients and ensuring it’s still edible. And cake.
- Now, let’s talk about the Lace team. They’re gearing up for the Lace Wallet 1.8 release, and it’s all about multi-staking—up to ten pools from the Lite wallet.
- The Plutus tools team is deep into proving Marconi’s indexing prowess. They’re also embedding Marconi into a Cardano node. And the Marlowe team? They just released the Marlowe TS-SDK beta.
- On the scaling front, it’s all about Hydra and Mithril. Hydra’s been ironing out test kinks while Mithril’s been busy adapting for WASM and optimizing performance.
- Finally, the education team is planning the next Haskell course and working on Mastering Cardano content. 👩🏫
Governance
And for the most important part of Cardano’s entire purpose for existing: Voltaire.
In Voltaire, the Intersect members are dedicated to building a secure and cooperative environment for Cardano’s ongoing growth. Recently, several committees have made significant strides:
- Civics Committee: Concentrated on ensuring open, equitable governance in Cardano, they’ve made governance recommendations and are focusing on 2024 priorities.
- Membership and Community (MCC) Committee: Continued to promote inclusivity, holding ten meetings, with another public one set for December 12.
- Parameter Committee: Provided key technical guidance and protocol parameter updates, with their first recommendation, PCP-001, published on the Cardano Forum.
- Open Source Committee: Developed a detailed roadmap for open source projects, focusing on transparency and community-led development, with active policy and strategy working groups. 🧑🎓