The number of smart contracts deployed on the Cardano ($ADA) network has grown by more than 340% year-to-date as developers keep on working in the cryptocurrency’s network, despite the ongoing bear market.
At the beginning of the year, there were 947 Plutus smart contracts on the Cardano network, according to data from Cardano Blockchain Insights. As of the time of writing, that number has significantly increased and now exceeds 4,200.
Plutus, it’s worth noting, is the “smart contract platform of the Cardano blockchain” that allows users to “write applications that interact with the Cardano blockchain.”
In January of this year, the number of smart contracts on Cardano surpassed 1,000 following the successful rollout of the Alonzo hard fork. This hard fork introduced support for smart contracts to the Cardano network, positioning it to compete with other popular blockchains like BNB Chain ($BNB), Ethereum ($ETH), and Solana ($SOL).
As CryptoGlobe reported, Cardano surpassed the 3,000 smart contract mark in August of this year, after adding around 100 smart contracts in a month at the time. Cardano’s developers have notably recently increased script capacity, the Plutus Debugger MVP, and finalized the implementation of full Babbage support in the Plutus tool.
Cardano’s recent growth in smart contract numbers comes after the network’s Vasil hard fork, a major upgraded that involved several Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIPs) and improved the network’s performance.
The Cardano network has recently reached a new milestone with the launch of its first stablecoin. Other stablecoins are being created on the Cardano network. EMURGO, which is the commercial arm of Cardano, announced the planned launch of its new dollar-backed stablecoin USDA, which is “the first fully fiat-backed, regulatory compliant stablecoin in the Cardano ecosystem,” earlier this month.
Recently, popular crypto influencer Benjamin Cowen suggested that there is a “real risk” that the price of $ADA could still drop over 60% during the bear market, as he believes Cardano is facing a bear market resistance band that has rejected its advances, and could be in for more pain.
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