Cardano Up 47% in 2020, But Does Blockchain’s Usage Warrant it?

Like many crypto assets, the price of Cardano (ADA) has increased over the opening month of 2020. Starting the year at around $0.033, the digital currrency now trades at more than $0.054.
Although the same could be said about many of the thousands of other digital currencies, the gains do not appear to be based on actual usage. In fact, a look at the Cardano blockchain shows that very few people are using the cryptocurrency at all.
Cardano Clearly a Long Way from Mass Adoption
According to data taken from its blockchain, hardly anyone is using Cardano. The tenth most popular crypto asset in terms of market capitalisation routinely sees blocks that are completely empty. When they’re not empty, they contain just a handful of transactions.
Pointing this out is software developer Joshua Henslee. Henslee tweeted the following yesterday:

#Cardano has more 'blocks' than transactions….https://t.co/TG7TmplCNt
— Joshua Henslee (@cryptoAcorns) January 30, 2020

A look at Cardano’s blockchain, via Blockchair.com, confirms the lack of network use. At the time of writing, 66 of the last 100 blocks contained no transactions whatsoever.
Other blocks contain only one or two transactions. None of the previous 100 blocks NewsBTC looked at on the network’s official explorer contained more than 10 transactions.
This has resulted in a situation where those mining ADA have added more blocks than the total number of transactions. At press time, there had been only 3,057 transactions over a total of 4,320 blocks.
Evidently, actual use of Cardano is incredibly low.
Will Upgrades and Partnerships Help Promote Adoption?
Although the number of transactions occurring on the Cardano network is cause for concern, upcoming developments for the network may promote greater use going forward. As NewsBTC reported days ago, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson just announced a major partnership with accountancy giant PwC.
The partnership is part of a marketing drive by those behind the cryptocurrency. The aim is to promote the blockchain system as one suitable for deployment by commercial interests.
Related to this are upgrades in the works to move the network to a proof-of-stake system and to add smart contract functionality. These updates, along with efforts to consolidate operations with the help of PwC, may indeed see the network experience greater use than it does at present.
Clearly, the price action for Cardano so far in 2020 is based entirely off speculation for what the system might achieve in the future. The on-chain data above shows that the network is seeing very little actual use that might drive price right now.
Whilst the markets of most cryptocurrencies are heavily based on speculation, most top ten digital assets do actually see some use. Bitcoin, for example, is emerging as a store of value for billions of dollars, Ethereum has a rapidly expanding DeFi ecosystem, and even Bitcoin SV has that weather application its proponents are so impressed by.
 
Related Reading: Last Year’s Top Crypto Market Performers Are Lagging Behind Altcoins in 2020
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