Cardano and Solana are the leading competitors for Ethereum as the top smart contracts platform. Their entrance into the space has been highly lauded as this will provide some much-needed diversification in the space. Activities are already underway on the Solana blockchain. However, Cardano has not had much in the way of activities on its blockchain since the launch of smart contracts capability.
This has mainly been due to the fact that smart contracts capabilities debuted on the network less than two months ago and it will take some time for developers to test and deploy their applications on the blockchain.
Cardano is behind its competitors due to this delay but is no doubt a contender in the space. The blockchain has maintained its position as the second leading smart contracts platform. Now, though, Solana has come for the crown and it is winning the fight.
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Solana Overtakes Cardano On Crypto Top 10
For months, Cardano had maintained its position at 3rd place on the crypto top 10 projects by market cap, before being pushed out by BNB last month. This was mainly due to the run-up in the digital asset in August that saw the price of ADA break above $3 for the first time. Its market cap skyrocketed with this rally to over $75 billion, making it one of the most valuable cryptocurrencies in the market.
Recent trends have however not been favorable for Cardano. The coin had not seen any significant movement after crashing back down to the low $2. While the broader market had rallied, ADA had remained mostly stagnant and this provided Solana the perfect opportunity to make a place for its spot.
SOL trading at $239 | Source:
Solana (SOL) has had a profitable couple of months with the advent of its decentralized finance (DeFi) marketplace and this has played into the high value of the asset. The early hours of Thursday saw the price of Solana hit a new all-time high, pushing its market cap to $72 billion, considerably higher than that of Cardano.
With its new market cap, Solana clenched the 4th spot on the crypto top 10, while Cardano slid down to 6th place behind Tether. Given that SOL has a considerably lower circulating supply than ADA, it far exceeds the latter in terms of value.
Leading Through DeFi
Solana is lightyears ahead of Cardano when it comes to decentralized finance. While developers are still struggling to get DApps and DEXes on the Cardano ecosystem, the DeFi space on Solana has been in full bloom for months. Users can lend, borrow, yield farm, and more on Solana while protocols that provide these services are still awaited on Cardano.
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Currently, Solana has over $14 billion in TVL (Total Value Locked) on the network, with over 37 billion total transactions. Since the DeFi space is yet to kickstart on Cardano, TVL on the network remains at zero.
Expectations for Cardano in the future remain high. However, in the meantime, Solana has proven to be the better choice of the two for DeFi. This makes it the top competitor for Ethereum in the space.
Featured image from Medium, chart from TradingView.com