Cardano Price Rallies to 2-Month High as Alonzo Anticipation Builds

A $600 million protocol hack, the advance of a bearish crypto bill in Congress, and a $100 million regulatory settlement by BitMEX have done nothing to dampen enthusiasm for cryptocurrency buyers.

Case in point: Cardano.

The Ethereum competitor, which is teasing the introduction of smart contracts, has watched its native coin, ADA, surge in price over 12% in 24 hours to plateau at above $1.65. It hasn’t seen such heights since the first week of June.

In an “announcement of the announcement,” Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said today he expects to reveal the date on which smart contracts will be released on the Cardano mainnet. “We’ll be able to announce when the Alonzo hard fork is going to happen, and at that point you’ll be able to run smart contracts on Cardano,” he told viewers on Periscope.

Hoskinson said the hard fork would occur before the Cardano Summit, currently scheduled for next month.

Cardano has gradually added functions since it went live in 2017. Like Ethereum, for instance, it allows for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which are blockchain-based tokens that signify a deed of ownership to a digital asset.

The Alonzo hard fork will be one of the most consequential upgrades for the proof-of-stake network because it will facilitate the introduction of decentralized finance (DeFi)—protocols that allow people to lend, borrow, and trade without any intermediaries. Instead of loan officers and underwriters, DeFi relies on smart contracts—programs that execute if certain conditions are met.

While ADA has had the largest movement of any asset in the top 10 in the last 24 hours, most coins have had a decent, if unspectacular day. Ethereum was slightly up, Binance Coin mustered a 4% increase, and Uniswap grabbed 3% gains. Bitcoin is down 1%.