Why Cardano (ADA) Surged 25% Today. Is It a Buy?

Anticipated enhancement called "Vasil" scheduled to launch on Cardano testnet this week and go live June 29.

Later this week, it's expected that the Cardano blockchain will deploy its "Vasil hard fork" on the system's test network, which will increase its operational throughput and efficiency. Once any technical bugs and glitches are worked out, the upgrade will go live at the end of June. This development will be the most significant development for the original "Ethereum Killer" blockchain since it added smart contract capabilities in September 2021.

Charles Hoskinson, who was one of the Ethereum network cofounders, launched Cardano in 2017 due to philosophical differences with other Ethereum creators and his belief that the Ethereum blockchain was systematically flawed due to programming challenges. Hoskinson also launched Cardano with a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus model to verify network transactions, an upgrade to the energy-hogging proof-of-work (PoW) method currently used by other popular crypto networks including Ethereum, Dogecoin, and Bitcoin.

While Cardano has a lot going for it regarding its ability to accommodate decentralized applications and smart contracts, one of the biggest criticisms against the project has been how slow it has progressed through its roadmap. In its painstaking efforts to be thorough, Cardano has ceded its first-mover advantage as a strong alternative to Ethereum to nimble competitors such as Solana, Polkadot, and Avalanche which have significantly eroded Cardano's price, position, and prospects.

Is Caradano a buy?

As of this writing, Cardano had lost a bit of ground from its intraday peak and was trading at $0.65 per coin on cryptocurrency exchanges, marking a 79% decline from its all-time high of $3.10 set Sept. 2, 2021. Despite its glacial deployment, its leadership team is exceptional and its technology remains strong for now. However, the big question is whether Cardano's tech will still be relevant in three to five years as faster competitors hop over it in the fast-pace race of tech supremacy. Unlike the fabled race between the tortoise and the hare, slow-and-steady developers tend to lose out when it comes to software innovation. That makes it extremely difficult to predict how Cardano may, or may not, finish its race with its toughest challenger -- itself.