Cardano (ADA) is often accused of not using the network much. Nevertheless, the project took a number of major steps last year, technically and administratively. And with what is planned for 2026, the foundation appears to be laid for a potentially explosive growth phase.
Cardano will lay the foundation in 2025
2025 was an important year for Cardano. For example, Hydra v1.0 was launched in October: a Layer-2 solution that should make Cardano ready for large-scale adoption. On testnet, Hydra previously achieved more than 1 million transactions per second, and theoretically it could even process billions of transactions in a short time.
In addition, the privacy-oriented sidechain Midnight (NIGHT) came to life. The token was launched on the Cardano network and now has a market capitalization of over $1 billion.
Midnight makes it possible to process sensitive data on the blockchain without all information being publicly visible. This is done via ‘selective disclosure’, where users decide for themselves what they share.
By the way, the claim period for NIGHT is still running. If you registered your wallet during the Glacier drop between August and October, you still have almost a year to claim your tokens.
Another historic moment was the Chang hard fork on September 1. This marked the start of the Voltaire phase: complete decentralization of the network. ADA holders were given the opportunity to choose so-called DReps via a new governance system, who help decide the course of the network.
Cardano accelerates in 2026
After an intensive year, Cardano will be anything but standing still in 2026. One of the most important upgrades is the planned launch of Ouroboros Leios. This innovation should increase the speed of the base layer (Layer 1) to 1,000 to even 10,000 transactions per second, without making any concessions to security or decentralization.
In addition, Midnight’s mainnet launch is expected in 2026. From that moment on, Midnight is fully operational and developers and users can actually build and use applications on it.
The token thus expands the applications for Cardano. With its focus on privacy and selective transparency, Midnight is especially interesting for institutions, companies and governments that want to use blockchain without making concessions to sensitive data. Consider, for example, hospitals that want to store medical records on the blockchain.
Furthermore, the community has agreed to a withdrawal of 70 million ADA from the treasury to support the integration of leading stablecoins such as USDT and USDC on Cardano.
Cardano is also working on expanding the basic infrastructure. There are rumors that major stablecoins (such as USDT or USDC) will finally come to the network next year. That would be a big boost for the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.
In practice, Defi still lags behind on the network. According to data from DefiLlama, the Total Value Locked (TVL) on Cardano is only $171 million. For comparison: with Solana (SOL) it is 8.5 billion dollars and with Ethereum (ETH) it is even 67.5 billion. An important difference is that the staked coins are not included in Cardano, because they are not actually fixed.
Given Cardano’s market cap of $13.4 billion, you would expect a much higher level of usage. Solana and Ethereum are larger networks, but the difference in activity is disproportionate.
An integration with Bitcoin (BTC) is also in the pipeline. This should make it possible to use BTC within Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem. This can also cause a significant increase in activity and a higher TVL.
Wider adoption can logically lead to increased demand. If more institutions, users and projects settle on Cardano, this could have a positive effect on the price.
It could really use that, because 2025 has been a disastrous year for the popular altcoin.
Source: https://newsbit.nl/dit-is-waarom-cardano-in-2026-kan-gaan-knallen/
