Cardano's ADA token has been rising in price over the past seven days thanks to several interesting innovations in its blockchain. The rise took place even though Bitcoin and Ethereum took a sideways position.

CoinGecko reports that ADA has risen by 30% over the past seven days, and this is against the backdrop of minimal growth in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP, whose combined increase was no more than 5%.

The data confidently shows that the volume of Cardano transactions per day is about $5.30 billion. This is comparable to Ethereum transaction volumes of $5.59 billion.

However, at the same time, Cardano's gas fees (payments made by users to offset the computing energy needed to process transactions) were around $75,400, compared to the latter's $44 million over the same period.

"One could quite easily argue that the NFT market has found a gas-light way to transact, and that is the Cardano blockchain," said Hayden Hughes, CEO of crypto trading social network Alpha Impact.

"Many have argued that it's only a matter of time before gas fees and congestion clog up the Cardano blockchain, leading to high gas fees, but despite the $5.31 billion in daily activity we have not yet seen this."

Difficult path to the top

Cardano has been quite volatile in recent months.

For a time, the token ranked third among all cryptocurrencies in the world, behind only Bitcoin and Ethereum, and its combined market value was approaching $100 billion amid optimism about the addition of smart contract capabilities.

But the hype from the news subsided and the token corrected 50% below its September record.

Despite this deep correction, the token managed to win a lot of loyal fans, as well as enemies. The latter includes Mike Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Digital, who tweeted six months ago that "I spoke to twenty of the smartest people I know in the space, and zero of them saw Cardano having traction with devs."

Probably, the attitude towards this digital asset is largely determined by the support of other altcoins and bitcoin. This is confirmed by the words of Antoni Trenchev: "ADA's critics say there's too much talk and not enough action. Cardano's position as Ethereum's nemesis was somewhat usurped in 2021 by the rise of rival blockchains Solana and Avalanche... clearly, there's a passionate Cardano community eager for it to succeed, otherwise it wouldn't be a top-five crypto."

The Cardano project is really actively developing at the moment. Its blockchain system includes decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and its own metaverse that unites its adherents into a single community. Such progress in scaling benefits the token by improving its prospects, according to Asian markets expert Vijay Ayyar.

Trenchev also spoke more than once about the interesting future of the token thanks to such a developed infrastructure.

"The planned launch of the first DEX – decentralized exchange – on the Cardano blockchain comes after it's already established a presence in NFTs," Trenchev shares. "To top it off, Cardano is stealing some attention away from Decentraland and The Sandbox with news of the first Cardano metaverse," he says, referring to his victory in the information field, which is the main advantage of the token's competitiveness. It looks like we will see growth in the near future.

The success of Cardano confirms that one of the basic rules of organizing an all-in-one service structure continues to apply even in times of globalization. The token has great potential and is a strong competitor to "fiat" altcoins.