Is Cardano Experiencing A DeFi Renaissance As Key Metrics Flash Red?

Cardano grabbed much traction over the last 24 hours as the market shifted in favor of altcoins.

This warranted a look under the hood of the network, which revealed that things have been bubbling up.

LunarCrush Social Insights revealed that social sentiment around Cardano was on the rise.

Moreover, its latest uptick pushed to levels last seen in December 2024, during which ADA price action experienced an aggressive rally.

The last time that market sentiment surged to those levels, the Cardano network also experienced a surge in activity.

On-chain activity on the Cardano network could signal that a similar situation played out in the last 7 days.

Cardano Network Activity Signals Positive Growth

The Cardano network kicked off July on a healthy note, as revealed by some of its main performance metrics.

DEX volume was nowhere near the levels observed in December 2024, but it did register a noteworthy recovery in the last 7 days.

For context, Cardano DEX volume bottomed out at $1.46 million on 5 June. However, a steady uptick during the week ensured that it surged up to $4.95 million by 11 June.

The surging DEX volume confirmed that the Cardano network experienced a surge in DEX activity. This was no coincidence, considering that it was an exciting week for the market.

Another major observation backing heightened DeFi activity was positive address growth, which also registered a significant uptick.

For reference, active addresses on the network surged from 16,100 to almost 27,000 addresses.

While address growth was up by a noteworthy margin, it was not particularly elevated. Especially compared to November and December 2024 levels.

Similarly, DEX volumes were also nowhere near December 2024 levels.

Nevertheless, renewed network activity this week offered some confidence and revealed that Cardano was in a position to benefit from the improving market conditions.

ADA Among Top Altcoins that Benefited in the Latest Bullish Wave

While Bitcoin rallied to new historic highs above $118,000, its dominance has been declining since 27 June. This confirmed that altcoins were starting to receive liquidity injections.

However, some altcoins attracted more liquidity injection than others, and Cardano (ADA) was among the biggest beneficiaries.

ADA surged as high as $0.77 on Friday, which marked a 37% upside from its weekly low. It had also bounced by 52% from its lowest price point in July.

Although ADA bulls were back, it still traded at a sizable discount from its December 2024 top and more so from its historic top in September 2021.

This meant the cryptocurrency had a lot of upside potential, which would likely be driven by robust network activity growth.

Unlike Bitcoin, which recently soared into previously uncharted territory, ADA still had a long way to go before retesting its ATH.

However, this latest spike in demand for ADA was confirmation that the cryptocurrency regained its appeal in the market.

Speaking of demand, Cardano (ADA) also found favor with the derivatives market. Open interest was set to conclude the week above $1 billion after its latest push.

This marked the first time that ADA open interest surged above the same level since early March.

Derivatives volumes signaled that ADA may be more susceptible to volatility ahead. Volume surged above $5 billion on Friday after bouncing by over 108% since Thursday.

Despite this, ADA volumes were below half of the March 2025 spike and on par with November 2024 levels.

The big question now is whether this latest spike in network activity and ADA price action is a temporary spike or the start of a robust, longer-term recovery.

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