Cardano (CRYPTO: ADA), the popular cryptocurrency project that Charles Hoskinson built, continues to struggle this year. Its token has plunged and is hovering near its all-time low, while its ecosystem growth has stagnated.
Cardano Fees Have Plunged This Year
Despite having an $8.2 billion market capitalization, Cardano has made just $352,000 this year, data by DeFi Llama shows. It made just $238,000 in the first quarter, its lowest level since the fourth quarter of 2020. At its peak, the network generated $4.2 million in fees.
Cardano's fees are significantly lower than other top networks in the crypto industry. For example, Hyperliquid, the fast-growing perpetual futures network, has made $336 million this year. Justin Sun's Tron (CRYPTO: TRX) has made over $1.3 billion, while Tether made $2.7 billion.
Cardano's performance is mostly because it has had no ecosystem growth in the past few years despite Hoskinson's efforts. For example, data compiled by RWA shows that it has zero assets in the real-world asset tokenization industry. In contrast, Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH), which Cardano sought to disrupt, has over $16 billion in tokenized assets.
Cardano's decentralized finance ecosystem has continued to worsen, with the total value locked dropping to just $128 million. Ethereum, in contrast, has over $43 billion in assets. Similarly, as the chart below shows, the volume handled by decentralized exchange networks in Cardano dropped to $222 million in Q1 from $408 million in Q4.
More users are abandoning Cardano, with the number of active addresses falling to 1.6 million in Q1, down from 15.1 million in Q4'21.
Hoskinson and the team have worked to boost activity on Cardano. For example, they integrated with Pyth Network, a tier-1 oracle network in December last year. They also launched Midnight, a zero-knowledge-based privacy network whose token has achieved a market capitalization of over $670 million.
ADA Price is Nearing Record Low
The ongoing Cardano woes likely explain why ADA, its token, has crashed and is hovering near its all-time low. It has dropped to $0.2353, a few points above its all-time low of $0.2073. This price is much lower than its all-time high of $3 when its market cap was over $90 billion.
ADA has continued to underperform its closest peers. For example, it has crashed by 65% in the last 12 months, while HYPE has jumped by 86% in the same period. Solana and XRP prices have dropped by 47%, 40%, while BNB has risen by over 2.5%.
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