ADA Unlikely to Stay at No. 10 Once Market Understands Cardano Fundamentals

A prominent Cardano community member argues that ADA’s current ranking as the 10th biggest token reflects market misunderstanding rather than technological inferiority.

Critics have widely interpreted Cardano’s position as the 10th biggest cryptocurrency as a sign of low adoption or innovation. However, supporters have consistently disputed this view, emphasizing that its low ranking is due to persistent market ignorance of Cardano’s core design advantages.

Consequently, they argue that once investors fully understand its design advantages, particularly around decentralization, security, and staking, Cardano’s position will improve based on fundamentals rather than hype.

Key Points

• Cardano bulls claim that ADA’s current ranking as the 10th-largest token reflects market perception, not technological weakness.
• They believe ADA’s ranking will improve once investors recognize its fundamentals over hype.
• Skeptics suggest otherwise, pointing to Cardano’s inability to attract institutions and top-level stablecoins.
• Ongoing efforts by Cardano’s team reflect a commitment to address ecosystem gaps.

Cardano’s Unique Design

Analyst Dr. Cuadrado highlighted in a tweet that Cardano is widely regarded as one of the most decentralized blockchains in the industry, featuring real on-chain governance and a security model built from first principles.

Unlike many competitors with uncapped supplies, Cardano has a fixed maximum of 45 billion ADA. The token remains in users’ wallets at all times, and rewards are distributed every five days without reliance on external smart contracts.

How Cardano Differs From Ethereum

Comparing Cardano to Ethereum, Cuadrado highlighted what he described as a structural divide. While Ethereum pioneered smart contracts and DeFi, its liquid staking ecosystem often requires custodial arrangements that expose users to protocol and counterparty risk.

However, Cuadrado noted that Cardano’s design eliminates these trade-offs by embedding staking directly into the base layer. Therefore, he suggested that once the market fully recognizes the ability to earn yield without lockups, custody loss, or hidden risk, Cardano’s ranking will reflect its fundamentals.

Mixed Reactions Trail Cuadrado’s Commentary

Cardano, which briefly ranked third-largest in 2021, now sits in 10th place. At a price of $0.3474 and a circulating supply of 36.04 billion tokens, ADA carries a market value of $12.52 billion.

Nonetheless, many Cardano proponents, including Cuadrado, expect ADA to climb higher in the future. They cite Cardano’s on-chain governance, research-driven and peer-reviewed development model, and its focus on solving scalability, interoperability, and sustainability challenges seen in earlier networks as factors that could fuel this growth.

In addition, they point to rising institutional interest, with ADA included in several basket ETFs in the U.S. and Grayscale seeking to launch a product solely tied to ADA.

However, skeptics remain unconvinced. Specifically, Pablo Antonio, founder of on-chain asset manager PBG, argues that strong fundamentals alone are unlikely to drive market leadership.

He contends that crypto’s success depends more on institutional adoption, which Cardano has yet to secure at scale. Antonio also criticized Cardano’s ecosystem for lagging in key areas such as stablecoins, oracles, and real-world assets (RWA), while emphasizing that the current leadership lacks a strong business and enterprise focus.

Meanwhile, Cardano is taking steps to address these challenges. Founder Charles Hoskinson has discussed launching the RLUSD stablecoin on Cardano with Ripple executives.

Moreover, Cardano stakeholders are also advancing real-world asset tokenization, with the blockchain participating in a project introduced by the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG). However, these initiatives have not materially impacted ADA’s price or valuation.