Cardano’s Smart Contract Count Breaches 2,200, Hoskinson Says Defi “up for grabs”

Cardano ($ADA) blockchain successfully integrated smart contracts to the mainnet on September 12 via Alonzo hardfork. The key upgrade was a major milestone coming at a critical time when NFT and Defi market is touching new highs. The smart contract functionality would allow Cardano to support Dapps, Defi protocols, and NFTs which all are governed through smart contracts.

Just four days after the upgrade Cardano blockchain’s smart contract count has breached 2,200 and the vicel app shows the current count at 2,271. However, these contracts won’t be deployed right away and developers are only saving them in advance on the blockchain to use it with the launch of their Dapp. This in turn shows the demand for Cardano blockchain. With a new architecture with scalability and security in focus, the blockchain is seeing a great surge in development activity.

On its way to the Alonzo upgrade, Cardano faced a lot of criticism and trolling for delaying the upgrade, many even bet against the smart contract possibility on the blockchain this year and eventually lost it. However, the developers managed to release everything on time and as promised.

Charles Hoskinson Beleive Cardano Would Lead the Second Wave of Defi

Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano believes the blockchain is well positioned for the second wave of defi as regulatory scrutiny on the defi market has increased. During a recent interview, Hoskinson noted that the upcoming crackdown wave would be quite similar to the ICO-era crackdown in 2017. He said the Defi market is up for grabs and only those Defi protocols that would have liquidity and interoperability features would lead the second wave of Defi.

“We will see over the next few months to years, some form of a crackdown,”  [That] means that the next generation of DeFi is up for grabs.”

He added

“The winners of the future in the DeFi space are going to have liquidity and interoperability, the ability to move multi-chain,” Hoskinson said. “And finally, cost predictability is such an important thing… It’s so bizarre how we just tolerate massive swings in the price of doing business.”

While the development activity on the Cardano blockchain is on the rise, the price continues to consolidate under $2.50. $ADA price bullish momentum started in August along with the rest of the crypto market and it managed to see a 2.5X rise in price to a new ATH of $3.10. However, the recent flash crash in the crypto market wiped out the majority of its gains and it is currently trading at $2.41. Increased development activity and rising demand could trigger the bullish momentum that the altcoin needs to push ahead of $2.50 and retest all-time highs.