It is often accused of stagnation amid rapid evolution elsewhere in the digital asset market.
That the price of its native ADA coin has never gone beyond $3.09 frequently fuels the criticism.
Since launching in 2017, the platform has also suffered several sharp drops in the Cardano to USD price.
These trough periods inevitably lead to speculation that the last rites are about to be read.
Yet despite all the naysaying and doomsday talk Cardano remains – maybe not as a towering presence but there all the same.
Solid Foundation for Growth
The question is, how is the platform managing to weather the storms thrown at it?
The answer is rather simple, as it turns out.
As more people start to understand the crypto market, so hype gives way to preferences for functionality.
In this regard, Cardano remains an industry powerhouse.
Its peer-reviewed research approach may put off investors looking for instant gratification, but it also inspires traditional financial institutions.
Cardano has built its name on scalability and sustainable design.
This makes it a trusted platform that offers plenty of scope for expanding across non-fungible tokens (NFTs), decentralised finance (DeFi), and use by governments.
Holy Grail Bridge?
In the crypto world there is no escaping the parallels drawn between market leader Bitcoin and the rest, including Cardano.
This is why a partnership between EMURGO Cardano’s co-founding entity and BitcoinOS, the smart contract operating system designed to expand bitcoin’s functionality without altering its core code, is turning heads.
The two are working together on the “BitcoinOS Grail Bridge” – a system that will enable the world’s biggest cryptocurrency to finally gain a proper foothold in DeFi, GameFi and smart contracts.
As big as bitcoin is, it has struggled for years with scalability, limiting its ability to compete in these areas.
Unspent transaction output (UTXO) lies at the heart of this partnership.
UXTO is the amount of digital currency left after a cryptocurrency transaction has taken place.
However, unlike traditional money, it does not reflect as a numerical amount that remains.
Rather, it allows for “non-exact” change transactions.
According to Cardano creator Charles Hoskinson, it is only through Cardano that Bitcoin can operate natively with the UTXO model.
This partnership introduces bitcoin to a smart contract layer on Cardano.
The upshot of this significant linkup is that Cardano can access bitcoin’s huge ecosystem and bitcoin users can make use of Cardano’s highly-respected features.
In other words, it’s a classic win-win situation.
Cardano’s challenge has often been liquidity and this move is aimed at making it simpler for users to trade between Cardano and bitcoin seamlessly.
Should all go according to plan, liquidity will be greatly improved.
Champion of resilience
While there will always be those to write off Cardano as a crypto also-ran, this type of partnership is exactly why the platform will not go quietly into the night.
It is nothing if not resilient.